Beware, there's going to be mspaint infographics in this post that may make your eyes bleed.
Ah, the everso-abused feature of proof of brain - vote-trading. Where to begin?
No, like seriously, where do I even begin, it's been something that I think has been possibly since most hardforks, maybe the first one which had this weird quadratic equation where it didn't make much sense to trade votes with. I can't even recall how exactly that one worked, or could be I never really understood it, I just remember that after a certain amount of vote weight had landed on posts shit started going exponential shortly after. Was during the time we'd see posts hitting $30-60k, of course the price being at an ATH and supply at an all time low were a big factor there too, along with sell pressure being low as well with powerdowns lasting 2 years and only giving you half a percent per week. Powerdowns would quite literally not give you more liquids than you'd earn that week from curation/inflation.
Okay, so much for staying on topic, anyway, ever since the curve got quite a lot more linear vote-trading became popular. It wasn't always just about trails and autovoting either, you could see people partake in it manually as well. I remember going through my rounds of curating posts in my feed and some of them would notice it and a few hours later throw me a vote back. Ehm, hello, while I appreciate it that's not what I voted you for. Then a few days later they'd go "fishing" with their votes, cast another one on me to give me a reminder "you forgetting something?", no not this time, sir. They'd magically stop voting my posts after that, so yeah, people can vote-trade manually too and it's not like I am completely against it, it's part of the whole building connections we know on Hive, it's just that my focus has been elsewhere.
Before I get to the concrete issues with this, I think it needs to be said that you can't judge people based on a small sample of this activity. We all have friends, we all may vote for some kind of motives at times, it's not like the community is trying to enforce utopia in stake distribution and fair curation, there'll always be some kind of "backscratching" going on, the issue is when people do it at alarming rates and then the content and engagement has nothing to show for it, it's like the sole purpose of the posts they may create daily is primarily just to get that extra APR they feel they deserve which is not always easy to distinguish but some times it is.
Let me begin with showing you some visuals that most people are aware of
but newbies and those who've never delved deeper into how hive actually works might learn a thing or two.
Here's a simple fact about how post and curation rewards are split up on hive, currently it's 50% of rewards go to curators while the remaining 50% go to authors:
As I talked in my previous post, curation rewards are usually somewhere around 8.5% if you vote in the first day of the post and the posts don't get downvoted a lot you'll see yourself earn about 8.5% in a year from your stake. This may of course be a bit higher since you collect rewards weekly which affect your next votes that week so it's not APY which may be a bit higher. Other than that you can of course also earn post rewards alongside your curation so the yearly return can be a lot higher depending on your post rewards and if you're staying staked.
Now this is what vote-traders like to do instead:
Now there are a lot of other factors involved, things such as autovote/trails, other random curators that may land on your posts, etc. The thing with vote-trading is that people use it in a way where they try to avoid making it look like that's what's going on, maybe cause they know it's against proof of brain or some may just fall into the trap and stay there. There are services out there, because frankly they cannot be stopped, even if hive.vote for instance were to disable such a vote trail someone could create his own instance, these services hide the excessive self-voting in some simple ways.
Here's an example:
Let's say for simplicities sake; there's 10 users on this vote-trading-trail, all of them have 10k HP. Without the trail if they wanted to maximize their own voting power towards themselves, they'd have to generate 10 posts per day and vote them up one by one. This is something people would quickly notice and downvotes would most likely occur. It's not common that people put in effort into writing 10 posts per day. Instead they do this:
(Eye warning)
Not sure if this visual was even necessary or helped anything, but you get the gist, they place their 10 daily votes on each post of the person in the trail. This means that everyone only has to post once per day to effectively get their 10 daily votes of 10k HP back to them in the form of 10x 10kHP (1x 100k HP) upvote on their post.
So why is this wrong?
So there's many reasons.
Similar to autovotes as discussed in my previous post, they now know that whatever they post they will get those 10 votes guaranteed on it. This often results in them not caring about what they post, quality not being great, effort not being great, etc. At this point they're kind of farming those rewards, if they don't post that they they'll miss out on their daily upvotes.
Knowing that this is working, no one is intervening, they become content with it, they may see some random votes flock to their post, often also blind/auto/trail votes which is just a bonus. They're getting their high APR with very little effort so they don't make an effort to get more unique voters. Some don't attempt to engage/socialize with others because what's the point, they're already doing rather well and it's not worth it. It may even back-fire cause they may get attention from someone who notices what they're doing so they rather sit in hiding and farm their daily votes.
Now let's think about this from another perspective.
Let's compare two accounts of the same sizes who use Hive differently:
Account A is the vote-trader and Account B is the one putting in effort on their content, as you can see post rewards are a lot less reliable for account B, but if he's putting in the effort, gets engagement cause he's actively building an audience of like-minded accounts, people are going to notice him now and then and genuinely curate his content. Meanwhile Account A has opted for not caring, not putting in any effort, not trying to be seen, his content will always get the same rewards, the same lack of engagement yet still get decent returns.
This weakens proof of brain, it weakens the value behind Hive because you now don't need to put in any effort/sweat equity to attain those rewards. People think that just because they've put in some sort of investment into their stake they're entitled to this kind of APR.
Now lastly, let's look at two different curators and their returns, Curatar A is involved in vote-trading and posts daily while curator B isn't and doesn't post daily:
Now Curator B could easily do what Curator A is, after all Curator A isn't putting in much effort into his daily posts, just a couple minutes of his time sharing a youtube link, including a footer automatically and letting the trail do the rest of the job. Curator B decides not to because he understands why proof of brain and curation is valuable to be used correctly. He understands why that's what makes Hive work, what distributes stake to newcomers and others, why people are welcomed to join this #web3 platform and can receive some value for their input and effort. Curator A is ignoring all that to maximize the returns of his stake.
So in a way those actively vote-trading are making those who don't weaker as they're earning more stake than them over time while those who aren't are the ones that are making Hive a better place and possibly increasing the value of everyone. This is important to keep in mind because we all share the same ecosystem and currency, the same reward pool, etc. If you don't put a stop to those unfairly earning more than you are, you're just making your own effort and everyone else's worth less in a way.
Let's compare a few real accounts, this first screenshot is from one on a vote-trading service called "backscratcher", I admit I cherry-picked the section in the screenshot as the account does have some engagement in some posts, albeit drama about the contents of the post or the votetrading later on:
Notice how rewards, vote amount and engagement is often pretty similar?
Let's check with someone else, picked first person I saw on my feed:
Oh a lot more volatile but also more rewarding in many aspects!
Sure the second user does have a lot more stake but at quick glance you can see they also put in effort into content, socializing, using dapps, etc.
If everyone only thought about maximizing APR based on their holdings, curation would be garbage. New users would close to never receive curation, their content wouldn't improve, their retention would be close to non-existent, etc. If all the focus is on maximizing then everyone would just take care of themselves and ignore everyone else. Trending would be filled with whoever has the most stake:
Rather than more diverse and based on other factors:
Anyway, that's it for today, need to get back to curating and replying to some comments from my last post as I've been a bit swamped lately, but looking forward to see what comes out of this one too!
Thanks for reading, I just think it's important that we all share the same values and vision of curation and when we see excessive abuse of this we all step in or drive attention to it to mitigate it for everyone's sake.
I can't be bothered to track who votes for me. Some people may think they will get something in return (apart from their curation rewards), but I just vote on what I like and expect nothing extra in return.
Of course people will try to game the system, but from what I have seen there are others looking out for any suspicious behaviour and they find it all the time. I expect they run some sort of statistics on voting patterns, but that's not my field.
I've said many times that reputation is hard to gain here and easy to lose, so you may only slip up once, but it could be costly. If you come back with a new account you have to build up again and may still get spotted. Is it worth all the effort?
I think Hive is doing pretty well at getting rewards where they are deserved, but no system is perfect. Of course some people are favoured by the whales, but that is more incentive to spread the stake around.
Hive is still tiny, but we can already anticipate what could happen as it grows. It's going to be interesting to see how resilient it is.
Same here, I never post expecting anything either. I have never voted for myself, and I've never belonged to any ring-pod. I've been part of some communities. I'm grateful though when I'm upvoted, so far I see it seems to shift from one post to another, so I'm grateful and never take it for granted. It's not a "base" vote (thought I see some people have me on autovote (maybe for the sake of old times) that's a small part of the rewards of the post. The rest is usually voted by random curations. And honestly still love to be curied, still it does feel great to me. I just can say, I never expect anyone to vote for anything I share, I do it also for the feedback and that's also a great deal to me. But I hope that what I share is worth the read/listen/watch
Agreed. Folks Dan and Starkerz of CTT are constantly reminding Hiveans to spread the token far and wide to counter concentration on HIVE within the few whale accounts.
I thinks it's important that we continue to do so.
I was going to have a productive day at work and then I read this and used up the few brain cells I actually possess to process all those lines. (Ok, not really, I have several brain cells, not just a few.
I'm never going to feel comfortable about lack of effort, especially when there's something riding on it: A work promotion, accolade, pay rise, award and, on Hive, votes. The quality of the effort is subjective of course, but valid, relevant, and interesting interaction is not as easily or lazily created...So, engagement is the thing here that makes a massive difference.
For example, I get a few comments now and then on my posts...but they come from "known sources" mostly, those who regularly comment. A lot of them gain votes from me in return, for their quality work and effort.
With my #weekend-engagement concept run in my Weekend Experiences community I get many entries each weekend, 70-80 I guess, and those people are there for many different reasons, but my votes and potential curangel support is certainly two of them. (I also ask tarazkp to vote on some I select, and he does.) Ok, sounds legit...But how many of those random entries (the users) interact on my posts during the week? Not many, sometimes (mostly) none. They ignore me.
My point? Damn, I forgot.
Not really.
My point is that people seem to have the wrong idea a lot of the time. They enter contests regularly, concepts like my own also, but fail miserably when it comes to building actual relationships with interaction and engagement. Sure, they may get a 0.30-1.00 vote from me if they enter my concept, maybe a curangel if it's a good post...but if they did a little more, made some effort to interact with validity with me on my own posts...Hmm, maybe they'd get those votes on their own (from me) regularly. I understand that many may simply not like me or my content and that's ok, but the point still stands...Engagement and valid interaction!
Sorry, I know this is not quite an on-topic comment, but considering people on Hive are seeking reward I felt inclined to make it...Reward comes through effort and, in my opinion, more readily through interaction with people and the relationships that interaction creates. Point in case: Your relationship with tarazkp (and others).
Lastly, ecency-points self-voting...I don't like it and think those votes could be better-used to open relationships and support others. I see a much greater reward coming from that than the few cents a person gets through self-voting with those points. I wonder what you think on that point.
Yeah, I was wondering about this. I got rid of HP delegation on Dlease because I didn't feel it was being used correctly and I got rid of using Ecency points for the same reason.
I remember a Bitcoin podcast where someone said that the incentive of participating in the Bitcoin network is to do the right thing because it could mean you could earn a block reward.
I feel like HIVE still has some incentives that are misaligned with the network. Of course, HIVE is still developing and this could be worked out in the future.
Thanks for your reply.
I'm not a fan of the Ecency front end, I use Peakd and am happy with it. However, several weeks back, I went to Ecency for some reason (can't recall why) and realised I had over 5,000 points there. I have no idea how. I immediately began to distribute them to others, not myself, as boosts.
It's actually pretty handy as I can reward people in that way even when my own VP is low. Seems like a good use of them. No one has thanked me for it yet, but that's ok, it feels good just giving people a little boost now and then.
Anyway, I think it would be nice to see everyone doing it that way, sharing it to others. I'm not naiive though, and understand it's unlikely to happen in a wholesale manner. I think it's a lost opportunity for users trying to build relationships should they squander their Ecency points on themselves.
Thank is what I do with my Ecency points. I never thought to use them on my own posts....
But then again, I use Hive.blog that no one but me uses so... take it for what you will LOLL
Yeah, using those points on myself isn't something I'd feel comfortable doing; the benefit of casting them on someone else is too great to waste them on oneself...and looking like a greedy fucker. I'd like to cast spells like Gandalf, but instead I cast Ecency points.
It's better than casting some other things :D
Sorry, I read your weekend prompts and now all I can think about is going shopping... LOLL
Lol...well yeah, go shopping in the city at your peril.
It was a joke topic, but there's been multiple posts based on that topic. Bonkers, but good on people for getting in there and having some fun.
I think I might just do that too. The only two things worth considering with boosting posts with Ecency points are:
Not deal breakers, but worth nothing.
I think it's a nice thing to do. I actually received one last night from a user I'd not have expected to boost anyone other than herself. It was nice to see for sure, and I was sure to leave a comment saying thank you to the user.
With the two dot-points. Yeah, Not deal breakers. They want to maximise their curation hence the 24 hour thing and I agree with not boosting/voting twice.
Let me know how you go with it.
This is actually a good post in my opinion:
https://ecency.com/hive-167922/@evernoticethat/the-future-of-hive-is-in-your-hands
and I tried to boost it within the first 24 hours. Not sure what criteria Ecency uses to approve or reject boosts.
Oh well. I guess I'll keep trying to use it, but it's not in my my favorites list at the moment.
I've had that happen. Maybe it's something to do with their voting power.
I believe it was discussed here some time ago: https://peakd.com/hive-173737/@acidyo/re-mikezillo-rot5oj
I'm personally not a fan, I'd rather they have some way of people "requesting" votes and then curators looking into them, them spending some ecency coins for the request and then curators getting some of them in exchange for their time and curation, rather than users instantly receiving a vote in exchange for a command and curators maybe removing the vote if they catch any abuse.
It's also annoying that they're stubborn on keeping it this way and every person out there starting new projects using it as an excuse to fully attempt to abuse PoB, such as what I assume is happening with that helios project but haven't looked too deep into it.
I'm sorry, I didn't see that other discussion, although am not surprised to see you're not a fan of it. (Me either clearly.)
I didn't know that Ecency were stubborn about it though, although did get some flak for once saying I wasn't a fan of the front end. I didn't mind, although thought it was rather pretentious of the user who seemed entitled to denigrate me. I'm not surprised they're digging in their heels.
I've downvoted users in the past for continually upvoting themselves directly and through Ecency points. I'll do so again. There has to be a better way to roll it out but if they're not open to discussion then the point is moot. I'll keep handing points out to others and I know a few other people do also, which I applaud.
Interestingly. one of my posts got a boost from a user last night, a user who I had least expected to do so. I was pleasantly surprised and straight away dropped a comment in thanks, as everyone should do.
Anyway, thanks for responding despite my comment not really aligning with your post. I was taking the self-vote theme and stretching it just a little.
I'm a bit disappointed that they don't give out votes based on other things instead (or focus on it), they're a front-end so they could easily record who is using it to post, comment and maybe even curate with. Reward that. Not delegators or buyers, that will most likely always create mostly abuse rather than the small % who'll use it for good. That's what I'd hoped they'd realize and change but instead they chose to defend it and I don't really have it in me to go out of my way to explain why it's not great.
If anything then incentivize curators to check on their votes better, there's been a lot of abuse reported to us from their curation activity that could easily be avoided.
There's so many things they could be rewarding...and yet they reward people for a "heart beat". I guess they used the points thing to attract people (initially) to use it and they're fixed on that course of action despite the fact they probably don't need to any more.
Indeed and, I'm not surprised about the abuse reports. Sad really.
Gosh dang, my eyes are bleeding now. All the lines! I can't really keep up! I do think that some voting circles or vote trading does happen organically. It's just part of the platform. As people start finding new people to follow they might start commenting back and forth with each other. The other person checks out your posts and likes what they see. Pretty soon you are commenting and upvoting on every post that the other one makes. I guess like in my last comment on your last post, commenting is what make the difference in this case. The actual interaction is happening, so the argument that it is abuse doesn't really fly.
Yeah as I said there's an acceptable amount of it and that can be pretty high too, as long as people are being a little bit responsible there's most of the time nothing wrong with it.
For instance if I really liked an author who also voted my content often or had me on auto and I'd also vote him back, the issue is when one or both decide to stop putting in effort into the posts and engage with people commenting on them or stop caring about the rest of the community completely. If you continue voting these sort of authors even though you see that they're not "worthy" anymore, you become part of the problem which is something that can happen often with autovoters who don't check what they're voting on for longer times.
Downvotes are a good solution to that, if anything to remind the authors that this isn't meant to be free rewards and that people won't stand for such activity, if they ignore the warnings and adjustments or the usual where they start lashing out, then the ecosystem is usually better without them.
Yes, that is a case where downvotes can be good. I also think it is important for people to be actively checking their autovotes. I don't have a problem with autovotes but make sure you are reviewing them regularly and cutting out the flowers that have turned to weeds.
Yeah, tools like hivestats* should make it easy for any autovoter to check up on it. "Why am I receiving less curation rewards on this upvote? Oh he got downvoted, okay let me see why, alright seems fair, removing author from my autovote list".
Yeah, hivestats is a great tool. I think sometimes we all need to be better stewards of our own accounts.
This is sounding interesting, but how can someone stop an auto votes on one’s post?
You could just decline rewards for the post, but that is kind of the extreme of the spectrum.
Oh! Alright
Thanks
Engagement is key, I always appreciate Vetrans who don’t just post but also engage with users who comment on their posts, some even go as far as recommending posts that would be helpful to you, they are the real deal if you ask me.
There are so many upcoming good writers out there that deserves all these truckload of votes because their contents are great.
Kudos to everyone out there that tries to make Hive a better place.
Thank you @acidyo😃
and here is silly old me who thought voting was all about supporting a damn interesting/amusing/photogenic upload! That explains maybe why I see an upload with in excess of 800 interactions, earning decent rewards and yet not half as interesting as others I see with virtually no engagement.
Corruption and greed rules OK
Hmm, good and thought provoking post.
My first thought when I read posts like this is that the key problem lies in the lack of numbers of users here (right now). As, if there was a load of quality content then many of the "siphoners' would be drowned out. The cream would rise to the top.
In the meantime, I can't expect the folk that I follow to churn out top notch A grade quality posts every time they post - that's not how the world works. They'll be the odd gem amongst a sea of mildly amusing updates. That's life. I'm okay with that.
In the same way that Instagram, FB etc feeds are generally filled with fairly mundane life stuff. I think that rolling out the QC police is the last thing we need, as we'd just scare away the few that we have here.
None of this is to say that I think colluding on circle voting is okay - it just needs to get washed away over time by the volume of (new) users. Hopefully they'll come...eventually!
I don't think it's something that can be drowned out by the crowd, though. Some people may choose to ignore the masses and how they use curation and build a bubble between a few people they'll constantly upvote, this can continue even if we have millions of users. With that amount it'll be easier to notice this kind of activity though and I'm sure by then a lot more people will want to counter it knowing why it's not great for the ecosystem.
True, I suppose.
Just hate the prospect of having to police all the time, but good that folk like you are looking out for the platform.
As I said the issue is really for extreme cases where the activity itself causes a lot of more negative effects such as the example above where accounts look dead and farmy with no effort whatsoever to socialize and use this place the way it's meant to all while taking rewards from those using it better.
Most accounts are unaffected but people can always change.
It is a simple post, but at the same time extremely complex.
As already mentioned in the comments above, I believe that both trails and you vote for a person you like are valid, because as the name itself says, we are a "hive" so it provides unity and companionship, and we end up having some specific community ties different and that's too good, because we create our own identity.
However, on the other hand, as you yourself mentioned, there are people who unfortunately look for ways to "win" easily, I see many posts of penny giveaways, which the person ends up earning more, or posting a short text of less than 100 words, this ends up "burning" the community a little for outside investors in my opinion, as it always ends up paying "x " value for a post the times it was made with crtl+c and crtl+v.
excellent post! upvoted and reblogged
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post more or I'll start downvoting
Now, I have to write a post about AI news. There have been quite a few developments. Cough cough GPT4. But there is some other news that is probably flying under the radar for quite a lot of people.
PS! I just realized I posted a screenshot of trending of the communities I'm subscribed to instead of our trending but the comparison still stands, lol.
Laughs I just go with the flow, trying to post everyday for the yearly author badge... But HELL it requires a fair amount of dedication!
It'll feel better that way too! :)
Believe me after this year I will take somewhat of a break from posting!
I almost have the same amount of HP that I had before I left, so I got that going for me... All in a mere 8 months.. not bad?
Not bad at all, it goes up nicely the longer you sit staked, but of course in the long term inflation is dropped every 250k hive blocks. In a decade or so it's going to get a lot harder to earn the stake you've earned these 8 months, or you know, when a lot more people join competing for it, whichever comes first. :P
Laughs I had no idea hive also work with blocks mined, how many blocks a day? Estimate?
That's pretty damn cool.
1 block every 3 seconds, you can see what kind of transactions each of them have here: https://hiveblocks.com/
each refresh usually shows a new block, spoiler: most are splinterlands txs :D
did you know you can Edit? lol
what's an e-dit
I kinda wonder how does one post every day 😭
I dont think I can take part in this vote trading business of posting everyday cause I can't even get the weekly badge😂😂
The votes farming is pretty bad for hive, but you have to admit (it is ingenious 😀✨)
And it does look like something you can claim it "grew organically".
Like I know I'm not fully into hive, but for you to have at least 1kHp, you've had to be in the Blockchain for some time, doubt one would buy $500 worth of hive as a newbie, just to participate in this trade😂😂
He says😂😂😂, please I've seen more confusing charts in my sis economics textbooks😭😭😭
Very insightful message especially for those of us who are new bees.
I got the gist very well. Thanks for communicating.
But then how do I manage an auto vote on my post?
As someone new to Hive I'm still find myself something taking the wrong decisions, at first thought going for auto vote for profit but then end up without much Vpower to vote manually so I'm constantly trimming auto votes and only leaving it for content I read, just today trim some more as I was voting for creators that maybe already have a good amount of votes and my account is small, I plan to go long term with my account and maybe auto voting just for rewards wont do me any good, your post got me thinking about it
Autovotes in and of itself don't guarantee higher profit than manual votes, not sure how much you know about voting but it's pretty flexible in ways where that difference doesn't matter. The only time you "lose out" on rewards is if you leave your account sitting at 100% voting power, anything under that is the same, unless you go way too low and don't have enough stake to reach the minimum 0.001 threshold.
Been thinking about revisiting a post about how voting power and the reward pool works since I'm seeing a lot of new users and followers lately but if you have any questions feel free to shoot.
Something that may make you realize how it works and what I'm referring to is:
If you are at 100% voting power, your 100% upvote burns 2% voting mana taking you down to 98% voting mana. This means that say if you have 100k HP and the price of Hive is where this would get you a $1.00 upvote, your next 100% upvote at 98% voting mana would consume 2% less mana (out of 2% = 1.98%) thus granting you a $0.98 upvote.
So for instance if you sit at 50% voting mana, your "100% upvote" isn't 100% but 50%, it'd only burn 1% mana instead of 2% and if you want to stay at 50% voting mana you'd have to cast twice as many votes that day (20x 100% upvotes instead of 10).
I have to say I know almost nothing as I only now the very basics thats the other reason of my constant confusion
So with that in mind, it's only if you vote on posts past 24h that already had a lot of votes on them or if the posts you upvote get downvoted can you earn less curation than autovoting. Whether it's manual or auto doesn't matter much there as long as you don't forget about your Hive account and let your voting power sit at max.
I would like to think that a true creator is going to keep creating not for want of monetary reward or vote trading, but because they have to create. If they receive rewards incidentally as a result of that, awesome.
Perhaps this is why art work is never truly valued until the artist is dead. In Hive, we all die 7 days after our content goes live, right? :D
Voting cartels can not be mitigated or minimized completely, even after so many forks they will find some way to survive. And sometimes we may not be able to establish abuse objectively. That's one fundamental problem.
Second, I personally believe that self upvote feature should be disabled in the frontend, and at the "0" layer adequate adjustment should be made.
Third problem is that an established blogger after some period, like 2 or 3 years or on account of his good behavior historically used to get some momentum votes just after posting(trail votes/automated votes), so the votes in such a case do not read the content, but on the premise of hitherto established reputation, they consider it as an acceptable content without reading it.
There exists a wrong conception of Hive Power since it is directly obtained by powering of HIVE, users do have a preconceived notion of Power to maximize APR, they do not take it as an influential power in the first place. Influence power comes with a responsibility to sustain that influence. If abuse of reward pool is going on, then unknowingly the people are weakening the worth of their own HP and influence power.
Decentralized curation (proof brain) may need a hybrid mechanism with some adjustment, it may also be a complex one. But as it evolves it has to fine-tune many such things simply for the reason that we intend to make it more human than AI, and human behavior is quite complex.
As engagement is the cornerstone of Hive to improve the odds of curation/vote to their posts, some people might game it with low or spam comments. And may further web a complex cliche, thye may try to maximize it to feature in Hive engagement league report. So checking the nature of abuse in the comment section if a herculean task, not because they would directly spam, but because they might tweak the things bit to masquerade it as genuine engagement. And cringe comments could be another headahce.
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Self-voting is something that whales are mostly using and I've observed that some give themselves 100% Upvote and when they are curating others' content they give 1% which in some cases is negligible. This doesn't help the Hive ecosystem which is truly powerful when has wealth distribution.
If it were after me, I would remove the self-voting feature which I think would bring more engagement even from whales which in a specific percent (even if little) might care to whom to spread the upvotes.
#backscratching, that's a wild one. Not sure what to think of that.
Good post but you are missing what it matters... Don't know if because you don't know or because you don't want to mess with some ;) let's say I believe you don't know.
Instead of screenshot post rewards with 2 hive, try to find those with 80 hive and more and +70% coming from autovotes.
You want an example? Just one example, there are more and more accounts.
Autoves, as you know can have different aspects. Alt accounts and people with posting key to many accounts are also aspects.
You my pretend to ignore if you want but they exist ;)
For me this not about rewards, rewards are part in Hive and available to all, to profit. It is about greediness.
A simple example:
https://peakd.com/hive-165757/@aquientredos/vhtavkkb
You really seem to have a problem with them...
I don't see what's wrong with their content, I don't see any vote trading activity and I don't see any neglect in engagement received or given, in fact some of their comments have more effort put behind them than many trending posts.
It's starting to not be a good look the way you seem to always focus around their activity.
eheheheh honestly didn't expect other reply than that.
Like you, I also don't see anything wrong with the content or vote trading. Also I don't have any kind of problem with anyone in this chain, like I don't have any "eye problem" and in the post in example, I can see from the top 11 upvotes 7 are from the same user that it happen is the post creator, that happen that it makes from the total of $86 rewards, $61 are autovotes, do you really think I have a problem with them???
Can you also explain this 👇
"....you seem to always focus around their activity"
What do you mean by always focus?? What do you know that I don't know??
Most of your comments lately have been surrounding eddie's activity no matter what I post about, they don't even seem to be posting that often even looking at all their accounts in total and knowing he's full time Hive and does a lot in and around the chain I don't see why you'd focus so much on them when there's plenty of other accounts who just shitpost and do barely anything else getting similar rewards.
Forget eddie... believe me, I don't care if it's eddie, jimmy or mary.
Let me repeat, from top 11 upvotes, 7 are from the post creator, from the total of $86 rewards, $61 are from the post creator.
Challenge you to find more like this and respond if you agree with this, no matter who are the user!
How do you know it's Eddie and not Dan upvoting? As I've said depending on the content and effort and what kind of community member it is, I don't think that self-votes make it any less fair than if he'd receive votes from others. It's about value for value. Some would easily be able to do vote-trading which is what my post is about just to get your suspicions out of the way but effectively be doing the same thing, the bad part about them is that they don't do anything else on/for Hive other than generating those posts and getting them a lot of rewards all the while their content looks like it has no consumption, no views, etc.
I already understood your point.
Mine is
Posts with high rewards, most part of rewards coming from the creator.
Will I downvote those post? No.
It is nice? No.
Do I think it's less nice than someone autovoting a post with $2 rewards? Yes.
Do I think autovoting like this, from users with reputation, comparing with a newbie that plagiarize, is worth? Yes! Users with reputation might be example to others that might mimic them. No one mimic a newbie.
To finish our talk let me tell you something. You know as I know, reward pool is the main thing in Hive, maybe just 1% of regular users will be on Hive if rewards didn't exist. Is also the main source of dramas. You already know my opinion, we need more OCDs and less autovoting, assumed or hooded, vote-trading, bid-bots, whatever.
We also need more things to explode but an healthy reward pool is one of the keys to success.
In my opinion the only problem here is your perception problem about my problems!
Let's contextualize this
Should I continue?
For me it's ok that you choose the side of your friends or the side of who delegate to your projects but please don't try to make me stupid, like I said my only problem is with greediness, not with people!
I get that but I still don't see it as abuse, I assume it's part of the pay that a big stakeholder has chosen to reward his helper with, like part being delegations and part being upvotes and I don't think there's anything wrong with that unless the latter starts getting abused excessively which in turn also means they don't deserve them cause they're not doing anything for it. Like comparing it to the person in screenshots for instance, just cause their rewards are low doesn't mean there aren't other bigger accounts also actively vote-trading and neglecting their other "duties" if you will such as engagement, interaction, etc. These accounts you keep pointing at often don't seem to be doing that and I don't think I know more about their activities around Hive than you do or that I'm picking sides cause I'm "friends" with them or anything. Just my opinion about the matter same as the way you're pointing out yours.
Well, at least we can agree, you have your opinion and I have mine. for me it's perfect!
For instance if I wanted someone to help me out with some ocd activities, I wouldn't be against giving them some delegation and maybe a few upvotes per week (of my own account), but I would deny those upvotes if they've shown they can't bother taking care of their posts properly.
This isn't really relatable cause I haven't felt the need to due to my autovotes and consistent posting over almost 7 years, if I some times feel my rewards were a bit on the low side I would throw a vote with my own account towards myself, or if they're too high I'd throw a downvote depending on the effort of my content and the engagement it produced, etc. I've also downvoted Eddie a few times and he's been understanding that the rewards were a bit too high.
You made my head hurt and my eyes bleed....
I spend too much time writing my own posts and commenting when I can and voting and helping others behind the scenes to even have time to try and think up some weird time-consuming scam when if a person just wrote a post from their heart, they would have a better chance at getting a vote.
and that is all I have to say.
Excellent post but White Space IS your Friend
HUGS!
Thanks for showing me what to look for :) I don't want to reward any users who are abusing the system, whether they have a decent post or not (since said post is probably a respin anyway).
Hey, what's wrong with Paint 😂
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
I think I have never self-voted and if I ever did it was by mistake. And that's practice wherever I go. Unless you have a profile or post that is for curation or a project that benefits ALL, your personal profile should not be pimped. Not judging but my two cents