I participated in this and other giveaways and I benefited from them. Until they were destroyed by DVs.
The big problem with DVs is that there are no set rules and it's up to whales to do whatever they feel like. Being stake weighted, it's a small but rich minority that dictates those rules, applies them however they want and they don't even follow them.
I'd rather have a button that said rules and explained what could and couldn't be done. Posts following those rules couldn't lose their rewards, posts breaking those rules would lose their rewards. Simple.
That doesn't interest the powerful, though. In the current system, if any small user is the target of a whale, there's nothing they can do, which is what happened to me because of discord disagreements where I was never rude.
And the whole thing about the "post bringing (or not) value to Hive" or "adjusting rewards to what the post is worth" is all BS because it's subjective. For me, the giveaway posts bring a lot of value. Posts with a lunch photo, or some random vacation photos have no value to me. I don't care about those. Seriously, this post is just a rant about posts that are considered "abuse" by whales and it gets a lot of upvotes because obviously those whales agree with it. What value does this bring?
That's why DVs should not exist. Upvotes are already stake weighted so why give double benefit to the most powerful users? I get DVs and I can't get any meaningful fight back.
And it's funny when I read the term "farming the reward pool". The reward pool is there for rewards. Upvotes are supposed to be used, although not all of them are because there's always people inactive, on vacation, or whatever. The point is that most of the upvoting power is used and that's what it is for. Regardless of the post I vote for, be it the most popular or the least popular, at 100%, I'm voting with my own HP and it's the same amount being distributed. There's not more Hive being given by my vote when that vote goes to what whales consider a low or a high quality post. It's exactly the same. There's no extra inflation because of that. If there are 10 times less posts I'm still gonna upvote the same amount and most people will too, in order to make the best use of their own HP. By giving these DVs they're just driving people away which only makes Hive price go lower and lower. In the end, that's what's gonna happen. While will be a handful of people with a ton of HP voting among themselves (which they already do) but it will be worth nothing because everyone else left since blogging was cool 20 years ago and they managed to drive everyone else away.