Some thoughts on downvotes for adjustment of rewards

in #downvoteslast year

There was an account recently that was brought to my attention, and even though I have posted about this in the past I think it's probably a good idea to bring some of these things up again when times ask for it.

Now this is my personal opinion on how I operate and potentially judge overrewarded content/accounts, not everyone may feel the same and not everyone may agree with some points. Before I go down the points I do want to point out that you can't compare hive rewards with #web2 monetization. This should be something quite obvious to most but it often isn't to some which is something they bring up and compare often. Adrevenue being the main monetization tool in web2 does not cost every stakeholder/the platform revenue, in fact the platform most of the time will take a big chunk of it and give the content creators a share, 50-70% usually. So with that in mind you have to understand that when (most) people downvote things they aren't doing it because it's fun, or because they have a vendetta against someone or because they profit off of it which is something I hear often. The latter is such a tiny portion that most wouldn't even notice it in terms of APR and the fact that downvotes are so seldom used it also constitutes that when they are used it's not used to increase the returns of the downvoters because everyone else profits from the rewards that are being returned to the pool from downvotes, not just the few daring to use their downvote mana to adjust rewards on certain posts. The whole "they're taking money from me to give it to themselves" is thus quite far-fetched.

When it comes to my decision to downvote certain posts it's often due to the initial votes being cast either too recklessly or there most likely being some intent to extract/maximize behind them, the latter is of course too difficult to know/judge but what you can judge is the active rewards and history of voting on certain accounts.

I often also like to split up how I judge these in two sections, there's users and influencers. I.e. you can have regular Hive users that don't have a big voice or influence outside of Hive thus they don't really attract new traffic/users towards the chain and then there's also influencers who have gotten here and receive a ton of votes for being influencers but they may not really use their voice outside of Hive to bring in any traffic - this last part often has a sort of honeymoon phase in my mind where I don't mind them being showered in rewards early on until they get to learn the platform properly and see the value in it and then potentially attempt to bring people in - but if that never starts occurring and there's never any attempts to do so then they also fall into the overrewarded category over time.

For users I often like to think, okay but what else do they do beside generate content and this might be one of the biggest reasoning to some of my downvotes in the past and why I often think some of their content is overrewarded. Most users on Hive are content creators, few of them consume content and interact with it but it has been getting better over time.

So in a way it comes down to value generation. A post by itself could be worth 0-100, on most other platforms it most of the time will be closer to 0 unless you are an influencer. Most on Hive aren't thus most of the content could potentially be worthless looking at it from that perspective, but as we've come to learn Hive we know that it isn't.

Content or authors where there's proof that others, especially within our ecosystem are consuming it, is worth more than content no one reads. This is quite common knowledge in most cases but some curators don't seem to care about this part which is often what forces other stakeholders to act and adjust rewards.

Let's look at a few examples, I'll try to censor out one of the examples as I don't want to generate negative traffic going that way but just use it to prove a point.

Here's an account that joined/started posting on chain a few years ago:

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The dates and activity are a bit suspicious but I'm not going to get into that here. What stands out that their first post was pretty much ignored, no intro post happened (which is fine but could've gotten him some early followers/engagement) and then a year after the user came back, started posting and receiving quite big upvotes straight out the bat. The weird thing here is that these upvotes, mostly from leo.voter and steempty occurred consistently after here. Again not trying to accuse anyone of anything but I know that steempty for instance likes to set people up for autovotes and forget about it which is often also a reason to downvotes for adjustment of rewards (a.k.a. blind votes a.k.a. autovotes).

This user posted a total of 43 posts and half of them or so have been this year, out of the 3-4 years he's been here he's only placed 5 comments until the downvotes started occurring he decided to lash out against yesterday with a series of threads. According to @hivebuzz he's received 50 replies, but knowing Hive and Hivebuzz itself you can imagine that a lot of those have been bots.

This activity is nothing against Hive, whether or not it's an alt account I wouldn't know. I can suspect, I can see some patterns that would suggest it might be but it's only speculation. The problem is that for this kind of activity, consumption, engagement and value they're bringing to the chain this is a seriously overrewarded account that consistently gets support no matter the quality, length or effort of the posts. So in and of itself there's nothing wrong with the account if it was being curated reasonably. If the upvotes were reasonable most people wouldn't mind it, he'd have more reasons to engage possibly to "earn" those rewards, build a real audience and grow the rewards he may get over time. Start sharing his content outside of Hive, maybe link his Twitter account instead of just having "twitter.com" in his Bio and in other ways start bringing value for the value he's receiving, over time these upvotes he gets now would start to match with the value he gets or at least be on par with what others are doing in terms of value who are on the same level of rewards.

I'm not even gonna go into how some of his posts may not fit into the LeoFinance community but are still getting curated by leofinance or how he's not even sourcing to any images used which may get him in trouble with hivewatchers, etc.

Here's some more screenshots of more recent posts so you don't think I'm just using the old ones when the price of Hive was higher to exaggerate.

image.png

Oh wow, 7 replies on that one post, wonder what they talked about! Let's take a look.

Okay, a pretty generic investment advice post, doesn't seem that special for the rewards in my eyes but you know, not like we have the best authors onchain:

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Wow, someone left him a very thoughtful and long comment, that's amazing!

image.png

One could say this could be worth even more than the initial post! How did it do, even if the author doesn't have a lot of stake maybe curators noticed it and gave it a vote as well! no? oh okay they must've missed it, but surely the author gave it a vote and a thoughtful response?

I just realized I didn't censor the footer but kind of pointless now not like I'm giving the commenter any shit anyways:

image.png

Oh okay, guess he just ignored him and everyone else in the post cause he had to post another 3 generic posts the next couple days to get those juicy rewards. Who has time for engagement and appreciating this dumbass' long response, amirite? (sorry @andy-plays, just kidding :p)

Okay so, while downvotes aren't occurring much and I don't see people going all nitpicky about it in general like "oh this post is at $54 but in my opinion it's only worth $52" and are mostly used in extreme cases like the one above. There's still a lot of resistance when it comes to them, people somehow can't fathom why downvotes exist and why even in good intentions like the ones above they are used.

There's quite a few ways to go about them as well, everyone has their own reasons and things that make certain posts or authors go above their line where they feel the need to adjust the rewards a bit and most of them are nice enough to let you know that that's what they're doing even knowing it's opening up the possibility of endless drama, finger-pointing, etc.

Then there's also bad usage of downvotes, downvoting for opinions, downvoting cause you don't like someone, there's most likely a lot of others such as retaliation, etc, and in many ways the use of downvotes a lot like upvotes can tell you a lot about a certain person, except those just following a trail/autovoting. You can also track people's history on the chain since everything is open-source to see the intentions of certain downvotes. Has this user been downvoting people out of nowhere for no real/overrewarded reason in the past, is this a downvote for that or is it cause he's having a bad day?

Downvotes aren't perfect and they're not always used perfectly. I have some times cast some downvotes on people who seemed to completely understand them and be friendly towards it and thanking me for letting them know why I cast it. I've some times even cast downvotes on my own content or content I've voted on with my curation accounts that ended up being too rewarded or have had to ask others to help bring it down a bit. People just need to normalize them a bit more, not think black & white or that rewards are being "taken from them" or that everyone's casting them with ulterior motives then going on rants telling the person who downvoted you why you think he did it, how this platform sucks, etc.

Anyway, before going down that route too much I'm going to end it with some other factors that go into my decision making of if users are bringing value to Hive before I decide if content is overrewarded and if I should act or not.

Are they active in engaging and replying to other people engaging with their content.

Are they active in other aspects of Hive, curation projects, contests, dapps, discords, etc, could be anything and everything that's not just the content. Some times I may not know and it helps if they let me know but most people are quite happy to place these things in their bio.

Are they sharing their content on web2 or attempting to bring traffic towards the content, this doesn't always have to be from web2.

Are they new to the chain?

Have they been "overrewarded" consistently?
How many of the same upvoters over time?
How many of the same "blind upvoters"?

As mentioned, I don't downvote often unless I find obvious abuse or cases like the one above and there's many times I also disagree with some people's downvotes for overrewarded content. It's all a bit subjective the same way content and value is but I think that over time with more users and content, better distributed stake, etc these issues will become smaller and smaller and we may not see downvotes for overrewarded content much and will mostly most likely tend towards abuse or very suspicious accounts like the example above.

Lastly, here's another example to compare with the previous screenshots. Now I am of course biased because I like the author both as a writer and friend but I know he has been consistent in both writing and engaging. Do you think it's fair/makes sense that a somewhat brand-new account with close to no history receives up to the same rewards as this account?

image.png

Or maybe @tarazkp is just super underrewarded compared, or you know, a lot of other more deserving users are underrewarded in comparison to the former mentioned account and we should act when we see suspicious accounts like that and hold the overvoters accountable as well, if not by words and advice then by downvotes to bring their APR down even if it may mean a bad taste in the authors mouths for a short time who may or may not be an alt and/or having gotten too spoiled unfairly.

Anyway, kind of a long post so not expecting many to have read it and have a lot to say about it but I'd be interested in how you've used your downvotes lately and if you've been using them at all for overrewarded content or has it felt like it's not worth it? (which would be understandable in many ways)

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Downvotes have been a contentious point since the dawn of Steemit, I think. We've had self-righteous plagiarists and vote-buyers getting upset at downvotes ever since people started to take notice. Shitposting to farm the bot trails is also a perennial issue. The AI spammers are just the newest iteration. Some people just post vapid nothingness and rely on the trails of upvotes. It's disgusting, and I think they should also get downvoted.

If people aren't actually engaging with replies like the one you illustrated, it indicates they are probably posting in bad faith. You mentioned @tarazkp, who seems like a genuine person creating the kind of content that gives HIVE real value to other people. Same for his brother @galenkp and his writing/community initiatives. Seriously undervalued members here! There are a few writers like @meesterboom and @slobberchops who get massive rewards, but they're posting original content I subjectively think is worth it, and I don't begrudge them their rewards even if I think a lot of it is autovoters who don't even read it, and are thus really missing out in the former's artistic vulgarity or the latter's explorations. They also both like to banter in their own comment threads and engage with other writers on their posts.

My own downvotes have not been utilized as much. If I see spam or plagiarism, I'll definitely join in, and I should get more active in the anti-abuse vigilante groups. Do we get cowboy hats in the crypto posse?

Artistic vulgarity... at last, I have found my perfect description! :0D

Well, that or Wizard of Word Wankery. Whatever you prefer.

I might just stick with the first one!

Thank you for the mention JT, I appreciate it.

Also, yep, cowboy hats for sure.

YEE-HAW BUCKAROO!.jpg
(Image poorly layered in Canva and then hastily "fixed" in Paint)

Lol, I knew you'd know the right words to speak.

My last post that went up today, has 50% more comments on it than all of those other ones pictured combined :D

There are so many subjective sides to the valuation argument of content, but I believe that the person behind the account matters more than an individual post. This means that they have built up a history of some kind, a reputation (not the rep score) as someone that delivers something of value. That comes through the content, but mostly through the interaction in the comment sections and off chain too. If accounts are getting highly rewarded, are impersonal and have very low interaction onchain, I suspect that there is some funny business going on. If the only time they comment is when getting downvoted, they aren't here for the community at all.

Also, that investment advice post looks like it might be spun.

Great perspective, I finding the relationships I have built the most rewarding aspect of Hive. I have gotten to know so many people through their work and conversations off chain. The human aspect of the content is what keeps people reading.

The human aspect of the content is what keeps people reading.

Perhaps some people are so isolated today that they have forgotten how lasting relationships are actually formed.

Don't even get me started on subject. I have been listening to some pieces on loneliness and how in today's culture we are seeing higher rate than ever. Humanity is loosing the human part at an alarming pace. I hate to see all the drama on Hive this has been a relatively peaceful place the last few months so hopefully we can figure it out and go back to talking about what's fun.

I have been listening to some pieces on loneliness and how in today's culture we are seeing higher rate than ever.

It makes me sad to "be right" in my predictions (been talking about it with anyone who would listen for years) and it is only going to get worse. The last few years bumped it up a gear too.

I don't give a lot of advice, but don't get emotionally caught up in the drama. Or at least, find a balance point where you spend the majority of your time in your foundation content on Hive - There are a lot of good people here too :)

I finding the relationships I have built the most rewarding aspect of Hive

Totally!

As a technophobe and relative newbie to the Hive, I come here to share my experiences with others of a similar mindset, and to experience others' travels and lives.

I really can't be arsed with "politics". On a few occasions I have had really good rewards then see a massive downvote.

Why?

Fuck this shit, the time and effort I have put into an upload and I get down voted who the fuck are you, thats it shove hive up your arse I am cashing out........
...... Then my guru @slobberchops , steps in, calms me down and I now realise it is not a personal attack on me, its politics.

Now, although it's not nice for it to happen I just laugh it off and move on.

Tbh, the rewards I get are piffling anyways but the reason I am here is to engage with others from all around the world, the first thing I look at are my replies and the people who have engaged and enjoyed my upload, that to me, and replying to them is the thing that keeps me going.

Somewhere along the line, maybe days later I see if the post has won me a reward..... or a fucking down vote!

and I now realise it is not a personal attack on me, its politics.

It happens to me every now and again, and I have to tell myself this. You know, you should sell some of that HBD and give yourself a break.., I know you have never taken a cent out after all this time.

cheers @slobberchops maybe one day I will need to drop some. I shall need refreshing on how to do it 🤣😂😂

I wouldn't say it's politics, it's more about fair distribution. I'm not familiar with your downvotes but I don't think it should come as a surprise or be something offensive if some smaller ones occur on large upvotes.

Taking a glance at your account it seems you do rather well and the content is excellent as well. Some times it seems you don't receive the upvotes you should get and other times maybe a bit too much but in my eyes you're at the point where it'd be a bit nitpicky to try and adjust rewards as there's a lot more obvious abuse and unfair rewards occurring in other places that could use the downvote mana more.

And reading @slobberchops reply, as much respect as I have for people who don't sell their rewards but grow their stake and (hopefully) use it well, it's not about that neither and I don't personally let that judge the way I curate posts and accounts. Those who choose to sell constantly may find themselves sooner or later having a hard time getting the support back with an increasing amount of authors/accounts striving after the same upvote mana they once used to receive. It's more about an investment from their perspective, they can either choose to stick around and potentially reap the real rewards later such as passive income/airdrops/whatnot or sell now and risk of never getting back to the stake they could've had/the active rewards they were once making in terms of Hive power.

cheers @acidyo , thanks for the reply and encouragement. Onwards and upwards as they say

Well I read it till the end. ;)

Sorry in advance to be pragmatic.

Influencers outside of Hive
Can you name 3 influencers outside of Hive, and if you can, what kind of traffic they bring? People thinking Hive is Santa Klaus? People that think there's no need to find a job because Santa Klaus will employe them?
As you know I'm quite active in Twitter and what I see is Hivers on Twitter interact, when interact, with Hivers on Twitter. Don't know other social networks but I guess are not so different.

About downvotes, I don't remember last time I downvote, if any, but I don't go on drama with downvotes. As we know there are healthy downvotes and people that downvote just because, it is what it is.
About downvoting over rewarded posts
I would like to know your opinion about one particular thing, or two, I will not mention accounts, because, there are several cases, and also because I know you are a guy who is interested and attentive to what is going on at the hive.

  • The daily top rewarded posts have a pattern, it is not quite diverse, we see everyday almost the same authors with the top rewards, do you think they are always making 10x better posts then the rest of authors? About this let me tell you that we need urgently more OCD's or we will end in a oligarc reward pool, we need diversity!
  • Do you think that is normal a post with 80 hive rewards, 55 of that 80 came from alt accounts/partner accounts/etc accounts? I don't think and I think they are making fun in front of our eyes. Once again we need more diversity!

Sorry again to mess you up with my questions but I not good dealing with hypocrisy... And I see some hypocrites playing the role of good boys.

No need to worry about questioning things.

There are very few influencers on Hive, some of them I've seen are independent journalists/influencers outside that seem to receive a lot of support over time on Hive but barely ever try to actually bring traffic towards their accounts here. This is what I've had a problem with in the past that has caused for some drama, especially from the supporters of such accounts retaliating and wanting their way to continue even though the influencer accounts have received less engagement/consumption here than random newbie intro posts. It's felt as if we're quite literally throwing value down the drain letting that occur over time without any resistance and thus I've been quite vocal about it to give them appropriate rewards or at least have them try a bit harder to grow an audience here if they for some reason don't want to bring their audience from outside here (which I can't come up with a good reason as to why they wouldn't want to do that).

Trending is a bit meh as well, there's a lot of accounts that don't seem to be responsible and check some factors when they cast a vote, with haejin/rancho being the worst of the bunch and often determining trending on his own. There are also a lot of accounts with a lot of stake that are either on auto and don't refresh their lists often if ever which in turn creates an avalanche effect of more people jumping on the upvote train.

I'd be interested in what you deem to be hypocrisy.

As to your point about needing more OCD's, I'd welcome that, especially when it comes to the manual and vetting process we do and especially when it comes to rewarding curators/community leaders in a more transparent way and at the same time hold them accountable for certain votes if abuse/ulterior motives are found. Instead we have big accounts /projects that aren't transparent about it, or the way they reward their curators if there are any which often leads to them using the voting power in shady ways to either upvote themselves or generate alt accounts to do so (which could explain the account and curation behind the example in the post).

That said, there is an issue with some of our votes where others will pile up theirs on top which may get them to trending even though it wasn't our intention, it's difficult to foresee when that is going to happen, especially considering we're voting up a lot of daily posts from unique authors and trying to mitigate that means we'd have to forfeit curation rewards which would just cost delegators in APR, and since we don't see many others doing things as manually and transparently as us it doesn't make a lot of sense to punish our delegators while others get free reign on keeping their APR while the curation accounts continue to remain lazy, suspicious and often times baffling with their upvotes on certain accounts/content.

Thanks for reply!

haejin/rancho are not the answer to every meh in trending and you know that. There are big accounts, well known accounts that have a pattern on their votes. There are accounts spreading the stake in different accounts and then all accounts upvoting every day on the same guys. Why spreading? To make it feel not so biased? Trying to make us stupid? This I call hypocrisy.
Don't gonna explain more about hypocrisy, not because I have any afraid to talk or mention people, I haven't, but because it takes a lot lot of time, now imagine what I see every single day happening... And I'm sure you also see! But I also understand we can't be 24h in Hive or take care of everything... Each one have priorities and you have yours.
Like I said, we need more diversity, much more! Like OCD does. We need less circle voting, and if it's difficult to convince "haejins" and "ranchos" of that, I think it's more easy to convince the rest of big accounts.

One more example of hypocrisy? Lol

I admit I'm kind of romantic on this theme.
"I love Hive"
My ass!!! They love the money that can take from Hive, all is still not enough!

About OCD you don't have to explain anything, I wish there were more OCDs in Hive. Without diversity and plurality, decentralization is just theory because dpos is good but not the cherry on top of the cake.

image.png

I'm logged in on @ocd here and zoomed out to see where the posts we've upvoted start coming up.

I'm not sure what accounts you're referring to exactly other than say leo.voter/appreciator but I do wish there was more transparency there and that they had a bit stricter requirements for their votes which often seems to place posts on trending with few if not any comments which may not be a great look to outsiders.

You can also look at Dan, Dan alts, most part of Dan delegations and so on. He is doing good in projects and no one want to mess with him because of that and because his power due the stake and influence in others but I'm free and use to talk if I think something is not ok (of course I not always right and my opinions are my opinions), and in this case I think he could do much better where it concerned to curation. Of course is his stake and he should do what we want with his stake, like I do with mine. But he personally could do better in curation. There are a kind of circle voting over there and it's not necessary, all could benefit with better curation, even him.

In conclusion, we all could do better, it's just a question of taking the eyes for awhile from the mirror. For some the better they get the more benefits to all, for others, small ones, their improvement might not have to much impact to all but at the end everyone's efforts are better to all.

We have certain rules in place for the more consistent votes (such as curation reports or curators who happen to be authors who also are underrewarded) to vote them up first between age 12-18h so that our votes won't cause the aforementioned avalanche effect of placing them onto trending hence getting them overrewarded. This has been quite an effective strategy to avoid getting some posts/accounts overrewarded but for our regular curation we don't see a lot of harm in getting our nominations to trending now and then as long as it's unique and often times newer users getting the attention and extra rewards, it just helps distribution and getting a more diverse trending and doesn't occur often.

I'm often confused with how Leo.voter votes. They ignore good posts, but then turn around and pick an author who puts out just average generic stuff and they consistently reward him quite well. The inconsistency in their voting is very confusing.

Anyway, that lack of interaction always annoys me. If one doesn't have time to respond to comments (and I realize it does happen) then they should at least give a small upvote to let the commenter know their comment was read. That just seems like common courtesy to me. In my community, Blockchain Poets, I am always trying to stress to the members that they should make every effort to respond to all comments they receive.

Anyway, I haven't used downvotes much except in the case of obvious abuse. In more subjective cases I tend to err on the side of caution and give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm not sure if that is the right action or not.

Anyway, great thoughts.

I stumbled upon a user a week or so ago from medium who had written some articles about Hive, I noticed he did have an account and came here to see he had received close to no curation. There even was a leo curator in his comments joking about why he was posting to medium which he retorted with showing he had earned more there than on Hive and the leo curator went quite/ignored him.

It's a bit disheartening as these are the kind of "real" people you'd wanna support posting into your community/front-end, especially when you see votes like the above mentioned account taking a large pie of the pool for content not only barely anyone consumed but from a person who may or may not be real considering the lack of connections to other socials as the one I stumbled upon had.

These things matter, cause had he received more support on Hive he may have bothered to engage and build an audience here, but just cause some leo curators allegedly/potentially are too focused on voting up alts/maximizing post rewards he not rather focused on Medium and I had to tweet it out, give him a follow and comment to maybe get him to give Hive another proper try. And I'm not even involved with leofinance nor do I almost ever curate in their community.

I have been here for about three months now and I can say that I've seen some content with so many upvotes that baffled me. Like some guy posts, "look at this youtube video I watched today" and gets like $50+ on that publication. Now, I'm not certain if those are alts upvoted by their other accounts or something but they always have the same pattern. Massive votes from the same accounts no matter the content or engagement. Maybe it's circle jerking and greed or just irresponsible auto upvotes. Either way, it doesn't leave a good look on the platform as a whole if many big accounts are doing the same thing.

Freedom doesn't free you from responsibility, it burdens you with it.

I have been using the vote/comment ratio as a way to target content to read and curate. This community is built around engagement lately I have been more impressed with engagement that rewards because I still feel rewards are not always distributed in the most equal way. The rewards abuse is getting better, but I think there are a lot of accounts that are on autovote lists that don't deserve all the rewards. Since I can't control that I tend to not read that type of content or if I do I will comment, bit not vote.

Acid,

Thank you for writing this post. I do not write that much, mainly because of limited time, but I spent inordinate amount of time on hive reading and observing behaviors. After five years of doing this I can intuitively catch who is farming and who is not. What is AI, modified AI, template writing modified with AI; rather easily. Most of the time, against popular knowledge on the chain about me, I actually do not act. I think about it a lot before I make it visible to others, like the example you have here.

So when I do, it is highly likely that the authors intentions are not favorable for the community and only directed at self-interest. I typically take a lot of heat of some of this. But I think I have proven that I do not have any financial interest from any of this work. I am financially free. I want this chain to succeed, and if it does, I will be financially rewarded. That is my prize.

There is currently an extreme amount of reward pool hive farming going on using leo.voter. I have expressed my concerns multiple times to leo curators, very recently to large leo stakeholder. The farming involves not only leo (which in terms of price is inferior to hive currently), but more importantly hive, which is why I am bringing this up over and over again. I do not want to write a post about the drawbacks of leo.voter curation, and stir up the drama. I humbly request curators of leo.voters to watch what they are voting. There are people posting on leofinance on

My Hive Goals - Weekly progress report

Splinterlands - My Weekly SPS goals

My earnings from Splinterlands

Hive Power Up day and My Monthly Hive Report

My Publish0x stats - Monthly report

Titles like this, with no engagement. Each post with $20- $40 in hive rewards, who know how much in Leo rewards. Please please don't make the community downvote these, is my request to author and please please don't vote these with $10 of leo.voter vote will be my request to the curators.

Yeah most of the time the issue lies with the upvoters, it's like they have no frame of judgement of what constitutes good rewards and the factors one should take into account before placing the big votes. Unfortunately a lot of big accounts do this and one of their main defenses is "oh it's just $20/$40, who cares" while the value doesn't matter much it's a lot of stake that could be going to a lot of other more deserving accounts.

If people have issues depleting their voting power in a fair basis there's plenty of other ways to use it that's a net positive for Hive, for example hbd.funder comments. You shouldn't thereby use the excuse that "oh we just didn't find enough good posts to curate that day so we voted these few accounts with huge votes" while there are plenty of posts that go unnoticed and unrewarded, some I've been stumbling upon accidentally too in their big community. Not gonna get into the whole why huge communities with a ton of "whatever posts as long as it's somehow finance related" are often a bad idea and make the life of curators & engagement/attention thus retention hard as in this case it's most likely rogue curators being tipped off to upvote certain alt accounts for whatever reason. This isn't something that only affects leo.voter and I wish I could say with 100% certainty that it doesn't happen in OCD but I can't cause it's hard to spot them and some may be better at hiding that fact than others, but the way leo's been using their voting power has seemed like it's more than just negligence unfortunately.

Honestly speaking, even though I am months old here on Hive, I had no idea why there was a Downvote feature. I thought it was for contents that we don't like, or a way to report the red flags. But I appreciate this post and I learned a lot. Also, like what you mentioned, I also avoid using the downvote since I don't want to offend other users, or give them an impression that I am personally attacking them through their contents. Since you already brought it up and explained that we must also normalize giving a downvote, I will try my best to also do the same thing.

I am also guilty as charged when you mentioned that some users only post contents and then leave no engagement in the platform. But everything changed. I made this goal of engaging with different users everyday and learning about their stories in life. It's my way of appreciating the opportunity that this platform has given me.

And in issue regarding the overrewarded contents that seem to be suspicious, I hope it will be managed to balance the rewards and to give chance to those content writers who also deserve a spot in receiving rewards.

you have to understand that when (most) people downvote things they aren't doing it because it's fun, or because they have a vendetta against someone or because they profit off of it

I read a post accusing downvoters of always being hateful / spiteful only yesterday. I downvote a lot, mostly that dtube shit that is YouTuber's cross-posting their content (and using YT videos as the primary, not DT).

It's never personal and I would rather them stop all the bullshit and do something that creates activity. There's never any comments, and they are generally new accounts and pulling the HIVE into Binance that dtube blindly gives them regardless of quality.

I don't get anything out of downvoting, in fact I feel bad about it. There is no maniacal gleeful look when I'm hitting that button. I have a large stake in HIVE, paid by hard work and fiat.

At one point I was buying £500 at a time (in 2019 during the deep bear). The rewards need to go to the ones putting in the effort and I do my small part by releasing these rewards back into the pool.

"...I do my small part by releasing these rewards back into the pool."

I am not being sarcastic when I note your humble effort in this regard. All of us do benefit from that unpleasant work, and this is also true of everyone that acts to deploy their stake to defend all of us from parasitic extraction by mechanisms and ploys that abuse the rewards pool.

Not following that with a 'but, ackshually...'

Just wanted to be grateful, for once.

There is a lot less crap out there than during the STEEM days. I for one am pleased about that.

I'm really glad I came along your article amd I must say, I have learnt a lot, especially in bringing more value to the chain by engagement, bringing current from Web 2, being part of 2 or 3 curating trails amd so on. Well, I have only downvoted not more than thrice on accounts that post phishing links on my post so that newbies don't fall into their trap. Thanks for sharing this.

PS: @ tarazkp is an amazing hiver. I've gotten value from his content and deserves all the rewards he gets and much more too.


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I kind of think that downvoting is stupid most of the time but it needs to be there for the times when its genuinely needed.

Its a perfect deterrent.

You said content 33 times.

Nah, I didn't count. I'm just feeling totally passive aggressive now.

Such a fascist

Autocorrect can be a real dick sometimes.

Lol I'm just messing

You didn't mean to call me Fabulous?

Only in my thoughts

That's what I was thinking. = }

Never used the DV option. I prefer to just ignore if I don't like something. Thanks to your (long) post, I understand a lot more.

I agree with this post in many respects and have had many experiences that can be related. I recently found myself stalling to respond to comments on two of my posts. But soon after I asked myself "wow, for months all I was thinking about was increasing the amount of comments on my posts and now that I'm getting am I going to ignore them?" It was a slap in my face to respond properly.

Also, despite reading a lot of posts and curating the projects I participate in, I can't leave a personalized comment (the time it takes to translate my comments into English really puts me off) and this is an aspect I need to improve a lot .

Despite these failures during the recent Leofinance challenge, I could see how rewarding my journey at Hive was because when I needed to invite people to access the challenge through my link, countless people I helped in the past (including some of them unfortunately stopped using Hive) took the time to help me. That feeling was sensational because I realized that I had helped them at some point and now they were rewarding me for it. For me that is the true meaning of Hive and I hope I can keep nurturing good relationships and helping as many people as I can!

(a giant text talking about me, but that's it)

For me that is the true meaning of Hive and I hope I can keep nurturing good relationships and helping as many people as I can!

Now that you figured out the magic of Hive, Never forget it!

Taraz and I were debating yesterday on AI (sorry) where I raised the point about how we as a society are yet to actually decide what 'value' (as well as 'art', 'music') actually means, and until/if that state can ever be resolved (unlikely, since we all inherently have individual... values), we will perpetually bicker about things like downvotes.

And indeed this kind of post has been published on here in perpetuity - though it certainly needs refreshing frequently like this here to keep with the times. I suppose the same applies across the social board. TikTok's algorithm now enables somebody who literally just stares at the camera for 8 seconds with some generic meme-like backing track, to get hundreds of millions of views and therefore a chest of gold bars in return... sigh. I wish I could downvote entire platforms.

I allocated my downvote power to a couple of respected downvote trails (while on a break from online activity) and rarely checked it until recently when I decided to have a look at what they were downvoting.

Most of the downvotes I agreed with but on one trail there were a few dvs that seemed rather personal and not content or reward related so I cancelled my downvote allocation to all downvote trails.

I thought we had left the drama behind when we forked off from the shitshow of steem.

I do use an auto voter when I'm not available and all the authors I support are good community members who rarely get double digit rewards. @tarazkp is a great contributor to hive and is on my auto voter.
I don't always comment but often read his posts. I've become a bit of a lurker recently.

I manually curate new users who get little or no rewards. Some of them are trying really hard and deserve some recognition for their efforts. No Shakespeare's yet but they are trying to figure out how to make content.

That's how I feel it should be.

For those new people reading this.

Find new users who get virtually no rewards and support them if they are at least trying to create decent content.

Focus on the positive and let the bigger accounts worry about downvoting the abusers. They can handle a flag war.

Content creation is a skill that you too can learn with enough practice.

Even though I had some issues understanding this when it happened to me, it made (sort of) sense later on. However, I still think that there are lots of posts that deserve downvotes more than others and that there are quite a few guys who are privileged from this 'service' while some shouldn't get such a big downvote for nothing. Equally, it's hard not to think about the times from 2016-2017 when many people became rich over the night and no one downvoted their posts. Again, these are some personal thoughts without making reference to specific people but only speaking in general :)

Yeah, back then downvotes literally cost people, i.e. they ate up upvote mana so most wouldn't use it as to not lose APR compared to everyone else, hence the "free downvote mana pool" which in some cases gets abused but they're thankfully very few of those cases. Those with a lot of stake who could abuse it the most are of course those who want to see the platform succeed so it kind of evens the risk out I think.

"Downvotes aren't perfect and they're not always used perfectly. I have some times cast some downvotes on people who seemed to completely understand them and be friendly towards it and thanking me for letting them know why I cast it. I've some times even cast downvotes on my own content or content I've voted on with my curation accounts that ended up being too rewarded or have had to ask others to help bring it down a bit. People just need to normalize them a bit more, not think black & white or that rewards are being "taken from them" or that everyone's casting them with ulterior motives then going on rants telling the person who downvoted you why you think he did it, how this platform sucks, etc."

Greetings @acidyo and thanks for this pieces you have brought forward. Actually this extract is perfect ideas to deal with people whose posts are downvoted so that they will have a clear mind about why their posts were being downvoted . Letting them know their mistakes or repeated mistake through comments on the downvoted posts would drawn their attention to something urgent they need to be correct rather than leaving the posts without any comment after downvoting.

On the second point of reducing their maximum votes cast for the low content is also in the right direction. But, I think this should be measurable to certain percentage ot reduction of vote so that the culprits would feel the pain. After reduction, I would suggest that a comment should be left the reason why that post votes was being reduced. Thanks for your good work!

Oh okay, guess he just ignored him and everyone else in the post cause he had to post another 3 generic posts the next couple days to get those juicy rewards. Who has time for engagement and appreciating this dumbass' long response, amirite?

I hate this! I think that if someone comments on one of your posts then you should acknowledge it one way or the other, whether that is with a small upvote, or a simple comment back. It really grinds my gear if I take time to comment on a post and don't recieve no response back, more so if I see that the person responds to 0 people.

One of the big things I see too is people who will put up a post that consists of only one or two paragraphs.

Good post, Acid! It was an enjoyment to read!

Thanks, and tbh nothing wrong with short posts, just curators need to make sure they upvote it accordingly or the author forfeits part of the rewards if he knows he's going to get a lot of autovotes if they happen often on previous posts.

It does put me off voting for someone if they never engage. I like those who want to be part of the community and give as well as take. I tend not to give posts that have decent rewards anyway as I can give more support to those who struggle to make much despite having good content. I often say that Hive is not 'fair' as it can be a lot about who you know, but having a lot of voting power brings responsibilities too.

I have done my share of downvoting, but mostly where there's clear abuse of the platform. It does make me some enemies, but so be it.

I'm the same way. Most of my upvotes seem to go towards people who rarely get much more than a buck in rewards. It may not help my curation rewards (then again, it might... I've never really taken the time to learn how to maximize that) but I think it's probably a better use of my upvote to help unrewarded users than add to already decent to great rewards that some others get.

I don't worry too much about what I make from curation. If we can't keep people engaged here then we all lose, so have to play the long game.

That's a great way of looking at it.

I agree! I tend to go half half I suppose ... I'm terrible at maximizing curation rewards but I like to help out underrewarded too as well as good content from people I like x

You can't really maximize them anymore the way you maybe could in previous hardforks, seems a lot of people aren't aware of the recent changes/how it works from what I've been reading lately. Not saying you're not aware but there seems to be many who completely missed how the current linear rewards work.

I probably missed it to. I guess I'm more about making sure others get rewards through my upvotes and comments than worrying about what I get.

Yeah it's a good change all around.

At the beginning of my path in this world, the conception I had of negative votes was about punishing plagiarism or spam content, the truth was that those who taught me said that was the use.

Over time I got caught up in several situations for voting negative. I understood the use of downvote with respect to excessive rating, when I was involved in several dramas. Of course, it would be a lie not to say that it affected me at first, but then I understood the point of it all.

The point is that most people do not sit down and study the economics and philosophy of our platform conscientiously. And that is when a series of ignorant attacks on the negative vote begins.

Perhaps changing the name of "downvote" to "adjustment" might provide a different perspective to whoever receives that "adjustment" in value.

I propose it as something that can help to benefit the negative context of such "adjustment".

Otherwise, I sincerely think that "adjustment" is necessary when there is overcompensated content and nowadays I use it for it with some frequency (with more incidence when I see abuses).

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

Yeah I get how downvotes affect people and myself at times, you try to think extra hard to make them personal and try to ignore that maybe it wasn't. It's not a nice thing to do and receive as @slobberchops put it in his comment above. I think seeing who gave the downvote, what kind of downvotes they usually give and if they maybe left a comment in either your post or on another post they downvoted helps realizing that maybe it wasn't personal and maybe they aren't aware of certain things.

Like when I leave someone a downvote, which happens seldom, I try to leave a comment. If the user let's me know that "oh okay but this is the first post in forever I've gotten big votes on" or something that may make me re-consider then I will. What I despise is people who instantly go on the offensive, say things like "this is censorship", "hive sucks and this will kill it", etc, then I know it's probably that they just care about maximizing rewards and are doing anything they can to get that to continue which won't go well from my point of reconsideration.

Engagement should always come first. Churning out new posts without engaging on the previous ones and/or on other people´s posts is the epitome of selfishness and ignorance. It´s particularly sad and pathetic when these posts with ghost town like comment sections appear on the trending page. Fortunately, it doesn´t happen very often here...

Yeah only exception I can think of is if the influencer is really big and practically doesn't have time to do so, but in that case they'd have to provide value in other ways than just cross-posting content onto Hive if they're getting a lot of rewards here. Such as promoting/mentioning their existence here in other places now and then.

Right. In fact, I brought one account like this to Hive. A friend of mine and his wife have been running this account where they share ideas and tutorials for crafts for kids and their parents. They have more than 2.5 million followers just on Facebook alone and hundreds of thousands on other social media so I was really excited that they joined Hive. I spent long hours explaining everything to them back then but after a few months of posting, they stopped being active here :( I asked them a few times if they were coming back and they always said yes but they haven´t really done that yet and I don´t want to push it too hard. Pity. The potential of introducing Hive to masses of Web 2 users was really huge there. Big influencers are busy keeping their businesses running I guess. Seems like we will have to get Hive on the Moon by ourselves :)

Step by step I guess, but any new user no matter influential size is a win for stake distribution and security of the network and who knows if they may turn into another @theycallmedan or bring in a lot of users over time who may bring in users themselves, etc. We're seeing some impressive onboarding with our program and looking forward to see how it evolves and scales.

Yeah, I know. And not just the programs, we have individuals here who have already managed to onboard dozens of people on Hive. Especially certain folks in the Filipino, Venezuelan and Vietnamese communities have been putting on some truly outstanding onboarding efforts, I´m sure you know some them... On the other hand, retention has proved to be just as important. I can see that myself. Over the years, I have brought some 10 - 15 people here but unfortunately, most of them are not active anymore. That´s why I now mostly focus on bringing people here who actually have the preconditions for staying...

I always like reading these. I’ve seen some of the downvote controversy over time, but posts like this really give perspective to the whole thing and I like seeing into the thought and deliberation that goes into these things.

Thank you for this! I've been getting a little disheartened with some of the activities on Hive the last 6 months or so. Autovoters, up/down votes on people I think are good content, etc. Would be nice to see these kinds of explanations fromsome of the other big vote swingers and to know their mind set. I know it doesnt seem right for anybody to have to write a post to "justify their vote". But it helps to let people know the mindset of the voter.
The autovoters absolutely drive me nuts. Especially with audio/video content. I get some big votes sometimes and then look at the views on the video and it just isnt no real way to gauge the reason why. Other than theres a lot of autovotes. It sucks. I dont want to make a monetary reward. I want engagement and feedback. I want to know that someone liked my content enough to take the time to view/listen to it. Thats worth more than any amount of autovoters.

disheartened with some of the activities on Hive the last 6 months or so

Nothing you described was ever any different, from my memory back in the early Steem days up until this point... did it get worse or something suddenly? I've not been too active for a while so I genuinely don't really know what's going on...

I didnt mean Hive itself as a technology. Rather some of the users and their uses of it.

yeah the crux of free transactions/votes, people will utilize it to the max if they can, even if it just means maybe 0.1 hive return after a year of 100k votes.

You definitely bring up some interesting points here! From a personal perspective, I don't use downvotes at all, unless it's for a post or comment that contains blatantly illegal content. This was a habit adopted from a different platform, but it's possible that the usage here may bear different consequences, some of which you mentioned.

I don't think I'll be changing my usage of downvotes, because in all honesty, who am I as a judge of value for content that's generated here? I'm not going to downvote content that seems overrewarded to me, because others may find it to be useful content worthy of their votes. Either that, or the poster in questions has managed to collect followers to such a degree that they've managed to earn consistently high rewards. In such a case, even if I'm not fond of the content, I just say, "That's impressive. Good for them."

Don't get me wrong; I absolutely respect your point of view for how you use your votes, because you have a strong subjective justification and reasoning. It's ultimately up to the individual, but as long as you remain honest in how you vote, then nobody can hold it against you.

In regards to a different point; specifically the quality comment with nearly no rewards or further engagement: I think this is a tragic consequence of the current voting system as it's currently implemented on Hive. Thus, I'm planning to implement a system on the FreeCompliments community that would help reward quality engagement, rather than just posts alone. It's something I haven't seen done consistently on any community I've visited on Hive to date, but it'll also require the community account to have more voting power. I believe it could be a game changer over time, and truly help encourage quality engagement on posts, because this is what drives communities to bond.

Thanks for writing and sharing this post! 😊


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I don’t think I’ve ever used the downvote button, because I don’t think I’ve ever really defined what “over-rewarded” meant to me. Hell I don’t know whether I even thought over-rewarded was a thing. I just saw all those good-looking payouts as either someone’s lucky day or their connections working for them.

Now though, I think I’ve established a metric for what over-rewarded means. I doubt I’ll have the courage to hit downvote though, because well…a small account like mine is only looking for trouble if I hit the red button on anyone’s post.

What I’ll be doing instead is I’ll just not vote anymore if I consider a post over-rewarded. Sounds smart and safe.

This was a good read and provided some insight into the thought that went into a downvote(in most reasonable cases anyways)

This dilemma will always live on the Hive blockchain as there are so many variables in the rewards pool equation. I too think that whales are rewarding the same authors over and over without any quality measurement, where the small content creators are struggling to earn a few dollars. But on the other side also the whales are having their righteous part as being early adopters or growing their stake through investment. Thus, it will always be a debate on the upvotes vs downvotes on specific content and practices.

whales are rewarding the same authors over and over without any quality measurement, where the small content creators are struggling to earn a few dollars.

☝️ That's an important point, that most part ignore, because reasons ;) to this I call hypocrisy

some good examples.. yea, people game the system and life is not always fair, but hive is AWESOME and I really am glad it's here.. :)

downvoted cause post is just too fking long to read 🤣

Understandable, lol.

Well, some call it "adjustment of rewards", some call it (at least in some cases) pure arbitrariness and ego gratification of some whales and members of the inner HIVE circle.

For example here the reputation of a user who made a Splinterlands proposal got crushed from about 50 to 9 ... I just wonder why? :
https://peakd.com/spsproposal/@mangowambo/convert-busd-dao-holdings-into-dec-dai-lp

Or here I guess it must have been really necessary to reduce the reward of this post to zero:
https://peakd.com/hive-117778/@andrianna/owl-diamond-embroidery

It's true that some (often new) users don't comment and interact a lot (whereby also often they are not to blame as only very few voters add comments to their posts - also a consequence of auto votes), but I wonder what prevents the 'dilligent' downvoters from communicatiing and giving some friendly advice first before attacking the 'sinners'? And yes, they feel attacked, even if experienced Hivers will quickly come now and explain that it's just a mechanism of reward distribution. However, the huge number of users who has left HIVE due to these kind of downvotes has another perception.

On Twitter you HIVE fans are always lamenting why nobody recognizes the greatness of HIVE? I tell you: they do know HIVE (during the fork everybody was talking about the STEEM/HIVE conflict), but simply too many potential users fear to get attacked when posting there.

That said in some cases of low quality posts, spam, plagiarism or very high rewarded but mediocre posts I agree with reducing the rewards.

I don't understand, both posts have explanations in them, one by @azircon and one by @galenkp, the former I also think was a bit overdone but the latter has quite a history of farming autovotes I've encountered myself as well.

I don't think everyone knows about Hive but choose not to be here due to the very few cases of bad downvotes, that's silly.

The first one is a proposal where it is only about to agree or disagree with a suggestion. If you disagree with the proposal it is enough to downvote with - for example - 1 %! There simply is no reason at all to downvote with 100 % (and it makes no difference as only the SPS stake of the voters is counted, not the percentage of the vote).

And abuse of autovotes in the second case? Nearly everybody who is downvoting this user is getting tons of autovotes! I would not upvote this user normally but considering all the autodownvotes I try to help a little bit.

P. S.: Concerning your last point I think you underestimate the psychological effect of the downvotes. Open for example CoinMarketCap and choose HIVE. Then read the comments. One of them (with 7 likes - no, I didn't like it) says
"$HIVE platform full of antisocial idiots - gonna short this shitcoin to the ground"(https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/hive-blockchain/). It is not that I agree with them but this is how quite some people are thinking.

I will provide further explanation. I have discussed with mangowambo as well and he doesn't have any problem with it. So I don't understand why you have any problem.

I DV'ed the proposal at 100% to discourage spamming of proposals. As you know everyone have ideas and they can write a proposal. But just because you have a good idea doesn't make it a good proposal. It requires additional thoughts, consensus generation before it can/should be published. Notice how few community proposals actually passed :)

Also notice how few proposals in general are forwarded. My method is working.

Oh Adriana? That's a spammer. Has a very long history of spamming. It was not even a person for a long time :) you don't know a lot of things

I will provide further explanation.

I appreciate that!

I have discussed with mangowambo as well and he doesn't have any problem with it.

Just lets be honest. He knows very well that expressing his anger could lead to further problems for him as a blogger in future. I don't say you would downvote him for that, but there is the possibility of it, which already can cause users to be very careful of what they are writing.

I DV'ed the proposal at 100% to discourage spamming of proposals.

I fear the effect is that nearly nobody (who cares the least about his HIVE reputation) is still daring to put a proposal because nobody can guess in advance what HIVE whales like you might think about their ideas.

As you are here I would like to tell you that actually I rather often agree with your point of views (not always but more often than you might think). I see the problem not in what you say and do but how you do it:
I suspect you are reluctant to admit that your statements often contain more than just a pinch of arrogance. Why not replace it by kindness and a more communicative approach in some cases? :)
(Not that I would consider myself perfect - not at all ...)

Oh Adriana? That's a spammer.

In my eyes her posts are too good to call her a spammer, but actually I partly understand the downvotes. On the other hand this exact post was not bad at all. My approach would have been to at first give her a friendly hint to interact more with the community, and only after that wouldn't help I would consider other measures.
For example when she asked for the reason of the flags I would have given a friendlier answer than @galenkp (oh no: I am triggering the whole community now) by giving her a chance to change her behaviour. Actually she is replying to more comments than before after I suggested it to her.

... you don't know a lot of things

Well, even if I am here since 2016 lets say yes: of course I don't know everything (as you - of course - also don't know everything).
If there is more behind that certain account than I know, so it might be, and I happily would admit to be wrong.

I agree with you regarding my arrogance. It’s not just a pinch. It’s often a lot :)

Believe me, I know about that personality trait and I am concerned about it too. However, I often use it to my advantage.

Mangowambo doesn’t blog, so that hive reputation number doesn’t matter to him I told him if he just post any random blog I can provide a single upvote and that rep number will be restored.

Adriana has a really have a very long history only a few anti-abuse people know. I don’t want to discuss it in detail as it take a long time. Just will tell you, it was not a person but a modeling agency :) Please believe me.

PS. The person behind that account is NOT a she, it's a he :) Yes, the lady is real, but she doesn't manage the blog :)

I agree with you regarding my arrogance. It’s not just a pinch. It’s often a lot :)

Lol, you show a sense of humour (and also honesty) here, which I didn't expect! Nice to know. :)

Also, please let people short hive :)

Most people who writes that word “short” doesn’t even have the first damn clue what that word actually means. Let alone the impact of it. It’s not that easy to short hive :) Also more people short hive better it is for us the stakeholders. Every time there will be rally it will be boosted by short covering.

FYI, I am shorting things since I was 16 years old :) I have shorted anything under the sun except probably ginger root futures :) Now I am 47 :)

While I appreciate the valuable service properly motivated downvotes provide, I also note the bubble from which you view value, and Hive. If Hive is to thrive and provide substantial value to broader society, content cannot only be considered valuable if it promotes Hive. That is not to say that promoting Hive is bad, or that you should personally have a different perspective. Everyone has a unique set of values, and societal values, which I often refer to, are in fact nonexistent, because what does actually exist are personal values.

While I don't flog Hive on Twatter, it's because I have no ability to tolerate censored platforms like Twatter, not because I wish Hive ill. The content I create isn't contrary to the benefit of Hive, specifically because it isn't only focused on Hive, but creates utility to the platform to wider society whose diverse interests either will be supported on Hive, or who will not participate on Hive at all.

It is for this reason that opinion flagging is extremely bad for Hive, because it drives from Hive people with different values that could be expressed on Hive and broaden and strengthen the society that benefits from Hive. Folks that seek to make Hive an echo chamber are just as bad for Hive as bidbots, if not worse.

While I despise criminal governments mass murdering their people, I don't run about flagging folks that fanatically support one or another of them that do this. It is that respect for free speech that enables all moronic camps to strengthen Hive by using it to advocate for idiocy.

We make society stronger, and Hive in particular, when we grant to others the right to be wrong.

Thanks!

I don't think I said that or that I stand by that:

content cannot only be considered valuable if it promotes Hive.

If you were talking about the section of me discussing influencers, content can be about anything. The issue I have is when these "influencers" have been given a lot of time, some times years, with consistent autovotes, often trending and they still fail to garner attention from other Hivers in the form of views on peakd/3speak or any kind of engagement in comments on all front-ends but are still massively showered in autovotes/rewards. That's where I have an issue, at this point these influencers should be aware of what's great about Hive, not just about immutability but also how they could curate and value their followers engagement with upvotes from the stake they've received over the years. It just feels like some either never bother learning more of where those rewards are coming from, possibly think it's adrevenue or something like their other front-ends, or they just don't care about trying to give the unique platform they share their content on some value back by mentioning/promoting their posts from here on other socials. It's just pointless at that point to continue showering them with rewards in the hopes they'll decide to at some point promote it and the way they react to downvotes has shown they don't really care neither.

There's plenty of other influencers out there who may "get it" eventually and at least attempt to bring traffic towards their Hive posts eventually that I'd rather see get a chance than the ones who've been taking 20-100k hp over the years but their accounts look like the potential sock/alt account I mentioned above.

I admit I was surprised you felt I was pigeonholing you until I reread my comment, and feel I poorly stated what I meant.

I don't disagree with your OP regarding the reasons you feel accounts like you highlighted are abusive. Neither do I disagree we should be promoting Hive, and particularly those with substantial audiences on other platforms. I intended to convey that promoting Hive isn't only done overtly, but also by Hive enabling substantive discussion of various issues that are particularly censored elsewhere.

The fact we can discuss things here that people get banned for on other platforms is the strongest advertising Hive can get. When people are drawn here by those issues, Hive also strengthens broader society, and that is something I hope Hive will do. I can see how my reply appeared to imply you disagreed simply by my focusing on that issue. That was unintentional.

Okay yea, for what it's worth, and since a majority of such content I've disagreed with the rewards has been of that nature where their content revolves around things that would be censored elsewhere, that doesn't matter to me. I'd be of the same opinion of an "influencer" talking football (soccer) for instance, if he has a great audience outside and is confirmed the account belongs to him it's great that people are focusing a lot of voting power his way, but over time, if all they do is just cross-post content, accept rewards, there comes a time where you gotta wonder what the value is we're getting out of the influencer. Is he bringing in people by maybe mentioning hive/sharing hive links in his other socials? Are people joining to consume his content on Hive (even without his efforts)?

So as you see the controversial content doesn't matter much to me and I've never downvoted due to that, it's just been about disagreement of rewards that I feel are unwarranted after a certain amount of time and stake has been "spent" on such users without any signs that it's being used well in exchange of value for value.

Hi @acidyo , I took some time to read and understand everything you explain, there are many points I agree with, thanks for your post because you did teach me things I didn't know about content overvaluation.

I don't use my downvote because at one time I joined a trail thinking they would put it to good use, I didn't last long because I was attacked by other trails in retaliation, so I didn't feel strong enough to withstand the hatred of others.

People need to understand that a downvote isn't a personal attack, it is an attack against the other votes made on a post.

I ever talked about this influence peddling and how some large accounts voted for themselves or their relatives, they even gave me the tobo hahaha.

tobo?

This is how we tell the spit container what is used in boxing fights.


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This issue of upvote and downvote have been lingering like for ever, it was this issue that caused the 1st rift on steem back in the days when bid bots where rampant and those with huge powers sell thier votes too the highest bidder, back then there was no auto downvote just upvote and the watch Dogs where finding it difficult too clean spam post unlike now. The major issue why one rant about being downvoted is when the downvoter doesn't give the author the reason for his downvote, and then again the value system of hive is some how trashed that's is why it hardly retains new users, 95% of people signing up on hive are here for the money, the work and the reward are not encouraging especially after creating the first contents without getting anything as reward.

For me i think a new mechanism should be put in place for new accounts not to be downvoted for at least the 1st 3 months after sign up too allow them familiarize with the hive world and Also gets too know the rules.

Yea i get hive is not for everyone but some of the people who would have loved it here where chased with downvotes.

The downvotes is the major reason why the price of hive is still where it's at no sane investor who is expecting huge roi will invest in hive for a long time, that's why with the mouth watering technology hive hasn't gotten too top 100 in cryptocurrency ranking.

Before Hive was Hive it was in the top 100. The mighty have fallen, and you note some of the reasons why. Flags aren't all bad, but they're sure not all good either. I'm unaware of a good author on the platform that hasn't been targeted by significant stake from time to time, for reasons that only deprecate the platform. Until Hive is perfected, we'll have to take the good with the bad, is the best I can resolve.

A problem Hive faces is that it's in a world in which stake rules supreme, and Hive will not succeed without significantly enabling stake to substantially incentivize folks to use it. This is a balancing act, and the OP is almost exclusively intent on enabling curators to better balance the deployment of stake via rewards, because a great many very destructive forces are unleashed on society through extractive processes that cause stake to oppress and deprecate far more valuable matters to society.

At this point in time, I can only hang in here and hope better minds than mine continue to seek solutions to problems that continue to negatively impact Hive, not in terms of token price, but in terms of the society that imparts value to that token. Until there are means of valuing more important and valuable aspects of society better than mere stake, Hive will struggle with over-valuing stake, and all the consequences that has to society, just like IRL.

At least greedy whales can't extract my organs and profit from selling them on Hive, so there is a limit to the potential negatives that Hive can inflict on society. Sometimes even the most acquisitive stakeholder recognizes that their stake only has value in society, and acts to strengthen society instead of maximizing their ROI. Until the balance is so far out of whack Hive cannot exist, or is perfected and conquers the world, I intend to persist here, in the hope that our mutual interactions of our own free will enable freedom to increase and happiness in the world increase as a result.

Yea true alot of persons including myself is just hanging there on hive, my mind has already left the reward for my sanity even though I actually need them right now but the present economic situation is not favorable for forks in my part of the world.

"...a new mechanism should be put in place for new accounts not to be downvoted for at least the 1st 3 months after sign up..."

I hope a moments reflection will enable you to grasp what a horrible idea this is, and how scammers with 10k accounts will rape the pants right off Hive if it ever was to happen.

Sometimes it is far better to do nothing than to make things worse.

I totally agree if the downvotes are as of result of unnecessary upvotes or if they're over voted..or from spams ...or suspicious activities...
When it's personal it makes downvotes look like the perfect weapon for warfare..
There's still no real definition as to a post can be valued..you might find value in a post and someone else might not, still doesn't make it undervalued or overvalued.. relationship also play a significant role..so I feel the issue of vote distribution will still be a major problem here on Hive

Getting comments is almost as nice as getting upvotes. It is a shame that some people don't value them.

I've experienced being downvoted on one of my posts before. And I wasn't fully aware of the reasons why many users voted on my posts at that time, but it sure did make me and my work appreciated. Then I later realized that one of the few persons I look up to on the platform recommended my post. For that, I am very thankful.

With regards to the downvote I received, I could've just accepted it more if some people did not just vote on my post. I'd rather want to see more people appreciating my posts compared to see downvotes on my posts.

My beef with downvotes is fairly selfish, basically I will work hard on a post and once in a while get hit by a big whale upvote, but these are almost always met with downvotes. It's hard not to take it personally, especially since I sometimes spend hours on posts. It has on more than one occasion taken the wind out of my sails and affected my motivation to provide good content, especially when I see other people consistently getting hit with rancho and appreciator and the like.

My votes aren't worth much, but because of my dislike of being downvoted I have only used my downvote powers ONCE, when some munchface made a comment on my post about shooting a crow for sport (not ok to say this to The Crow Lady).

In the situation you provided, downvotes to regulate rewards make sense. There's always politics (and corruption) wherever money is involved, and I try to keep out of it and just do my own thing. Still, would be nice if Hive was a little utopia...

Thanks for your post! I read it all, understood most of it.

You are right
I guess the persom who owns the account already spoke to some people by begging them to upvote his posts. Incase you do not know, people do this a lot and it is quite annoying.

Also, there are times that some people will mistakenly press the downvote botton. I won't lie, i have mistakenly pressed the botton.

Also, i feel like any article that is wrotten by someone is his creative work and it may take time to achieve that. Instead of downvoting the post because i do not like it, i will rather pass and go.

The only reason i downvote posts is when it does not pertain to what they mostly talk about it that community or it is totally meaningless.

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Ok, I have learnt a lot about up votes and down votes from this post and reasons for them...

It is really sad to see some undervalued post getting over rewarded and sometimes valued ones getting little or no rewards.

Well, thanks for writing on such matters, I will go a long way for those with little understanding about voting.

I read this and even the comments to the end, and the various comments suggested to me the same thing the post does... the challenge is, no one has the assurance that DVing on Hive or upvoting is a fair system. I understand YOUR rationale now, but that doesn't help me understand why things are upvoted or downvoted. It seems very subjective, and having been on the chain for now four years as of the 17th, that's actually a bit scary. We can assume two principles have coalesced in those four years:

  1. Don't plagiarize (but I was a professional journalist, so I expect that everywhere)
  2. Don't use AI (but, again, I would expect that)

I can see those getting instant DVs ... but then I get hit with whale wars and get sniped because one whale doesn't seem to like another one who has me on a trail ... that was last month ... or, I see people being DVed for using reward.app last year ... an I'm sure everyone has a reason ... but there is no RUBRIC for anyone to look at and say, "I don't agree with it, but those are the community rules, so..." I believe in the value of my own work as a creative and a curator, but, upon reflection, there's no clear rubric for the upvotes either.

By contrast, @threespeak is very clear when you come in: they have a video showing you thus and so is what you do if you want an upvote. You need to make original content, you need to pass our review standards, and you need to put the videos you make here on other platforms so the platform gets exposure. This video is in English and Spanish, Hive's two major languages. OCD is also clear: this is what OCD curates, and this is what it doesn't. If I produce explicitly Christian content, I don't expect an OCD vote -- that's a clear choice.

Granted, I was one of those students in college who studied the rubrics -- I also realize Hive is for GROWN GROWN folks, which means we need to be flexible. But it might be helpful if the large curators could get together, consider the matter, and do much as you have done in this post. I'm not saying remove subjectivity -- people have a right to do what they want with their votes. I am saying that if there are major issues that we on Hive are coalescing around as standards for the community for support and also for getting blasted out of here, the community needs to know that. That would help those of us who are onboarding as well -- new people would come in more confident and prepared if existing members had this settled and could share.

So, I've been playing Splinterlands for a long time, but haven't really dove into HIVE much until recently.
How should I be using my downvotes? Are there reasons to downvote besides reward adjustment or plagiarism?
Is there an article that explains the proper use of downvotes?

It's mostly for the reasons you stated, tho with a smaller account being nitpicky about reward adjustment is probably a little necessary. I'd recommend you dig into all other things hive before getting to use downvotes more frequently.

We have been watching @chloem account.
The posting is suspicious.

Yeah thanks to @azircon for bringing it to my attention, the more you look at it the more sus it is.

I issued a single DV on this post, on the basis of disagreement on rewards, as I didn't see any value on the post.

https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@chloem/how-to-write-a-lot-of-content

But I asked a question 6 days back if you see in the comments. 4 days there was no response. Then I issued a DV. Immediate response on a leo thread and on the post. But by whom? Not chloem, but by someone called v10r8! :)

Damn, you forgot to switch your log-in profile! LOL

Shame shame......farming wasn't enough. Multi-account farming was necessary.

I still haven't nuked the account. I trust, community will.

Here is another alt

https://peakd.com/@asteroids/posts

based on a reasonable guess, and HBD transfer from the wallet

ugh looks like he accidentally logged into another sock tho, lol

LOL, the risk of sockpuppeting, one mistake and you have immutable evidence against you and you ruin your reputation and future income source.

Hopefully it's dealt with and they do a better job at vetting curators in the future.

I am not sure, if it is dealt with or not. So I like to add this to the list.

Leo Finance curations is an easy farm since it has become an automated, rogue curation trail despite being used by circle-j**king team.

@onealfa.leo
Since I see that already disagreed with rewards on "chloem", would you like to help with reward disagreement on these?

@asteroids
@v10r8

And there is a 4th one that @acidyo mentioned.

Thank you :-)