As a relative newcomer to Hive, this thread is somewhat disheartening. I saw HIVE as viable alternative to existing social media as well as a way to counteract the censorship which takes place on other platforms.
The concept of value creation is not new to me. As an entrepreneur, I have spent most of my career building value both for myself as well as everyone in the networks that I have built or been involved with. Unfortunately over the last few months I have noticed that the Hive community appears to be falling into many of the same traps that have plagued mainstream social media platforms. "Policing" instead of being conducted by outright censorship is conducted by downvoting. "Remove the ability to earn value and you will silence the voice," seems to be the method being deployed.
When I joined the community in June or so this year, my impression was that the community was "kind and supportive." I saw it as a vehicle to "tell my story" and both add and be rewarded with value. I was told by the friend who introduced me to Hive that the Hive Blockchain was hardforked after an attempt was made to control Steem. It sounded good. I created a couple of posts in the summer which I enjoyed creating and feedback was encouraging.
Subsequently, "life happened" and it was a couple of months before I returned to Hive. Whilst at the moment I don't have time to create content, I felt that I needed to re-connect and possibly find some Hivers to share some of my stored value with. Unfortunately, my experience has been that there has been a decline in the quality of original content or rather... There has been an increase in the amount of poor quality content in some of the communities to which I belong. This has meant that good quality content is somewhat hidden. Instead of just leaving the platform, I thought that it would be a good idea to look for some of the content creators that I know and use Hive to reward them. The Last American Vagabond is just one such content creator. To see how this channel has been downvoted may just be the final nail in the Hive coffin for me. To see how "re-enforcements" were called in to essentially wipe out any value that was given to Ryan - that's his name - is reminiscent of the chants to "burn the witch" at the Salem witch trials.
Have the downvoters in question considered the fact that this particular Hiver (and others like him) may in fact be the very reason that many have come to Hive? For me, Hive is the ideal way to support members of the alternative media. Do you have any idea of the reach of many of these independent journalists? Before The Last American Vagabond was de-platformed by YouTube, his reach was routinely in the hundreds of thousands.
I would kindly suggest that before embarking on a campaign to "punish" a Hiver like The last American Vagabond for "only posting an external link" that downvoters consider all of the facts and ramifications of doing this. There is a real danger that HIVE will just become another social media platform with crypto on the side. We need to be better than the platforms and spaces that we left to come here.
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EXACTLY! Thank you. Very sad to see.
@fulltimegeek you have just proved the point with your downvote here. This has nothing to do with preserving the integrity of Hive and everything to do with suppressing what you deem to be "wrongthink." Whilst disappointing, your action is not surprising.
He is not a Hive content creator, he's just sharing his posts here through links, not even content. Sorry but we don't live in a fictional world where we can just throw money around at any one we want without others having a say in it because they believe they're not providing any value to the network and mainly chime in when they get downvoted.
Look at his previous posts, he was at least using 3speak - a Hive dapp, to post his content, it wasn't just links. Even then you could say the content was a bit overrewarded because not only was this user constantly trending from the same autovoters he still failed to grow an audience on Hive or what would've been even better, bring his audience over to Hive. I can guarantee you no one would dare to downvote or say anything if that had happened and was true today. Even if some people had personal grudges which some seem to accuse fulltimegeek of, others would've gladly countered his downvotes and defended tlavagabond because he would've had a rich profile with tons of unique users consuming his content here whether or not it was "hive first" which is what I meant in my first setence with "hive content creator".
It's nice when new influencers join, I don't mind people showering them with votes, but if they get complacent over time and their effort of the content they're generating here decreases to only sharing a link and a banner then I really can't defend it nor the autovotes of people saying "oops sorry didn't know he was just linking" or some of you who scream censorship and all this other nonsense instead of facing the issue at hand. That the value they are bringing to Hive is close to 0 and it should reflect in their earnings.
Thank you for your well structured and reasoned reply. I would prefer to be proven wrong in my observations about current trends about downvoting as I feel that HIVE has potential as both a platform and currency. I will continue to observe, engage and create content as I can and see where this goes.