and was met with an unfollow right back after a short while - understandable.
I see them posting about stuff and the content isn't bad, it's actually pretty decent, but the way they're going about getting rewarded for it was what went against my ideal form of curation.
Thought I'd make a quick post mentioning why that was an issue for me and why always trying to get the most amount of rewards may not always be in your best interest here.
The account in question also leases Hive Power, something that usually is not profitable because why would people lease out their hive power if they can just earn 8.5% APR on curation alone, thus if they are to lease it you'll have to pay them more than that. How can you earn more than 8.5% of that hive power? Well, by vote-trading.
Now as I've said many times in the past, some reciprocal trading is okay, we all have friends and better connections with some people, maybe we talk to them off-chain, maybe we believe they're here to stay long-term, maybe we think their content are a great value-add to hive, and many other reasons. When this crosses a line however is when most of your voting power goes to accounts of a similar sized value and it seeming random in terms of the connection of these authors other than everyone trying to make the most author rewards they can.
This has happened to me in the past as well, I remember a time when I was blessed by a 500k SP delegation by blocktrades (among other people) and these "fishers" would start appearing. What do I mean by fishers, well, to put it bluntly, they'll vote a post of yours even though they may have never done so before even though you've both been around for a long time, noticed each other in trending or here and there, etc. The first vote can be a sort of and introduction in a form, no words exchanged, no harm or foul meant and some times it'd be natural for an author to notice the vote and then go check out the content of that other user to bless them with a vote as well. If you do this, and some times I have, the fisher moves on to the next step - voting for your next post as well.
Now you're in this scenario where you received another big vote by this user, you may never have interacted with them, you may not even understand their content aside from a few nice images, etc, but you now have a choice to make, do you still give them a vote back or do you go on voting other people and see what their next steps are? I usually tend for the latter. Some times they don't instantly give up, they may vote on your next post as well, they may even start leaving comments here and there as a soft reminder of "hey, aren't you forgetting something?" without mentioning it. The desperation comes out some times and eventually they stop voting your content - bummer, eh?
Okay, so what is this unspoken scheme and handshake about? Well, it's about accounts of similar stake or vote size trying to build a relationship of vote-trading with another. Once that becomes too apparent and obvious, that's usually when downvotes start to enter if people notice and can be bothered but it is also when drama unfolds.
Let's take a deeper look at this certain account to see their voting practices, I'll try not to make it obvious who it is as that's not what this post is about, it's about this vote-trading activity that doesn't even really need to be set up through hive.vote, some other schemes or any exchange of words.
Through hivetask we can see the votes they've sent out the last 7 days, these are by weight and by amount. Meaning how big the votes were compared to their total hive power and how many of them. So what I did next, was open up the top 7 users on that list on hivetask as well to see their outgoing votes.
I was initially going to post everyone's votes and how they're reciprocating each other with votes as it boosts their author rewards but I don't think there's much point to it since I'd have to censor the usernames either way.
I'll talk a bit more about the idea behind all of this instead.
In one way you can see it as a "perk", if you have a lot of hivepower but don't wanna get judged by others for using all of it to selfvotes constantly, you can hide away that activity by voting for 9-10 other authors of similar stake and as long as all of them return a vote you're now technically self-voting 10x per day but only having to post once. This is a common activity on hive, I'm sure it doesn't take a genius to notice and figure out what's happening and as I said, to a certain degree it's okay, but if all you vote is only people of similar stake that also give you a vote back you're not really participating in "curation", you're just looking out to earn the most author rewards you can while also piling other random votes on top here and there.
Now as I mentioned early in the post, some are doing this with leased HP as well, meaning they don't even have any real skin in the game and are relying on those reciprocal votes so they can keep leasing HP to have a bigger influence on Hive and keep giving big votes to those orca's/whales. They've skipped the "grind" that's usually common on social media platforms and instantly dived into vote trading with other people's stake and are making sure leasing of HP is profitable for both the lessor and lessee.
Now why is that bad? Remember when we talked about vote selling and delegation for voting projects? If both parties are profiting of the activity then the people losing out on it are the rest not participating in this. The people in this case using hive-engine to lease out delegations and the author to rent those delegations in exchange of hive and hive-engine maybe taking a middleman fee there as escrow (not sure if that's a thing) are all profiting it means that those not actively participating in this activity are being diluted.
Rewards can't come from nothing and we all share the same reward pool, so if some people are unfairly getting votes through vote trading, making leasing of HP profitable, etc, it means the rest are earning less because of this, both curators who don't lease out HP and authors who don't use leased HP to vote trade to increase author rewards "unfairly".
Now, I'm not against the leasing of HP, but it has to be an "investment" so to speak. Ask yourself why no one is leasing out HP at a lower cost than 8.5% APR, naturally because they could just vote to get those returns so why lease out stake, everyone wants more stake. Then ask yourself why almost no one is leasing HP for a higher cost than 8.5%? Well cause if you'd just curate with it it would constantly cost you more to keep leasing than what you're getting from curation rewards. The "investment" I speak of is a long-term strategy, you curate with leased HP users of all kinds, preferably of course those who post content you're interested in so that over time you can have a rich following with users who consume your content and reward you with their votes based on you as an author and user on Hive and not solely based on how much hive power you have.
The long-term investment could also work in different ways, let's say if I leased HP for over a year and it cost me 10,000 Hive to do so, but now for the next year I may have built connections with minnows, dolphins, orcas, whales, etc that are interested in me as a user and will continue to support me even though my HP is much smaller than back when I leased it.
These users though want the influence, the long-term investment of "consistent rewards" and to profit off of the lease as well making this whole endeavor risk-free for them.
Anyway, I probably wrote enough about this subject, and no, I'm not going to get in the way of such activity at this point in time, just thought I'd make a quick post about it and give you some food for thought. I'm a bit too busy with other things lately but figured I can at least not support users any longer, hence the unfollow.
There are only a few authors I trust to not just dump everything constantly.
Those are the ones who get my support. Hard to get on the list, but once you're there it's a long term thing.
A few days ago you published an article entitled: I am the main victim. In that article you talked about why the negative vote was necessary. I remember that when I came to Hive you also spoke out on the subject. I bring up that post, because this one relates to it.
Both posts have caused me intrigue. In my case genre manual heals, others to trails I follow and authors in fanbase. I have wondered if this distribution is correct, but I did it this way, because I trust projects and I like the content of the authors that are there. I even have them in my favorites list, which reports Ecency.
I try to vote manual and interact with the content I like. The truth is that I am always faced with the fact that I like a lot of things.
I've always wondered why people have a hard time commenting, but it's a relative thing. I wouldn't stop following someone because they stop following me. :P There are users who follow to be informed of what's going on in the ecosystem, others because they complement with their tastes and others for quality content.
I enjoy my writing and reading time with a cup of coffee and listening to music. To some it may seem like I'm an old man in a young body, hahaha.
Abusers usually look for the larger votes, so most smaller stakeholders with smaller votes, trails and fanbase's are usually quite "safe". At those smaller levels the abuse is more apparent, i.e. literal farms posting copypasted stuff and those get usually found quickly by hivewatchers or other stakeholders spending time reporting them.
I guess this post is about more "clever" tactics to earn more author rewards and make sure you're profiting off of your activities at the cost of others. This user for instance jumpstarted his journey on hive quick by leasing HP, and that's fine in and of itself, but doing well on Hive means you have to put in effort and get votes and attention because you've put in the work - if you're going to pay for it (by leasing HP in this case) it shouldn't also be profitable because you're now avoiding all the grind and activity and effort many others have put into to get to a place where they earn their votes. Instead they are now a top x author on the monthly chart and getting a lot of votes from different users because they're trending mainly by having used the leased stake to encourage other similar sized stakeholders to trade votes based on their greed.
That's just my opinion on it, some people may say that's fine and fair use of the blockchain and system.
From what I understand, it is about using fanbase correctly and distributing votes fairly, despite being a small account. In the case of growers, I understand what you are saying and I have seen it. The good thing is that they are quickly detected by hivewatchers.
I see renting as a quick option that doesn't allow you to build something solid in the long term. In Hive the hardest thing to get is followers, gaining the trust of another person, it's not just about the content but the work you do and how you manage your process here.
I have always respected the freedom of action of each person, but the quick options are not the ones I like the most. Mainly because they are not long-lasting. Regarding the last part, my position is similar.
Mainly, I like to find diverse content in trends. Not monofunctionality. The interesting thing about this is to see what another person can give from their intrinsic talents and abilities. Rewards for healing should be directed that way. It is a particular position, it may be supported by some and opposed for others, as you argue at the end.
Your posts are like an encyclopedia on Hive :) I learn something new every time I read one of these.
I have a question, I saw that you view those who lease HP as taking shortcut on Hive. What about if an author were to make an investment in buying Hive and staking it to get HP would you view that the same way?
We want people to buy Hive, right?
Think I mentioned in the post that leasing HP as an investment is perfectly fine, as long as you fairly curate with it and not just look to entice others to vote-trade so your lease remains profitable
I will start there. I know that there is a lot to say here. Even comments can be lengthy. But, I will try to summarize it.
So, I think if this post was viewed by new joiners, it would give them a lot of insights about the platform. Do's and Dont's maybe.
You have talked about some people being desperate of getting those votes. I think that they are missing the point here. I think people should enjoy their time and try to build some connections and their accounts will grow eventually.
I would never even think to unfollow someone because they unfollowed me.
That's some follow-for-follow vote-for-vote bullshit right there.
I follow people because I want their content in my feed.
Playing this maximize-rewards game is annoying as shit.
Yeah, same here. Obviously, sometimes an unfollow happens if the content lose my interest for too long, or if I find it somehow unworthy of following.
And sometimes I don't even follow, but still check up on content from them.. that's to avoid getting in a situation like the user in the article.
Man, I wouldn't even notice if someone unfollowed me. It's so weird to be fixated on that kind of metric.
I was talking about this user with a whale and they said they used to get a lot of awesome comments by them, but once he had placed the user on autovotes the comments stopped completely, lol.
i just checked you are following 1600 users, your feed must be sooo long, it must take agest to go through all of this
the vote trading is quite easy to understand, im not sure i understood the HP leasing thing... one rents a big amount of HP, then upvotes someone bigger or as big and the vote trading starts? so basically vote trade with rented HP instead of own HP?
about your second part, yes
Then it's still the same abuse, but downvotes there might be even more effective to "persuade" to act better... if it's owned hp, the user loses curation reward, if it's rented however, loses curation rewards AND the money for the rent, so double damage
naah many of them are inactive but it's nice when you see some come back
I’ve noticed this too😅. Although I’m a small account but things don’t go unnoticed. You’re free to do whatever you want with your votes, right :)?
There’s no way ima unfollowing someone if their content is interesting!
Honestly I think this kind of self policing over votes is futile folks can always come up with a more intricate scheme, The chain should manage the reward pool automatically... what I mean by manage the reward pool is the chain assigns a user a score if they leach hard from the chain they get a bad score this score is then used as a multiplier that reduces their rewards automatically, this makes curation better as even if folks are not investing to see if the post/user is worthy(most probably not doing a great job if we honest) of the vote this is all handled automatically and goes across chain so no one is above it
Sounds a bit like moons token on r/cryptocurrency. Even though people get rewards once a month based on 1 acc 1 vote, if you sell some of those holdings you will earn a smaller multiplier the next window.
not a fan of that imo.
If you have some time would love to hear what you don't like about it, what I like is that it makes a system change instead of relying on the users
Also you the posh man right ? I had a link on my latest post form posh not sure what the deal is here or how it all work I may be getting robbed or something 🤣 if you can link me the discord or let me know how I can find out more would appreciate
What's the issue exactly? We have a channel in the @ocd discord but not really something central about it other than on-chain.
I am not sure if it is an issue since I am not totally clear on how it works but someone maybe using my content as theirs to get rewards, as mentioned I got a reply on my post from posh to some external bluesky post with a link to my blog post
The comment rewards are meant to reward the person for sharing content outside of hive, whether or not it's their own or someone else's shouldn't play much of a role. At current configuration the author receives 20% of the comment rewards.
Oh ok thanks for clearing things up, found the discord on my own
I see what you are saying. I think you still need to go out on a limb a bit and try to make those connections. I would always leave some kind of comment though. Occasionally I will go through my following feed and click random posts and check them out to see if I want to give them an extra upvote. I'm trying to find a good balance of auto and manual hybrid voting.
Yeah that's usually fine, maximizers don't usually care to give smaller users a vote however. it basically leads to the "middleclass" getting a larger piece of the pie since those votes are just concentrated between each other and in this case with leased/delegated stake.
Ah okay. I have a clearer picture of what you are saying now. So those other accounts were only giving about 20 upvotes per day and they were all 100%.
Gaming social system seldom works to make large amount of money, if here for social read many interesting topics, comment and make contacts some become real life friends.
Couple of exceptionally good content writers do make a reasonable amount, not enough to retire on I don't think.
If purely financing is reason, perhaps move into trading as that would be more beneficial.
Trading is risky, but if there's community continues to demonise downvoting then pulling these schemes means they're risk-free.
Not enough time to pull schemes, have seen it in action, at the end of day simply dust off and walk away. Trading is way too risky!
Most of the time someone removes me from friends on facebook I am left wondering who it was. I only have 87 facebook friends. But I barely use facebook and have not spoken with most of them in years or decades.
At least here we get to know who and usually also why. ;D
The more I read educated posts like this one, the more I see the hive is like a fucking big onion, peel back the layers and more is revealed, and often not good.
The love of money is the root of all evil
I think it comes from St Paul's letter to Timothy, something that has stuck with me for over 50 years, tucked away in a dark corner of the brain
Thanks for explaining this in detail. The idea of vote trading feels weird and dishonest. I think everyone wants to earn more, but doing it in this sneaky way messes with the concept of curation.
I am not surprised to see tha abuse and I agree that this is not a good thing.
On the other hand, my own vote distribution also concentrates on a couple of users I interact with.
On one side, as you already mentioned, this is normal. It are the Hivers with who you have something in common. And it is surely no vote trading.
On the other hand it's also because I often use the following feed to curate. All other feeds give me too much junk which makes it more time consuming to use. But this is bad for vote diversity.
I'm working with Eco on a tool with which you can filter the blogs stream to customize it. Did you read it?
Eco is developing a MVP to see if there is interest in such a tool.
Humans doing humans I guess.
I'm a simple person, I see a post I like, I upvote it. That's it. It's so simple. I'm not getting rich with some Hive so I don't care. I'm here to make worthy friendships and talk about my music 😊
I don't understand this? I'd like to understand.
Cost lower than 8.5% APR
Rent HP at a cost higher than 8.5%
At some point I thought about renting HP, but I haven't because I don't understand the mechanism. My goal was to vote for users who aren't taken into account. I've experienced this myself and know what it feels like, and I want to have that project at some point. I'm still learning and I don't know many things, which is why I haven't put it into practice yet. I would appreciate it if you could provide me with some Healing guides because there are many things I don't understand. Thank you very much.
And I feel bad for those users you unfollowed; I think they'll be sad.
The cost to rent is usually equated in APR, I.e how much curation reward APR you get from renting the HP compared to what the average is, usually it's higher than 8.5% because that's the base-line many can get to without much effort such as delegating to a curation project or trailing an account that votes or simply autovoting.
The idea to rent HP is to use it to promote yourself or a brand or a project, entice people with votes to check yourself out or the project. There should be a "cost" in doing so, if it's cheaper to rent HP than it is to earn curation rewards for it everyone would do it.
Some people rent it just to get connections where they spend most of the rented HP to trade votes with users of similar vote strength, whether they rent or not is a bit irrelevant as they're voting each other only based on interest in votes, not interest in the content or the user.
Greetings, I'm still processing this, I think I understand. Partly, it's about promoting, I understand that. I don't know the percentages and the APRs yet, but I have a general idea: it's not profitable, but if it's profitable for promotion, yes, and if it's profitable for supporting those who need it, they'll believe in your project and support you.
APRs, I still need to assimilate that. I'll keep investigating.
Gracias gracias
Your point about the long-term strategy for leasing HP is so true. Building genuine connections over time makes a lot more sense than relying on short-term vote trading
I thought it was this project and I see there are several on Hive. This one receives delegations, the project votes itself 23.59% on its various accounts.
Is it accepting all rewards?
3% for curators
Feel free to give me more info privately if you like
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