I have become accustomed to often being downvoted by swarms of those attempting to punish me and many others for exercising free speech because we choose to voice politically incorrect or dissident views. And in all my time on this blockchain, I have never written an entire post on the downvote issue, despite it being an issue of major debate, but it has now come to my attention that certain downvote behavior I was not even aware of - what can accurately be described as policing rewards - is beginning to drive good people who are creating original / well-researched content away from this otherwise great platform, so I will now finally make a short post to address the issue and share my views on the subject.
From the start, I have never been a fan of the downvote function, as it seems to be the cause of far more of what I would describe as blockchain or power abuse than the supposed good it does to reign in blockchain abuse it was set up to, such as plagiarized / fraudulent content or spam. I have never understood why certain users would spend so much time and energy to hunt for content they disagree with to downvote when they have the power to support content they support, but such is the way of many stuck in negative thought patterns of this world, rather spending majority of resources punishing those they disagree with than supporting those they do. I don't make a practice of downvoting, in fact as far as I can recall I have only downloaded a post once, and have resolved to never do so again. We only strengthen what we fight against, and so I believe it is far healthier and more productive to spend our time, energy and resources building the world we want to see than fighting against what we don't support, and that's how I use my votes, to support posts and users I want to. If I really disagree with a post so much so that I don't wish to ignore it, I will leave a comment, but why downvote? Others clearly do not feel the same way, rather feeling they have the 'right' to downvote whoever they want to, without leaving a comment to tell the user why they are 'punishing' them or what they did 'wrong' to 'deserve' the flag / reward adjustment. And I suppose it is their right, as long as downvotes are built into the blockchain, which is why I've wondered for a while now if the harm caused by this function in fact far outweighs the little good it may accomplish in diminishing spam, plagiarism, and the like. From my perspective that does certainly appear to be the case, and increasingly so as the days go by.
Now it has come to my attention that not only are their swarms of mindless trolls whose only response to speech they can't stand is with a downvote absent any comment or debate, but there are also those, at least one prominent user anyhow, who acts as the blockchain reward pool police, policing rewards by downvoting content deemed by their subjective opinion to be 'too high'. I became aware of this only because the user, who I was previously unaware of, targeted two of my posts in a row, around the same time @thoughts-in-time was hit with a huge downvote on similar content of his own, prompting me to look for a reason for the massive downvotes, at which point I realized I had apparently fallen victim to being rewarded 'too much' for my work. And here I was thinking a major incentive to investing so much time and energy in a reward-based platform like this was to build a following and hopefully some day reach the point where users appreciate the content enough that one is rewarded with a decent payout. Apparently I was mistaken, however, for as soon as you start making 'too much' for quality work, then comes along the reward police to adjust your rewards down to what they deem to be 'appropriate', as if a truly free-market could not decide that on its own, as if people being rewarded more for their work is somehow bad for the platform and that it is their right and duty to ensure that people don't get rewarded 'too much'.
Many of you are surely aware of the user I am referring to as some of my followers and favorite users I follow have also been recently (or previously) targeted by the reward police - @smooth - although there may be others who do the same. I intentionally choose the term reward police not to be demeaning but because I find it to be the least offensive and most accurate term possible, based upon the user's own description of why they habitually dish out massive downvotes to users who are not trolling, spamming, engaging in fraud, hate speech or plagiarism of any kind, or otherwise abusing the blockchain; and not only that, but that slashing the payouts of popular posts that many people clearly wanted to reward with their votes is somehow altruistic in nature, by claiming that doing so increases rewards of everyone else's posts.
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Now I am no expert on blockchain technology nor a Hive programmer, but somehow I do not feel that anytime someone else's post is downvoted, those removed rewards somehow increase the payout of my posts, but maybe I just don't fully understand how Hive works. Never mind that a number of those downvotes are in fact dished straight out to 'small content creators', some who just happen to have hit the jackpot one day or who have a small following of decently staked supporter base they have worked for months or years to build spending countless hours creating content that users actually appreciate and want to support. But even if this is exactly how it works, and only 'large creators' were being downvoted (would who constitutes a 'large' creator not also be entirely subjective?), would it not be much more beneficial to find those deemed to be small and under-rewarded and support them with a huge upvote rather than policing rewards by constantly downvoting content simply for doing what we are all told Hive is supposed to do - to give content creators opportunity to build a following and to be well rewarded for making great content?!?! How does punishing blockchain success, however minor or major that success may be, encourage use and growth of the platform? I argue it does not, which is why new users are being deterred from joining after seeing such behavior and why others are packing their bags and leaving.
When asked about it, the answer is always the same, this user uses their time/energy/power to act as reward pool police, and any repeat downvotes of the same user is always pure coincidence...
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In other words, the users collectively via their upvotes are not properly distributing their rewards 'for the benefit of Hive' as it is, until the reward police step in and reduce those rewards deemed 'excessive'. No need to help the underdogs whose posts are under-valued, just punish those who are coming out ahead. One user with more hive power than most posts ever get rewarded, so actually has the power on their own to determine the 'proper' payout of absolutely any user whose payout is $115 or less, and instead of using that power to upvote content, uses it to diminish rewards of popular posts that others chose to reward. To his credit, he rarely takes a post down to near zero, so this does not diminish reputation, but that is not the point, the point is that many feel this is a very clear and subjective abuse of power and also a clear and present threat to the viability and neutrality of the platform if it ever had neutrality to begin with, and it is driving users away to other friendlier platforms.
Not only that, we are told the downvotes are not systematic to a user's posts, despite downvotes hitting multiple posts of the same user in a row, for multiple users (that's how it recently happened to me), but I suppose it's plausible that this too is another coincidence...
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Now I like Hive and have been here since over a year before it forked from Steem, and I like it, despite the downvotes, I liked it back when I had a tiny following when I made nothing and a dollar post seemed like massive payout in my book, blockchain technology is cool and there is great diverse community here with much potential to be much better for everyone involved, and that is why I think the developers need to have a real discussion on regulating downvote function or remove it altogether, before the downvote 'abuse' drives all of the great content creators away, leaving the platform barren of diversity and growth it now has. I think anyone who claims to be a supporter of the platform should take a serious look at how such negative use of voting power is effecting user base and whether it is in any way actually in the best interest of the Hive community to use their power to police rewards rather than supporting those seen as under-rewarded.
This post is not an attack on this user, but a call to question the 'accepted' use of downvotes in general as useful, and I along with many others would appreciate a more detailed explanation of how such downvoting behavior is actually in the best interest of the blockchain, not from those theorizing as to why his votes are being cast, but by @smooth directly, as theories are no substitute for a direct explanation from the source of these massive downvotes that are, as I will document, driving many people away from Hive, not exactly great for the Hive ecosystem.
It is entirely within their right to do so as the blockchain is currently set up, however, listed as legitimate use of downvote under 'disagreement on rewards', but it sure would be nice to see some kind of a formula, or criteria, for what constitutes too big of a payout, and what content is 'allowed' and 'not allowed' to receive what amounts of rewards. It is all a bit subjective, don't you think, folks? Why do some minority of users feel the need to police rewards and decide payout amounts based on their power on particular posts, but not others that get even higher payouts? Why are some posts deemed 'not worthy' of the rewards the platform users decide based upon their delegations, and yet others are? What constitutes content that is 'over-rewarded' and why not also reward 'under-rewarded' content at the same time, if your goal is truly to help the blockchain and 'equalize' reward disparity?
I don't have the answers as to what exactly is driving such behavior, but I can point out what appears to be a clear pattern that I have noticed looking at the past 2 weeks of this user's history. You can look for yourself and go as far back as you want, do the same for other abusive downvoters too and find the patterns for those too: https://hiveblocks.com/@smooth
First thing I noticed, upvotes on posts are almost entirely absent apart from repeat voting for @hbd-funder posts (and spam comments) raising money for hbd stabilizer and some votes on a few other comments, while downvotes are prolific, a clear pattern of punishing some while not actively rewarding any of the rest. Furthermore, hbd stabilizer is run by none other than the upvoter himself, so apart from an upvote to other users' posts every blue moon, the only regular rewarding of content here is funneled to his own accounts and projects.
Followed by reaping the curation rewards for those massive upvotes that are going straight to his own project.
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All while minnows the blockchain over aren't getting any such big votes, while others get punished when some of those who actually do give out rewards from their vote power attempt to reward them for great content and take major hits to their reward pools. To be fair, this project is supposed to help Hive blockchain and it may, but at the expense of being programmed by a user who is punishing a whole bunch of others simply for being rewarded more than he subjectively deems to be appropriate.
A very large number of the downvotes, at least one third based upon the sample pages I actually counted (8 of 24 in 2 pages of data), also seem to be directed towards independent journalism and those voicing politically incorrect views and 'conspiracy' subjects, especially in regards to the coronavirus and related 'vaccine', while a sizeable number also seem to be directed towards recipe posts and those related to various natural medicine and gardening related topics. Many of the users were downvoted multiple times, appearing to indicate these downvotes are not as random and more targeted than has been admitted, though of course these apparent patterns could just be coincidental. I'm sure it's also just a coincidence that high payout posts from some other users don't look to ever be downvoted, which gives us a general idea of the possible types of posts that this reward policeman finds to be consistently overvalued compared to similarly rewarded posts of other subjects in his opinion, that being non-mainstream views.
All theorizing aside, however, the one pattern that is self evident to all is the pattern of systematic downvoting to a wide variety of users with minimal upvoting of content outside of hbd stabilizer fundraising, and that this behavior is understandably driving people away from the blockchain. It is said these downvotes are given out to balance out haejin and rancho votes which tend to be randomly given out to trending posts, and yet this is clearly not the case for a large number of these downvoted posts. There are people who rarely get such a high payout, and then lose a good chunk of it with a -40 vote, there are people whose primary means of income is from Hive rewards whose hours of research put into well-liked posts is deemed 'over-valued', and the only consolation is that it's nothing personal, it's just 'fixing' an 'over-rewarded' post, as if those who support the work were wrong to give it the value they did with their votes! This is absurd. Who are they to decide a post is not worth what those supporting it have decided based upon their own votes? Often times these posts have been reblogged, have good engagement, and have received tips, all signs they are deserving of being rewarded, and aren't just getting random auto upvotes by whales, but who cares about that right, the payout looks too high so better get it back in line with and acceptably low reward level closer to the average I guess. Never mind that people actually use their own money to send a tip and one downvote takes 10 times the tip from the reward value, never mind that the post could be written by a poor family man in a developing country just struggling to get by or even a poor American just barely making ends meet in these troubling times, don't bother actually taking into account how many hours of research or work went into a post or the circumstances of the user that may cause a larger than usual payout, or the fact it could be so popular because people actually like it and want the user to get an exceptional payout, just toss empathy and compassion out the window and if it looks disproportionately high then just whack it down and put those peasants back in their place, just don't touch those other whales cuz they always deserve their high payouts.
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Why is getting high rewards a bad thing, and shouldn't there be encouragement for all of us to work towards getting higher rewards, on a reward-based platform? I would hope everyone on Hive could someday be able to make $100 payouts on most of their posts, not trying to adjust their rewards down when they start to get enough to potentially actually survive off of these relatively small earnings or start making more than I do on a post. Why would I care about how much someone else is getting if I have so much power and can just reward the people I support with substantial upvotes? I guess if I only supported myself and my own project, though, maybe I'd see everybody else as competition, but that's not how most of us are on here, and most of us don't take it upon ourselves to police rewards either, even those with substantial stake, but some do for some reason.
Personally, If I think the content isn't worthwhile, I simply don't give it my vote, it's really that simple, and I think it's quite pathetic that we have those who have appointed themselves to be the reward police to punish users for succeeding, and doing so in the name of the greater good of the platform.
Is driving users away good for the platform, though? Because that is what this abuse of power is doing, it's driving people away, people who make good original content, people who are taking their business elsewhere, some long-time users, others who are interested never even joining because they see such behavior as quite the opposite of welcoming.
It is my strong opinion that rewarding what one deems to be good content will do far more to encourage growth here than punishing high rewards or content you disagree with. Isn't high rewards to be an incentive to reach for, rather than an accomplishment to bring about punishment? I would greatly appreciate an answer from the user engaging in this behavior, answering this question and explaining how, if not, the alternate is the case when it is actively driving people away from the platform. I suspect growing the platform is not actually the goal, as @lucylin has opined, but rather 'feeding the beast' (the in crowd, the accepted whales who don't make waves or challenge the status quo). Like Steem, Hive now seems to be heading downhill due to increasingly rampant downvote abuse from this and many other users, and being there are already viable alternatives offering friendlier atmosphere along with opportunity for the combination of crypto rewards and censorship-proof blockchain preservation of online data, if those running the show do not soon address this issue or those engaging in this behavior radically shift their voting practices from punishing to rewarding, then it seems Hive will lose much of its user base just like Steem, and such an exodus looks to be already beginning. I would love to hear people's thoughts and experiences below, as open discussion on this topic can be the only answer, and I know many are sick and tired of the rampant downvoting while many others defend it.
What do you think, is reward pool policing and downvotes given out to punish dissenting views an abuse of power or actually good for the platform as proponents of downvote feature claim, a form of tyranny or free market justice?
You can stop right there. Downvotes aren't punitive, they are voting on where rewards go. You are free to post and no one is punishing you, but you aren't entitled to rewards unless the blockchain voting allocates them to you, end of story.
I think this is the part enough people don't understand. Voting is a two way street.
No, we understand perfectly. You can't insist votes are a 2-way street and simultaneously say downvotes aren't punitive when they diminish rewards that were allocated to the user by other users who wanted to reward the content. Either it is a one way street and downvotes should not be used apart from flagging spam and plagiarism, or 2 way street where upvotes reward and downvotes punish by diminishing those rewards.
Taking away or diminishing a reward is very much a punitive action and would not be accomplished if the blockchain had not allocated rewards that are then being subjectively adjusted down, taken away from the user they were delegated to by upvote. Downvotes don’t allocate rewards, on the contrary they nullify to some extent what has been allocated by users on the chain, so what you really mean when you make this bs claim is that no one is entitled to rewards powerful users don’t want you to have.
More of the exact same defensive BS from the echo chamber inhabited by some of the most nefarious reward pool rapists this platform tolerates.
Users do not "allocate", they vote. The blockchain allocates at the end of seven days depending on the overall result of the voting.
"You can stop right there. Downvotes aren't punitive, they are voting on where rewards go. You are free to post and no one is punishing you, but you aren't entitled to rewards unless the blockchain voting allocates them to you, end of story."Let's be honest for a moment. In your downvote activity, you're not voting where you want the rewards to go. They are safe and sound in the reward pool and haven't gone anywhere. What you're doing is voting where you don't want them to go, and that is punitive. It's plain as day that you are blatantly targeting specific types of content with your downvotes. And if you're saying I want my vote to minusculely increase all other upvoted content at the expense of an [individual post], there's no way to see that other than as a punitive action of sorts.
I noticed you were talking to @truthforce about comments, balking at the number of comments on some of the content you're downvoting. Well, here's the thing, every time you ding a post, it drops a few if not many places in any given feed. This kind of action makes it less noticeable and almost ensures less engagement on the content. And if we address comments being the deciding factor of whether a post merits receiving one of your downvotes. Then why are you upvoting instead of downvoting the spam comments on your @hbd.funder?
Nobody is engaging with those spam comments with comments. And you have them upvoted to the tune of hundreds of dollars each daily while reaping massive amounts of curation rewards on autopilot by curating textbook spam. Now, I know this project is allegedly for a good cause. However, you're gaming the curation scheme in one of the laziest ways possible to benefit yourself and your project all-the-while griefing people who are trying damn hard and putting forth a lot of effort to make it in this ecosystem.
I know that code is law, technically speaking, but it's like the 'Law of the Jungle.' The best of men in days of old have expounded upon this ruthless fact, that there is a thin veneer between civilization and all-out chaos, and they've created additional layers of law for the betterment of humankind. The most simple, effective, and least-offensive form of these is natural law, and all other forms of laws are built on top of that one.
Here's a thought experiment, a crazy man can go and murder or rob someone and be in complete harmony with the law of the jungle. But that doesn't make his actions right, and that's where natural law comes into play. I think it would greatly benefit the HIVE platform if the DEV team tried their best to conform to natural law--this is opposed to the "law of the jungle." You see, if HIVE doesn't feel or gel right with people, then the lack of retention will be the sole blame of stakeholders like yourself who make it this way.
We're still in a quasi-state of first mover advantage. We got some time to get good and show how engaging HIVE can be. But if people like yourself keep shitting on the user experience of those who demonstrate intelligence and show an effort--then you'll have nobody except yourself to blame for just another random token that fails to reach its best potential.
Because I believe high(er) rewards there are beneficial to Hive.
Technical correction, though. I don't make those posts/comments, so they're not mine. They do benefit a project (hbdstabilizer) that I run, but which also does not benefit me personally except to the extent that I'm a Hive stakeholder and I believe it benefits all Hive stakeholders.
The curation rewards must be pretty sick, though. How many of those spam comments do you upvote at 100% daily?
My curation rewards are absolutely crappy because I do nothing to optimize it. Yes, if you have a large stake you get large curation rewards, but compared to the ROI of those who actually try, mine are terrible.
It isn't because I don't know how to do so either. I've both done successful manual curation and run curation bots in the past, and I had among the highest curation ROI for both. I just don't want to focus on extracting rewards at this point when there is far more to be gained by increasing the value of Hive. With the value circling the drain, focusing on maximizing rewards is fighting for second to last place here. No thanks. Let's get Hive to be worth a lot and then we all do well.
"Let's get Hive to be worth a lot and then we all do well."I bet you if you considered focusing less on downvoting the work of content creators, more people would feel comfortable telling their friends to come here, and when people start feeling good about HIVE, they'll buy more tokens. It's this kind of (block)chain reaction that'll cause market activity that drives up the value of HIVE in the marketplace.
We don't have enough clout to be ("the literal") 'Soup Nazi' anymore. The decentralized paid social media marketplace is rapidly expanding to places like odysee and theta. Once any given platform perfects the formula, then we've blown our chance at being the first (successful) mover, and folks will migrate there. I don't think you want that. Nobody does. Everyone I know wants HIVE to get good.
Everyone I know wants the "large stakeholders" to get friendly towards lowly content creators that do their all to make this place work. To give you an idea, I could earn more panhandling for a couple of days at an intersection in a homeless man's attire than I did for all these years that I've poured my heart and soul into this platform, and this should let you know that I'm not here for the money.
Although, I do get torqued when people interfere with my earning potential. HIVE might only pay in peanuts, but I worked god damn hard for those peanuts. So please don't be a (hold your tongue and say) peanuts.
For that matter, I'm pretty sure my rewards were higher when I just delegated to a curation project, even though they take a cut. I cancelled the delegation so I could concentrate my votes on to hbd.funder. Doing so likely cost me money.
That's the same thing and no I don't see it as punitive. Voting where they don't go means they go to others. They don't get taken by the downvoter.
I know that you are not "taking the rewards," but you are not allocating them either. When you diminish the earmarked rewards for a post, you are, in effect, invalidating the upvote actions of others who've mindfully read and resonated with the content. Your bold assertion that leaving it in the rewards pool is like giving all other upvotes a tiny increase is rather obtuse. I say this because people know without a doubt that you didn't read all of those thousands of posts to determine whether or not they merited the imperceptible boost in value. That said, some of your downvote activity has more of a harmful effect than anything else because you're handing out demerits to content you don't like instead of allocating rewards to content that you do. I want you to know it's a very demoralizing experience to be on the receiving end of a smooth downvote, but I think you know this already. I think you enjoy this aspect of your stake power. But mark my words, one day, life will downvote you, and I say this because it happens to us all eventually. Shitty things happen all of the time to good people and bad people alike. But whenever life deals you a sour hand, take the time to reflect on your past behavior and how you got off on doing shitty things to good people. Many of us on HIVE genuinely care about each other, so much that people will blog about their hard times or a bad experience, and we receive and give words of support and encouragement to each other. But I can't help but wonder when someone sick like yourself runs into hard times, if you have someone to go to, or if you've burned all those bridges down and to the ground. I had better quit right now. You're going to end up having me talk me into feeling sorry for yourself, and I just don't have that kind of time or energy for you right now. Get well, get gud, stop breaking HIVE, you're stinking up the joint!
That is the reality of the system and the way voting/code works, sure. But do you think it is in the spirit of the platform though?
If someone's post has dozens(previously said hundreds)of comments on it, or draws in lots of outside users, I wouldn't think a post like that should be downvoted. The rewards might look excessive, but those users are doing something for the platform in terms of engagement.
There is definitely a point in where your downvotes are accomplishing the opposite of what you intend to do(and you have recently done that at least a few times). You want more users coming here and positive experience and positive PR for Hive just like we all do. I think you should take a look at some of the criteria you use when downvoting. Some of the people you are downvoting or the people who are witnessing what is happening are going to leave, and they drive decent engagement with their content.
I'm not saying stop downvoting or anything like that, but maybe there is a possibility for a small change to your approach?
I made a post the other day where I was thinking we should just limit posts to 50 USD max per post(as an example). And the responses to that post is that people want to earn more than 50 USD max per post. The community wants to earn more and the people with the staked power want to see more downvotes. How we can square this circle I don't know, but some conversations might help.
Hundreds of comments? I just scrolled down the trending page and I didn't see any with more than 50 comments, a lot had less than 10. Some have zero! There are plenty of highly rewarded posts on here with very little engagement.
In fact, you could make the case that the biggest driver of engagement is downvotes.
I will update my comment to dozens of comments.
Curious though, do you have a post with your criteria on why you downvote? Like an explanation post?
As I've said many times, for the most part my downvotes are an opinion that the rewards are too high. It is completely subjective. The system tallies the votes and pays rewards after 7 days.
Of course, I will also on occasion make votes for other reasons, but that's 90% of it at least.
"For the most part" leaves a huge loophole for many instances of the possibility of dishonest intentions. That needs to be pointed out, whether there are good intentions or not. It's a nice get out clause that can be shaped into whatever reason you want it to be for PR purposes, and that is the problem here. Many people can see though this, and the clarification on this point is a lot more important than you make it appear.
"For the most part" in this instance means there may be other reasons such as plagiarism, but usually not since I don't search for those things the way others do.
i'm dumping my 20,000 HIVE and buying THETA.
not because i'm being downvoted, i'm strangely NOT downvoted.
but because i've seen way too many unfair downvotes.
@truthforce, That’s the one thing I was really hoping he would clarify in response to this post, but seems to circle around the issue with a ten foot pole, instead insisting downvotes are never punitive despite others targeting free speech they hate without debate/engagement and repeating it is our right to downvote. I would think it only fair there be a criteria laid out, some method to the madness so at least the community understands why, and that is what numerous people have now been pressing for an answer on, but so far to no avail.
We know the chain is setup to allow downvotes, @smooth, we are only asking that you rethink whether this practice is the best way to encourage growth when it is causing people to leave for friendlier platforms, and I know it is not you alone giving so many downvotes without leaving comments with explanation on the posts you hit, but even just telling us how you determine what constitutes overcompensation in your opinion, when you are at the same time willing to upvote highly rewarded posts upvoted by the auto voting rancho and Haejin when many are under the impression you are attempting to counter their vote ‘abuse’ as many see those 2 accounts.
Some clarification would be appreciated, but nice to see you are using your power to upvote content now, especially folks that truly look to be in need.
That an account frequently makes dumb upvotes that overreward does not mean that every single vote is bad or that I will disagree with it. Stopped clock and all.
But you will not clarify for us what criteria you use to determine ‘good’ upvotes versus ‘bad’ or what specifically causes you to disagree with high payout in the cases you downvote, or what you deem to be ‘too high’ of rewards?
This lack of clarification, the upvotes not accompanied by comment explaining each time, and general subjectivity of it all without a completely clear reasoning for ppl to understand makes it easy to view your votes as targeting specific content and users, and the reason ppl are leaving Hive. As those whose rewards are being policed, it’d be nice to know the ‘rules’ of the game from those doing the policing.
Just know you along with few other whales helped drive many users away with this rampant abuse of power and lack of transparency on your part, although the pattern is rather transparent for all to see as to what you consistently deem over-rewarded and what you see as acceptable for high payouts. I know you have the right according to the blockchain code and view your actions as in the best interest of The community, but all tyrants do the same, so enjoy stamping us blockchain peasants down, it’s what the rich and powerful are usually best at anyway. Good luck using your power to punish rather than reward, its a sad path to travel being so negatively oriented, I hope you find a way to use your power in a more positive way in the future and wish you all the best, despite the 3 downvotes in a row and all.
We wouldn't have this problem with a 1000mv vote limit in place.
Let me just separate my stake out into multiple accounts and we are right back here again.
Yes, and once the community figures out you are a pariah, maybe they will downvote you and all who you vote, too.
But what if I'm acid?
I'll need more data.
PRESEARCH.ORG SOLVED THE "MULTIACCOUNTPROBLEM".
It's very simple: The blockchain is continuously distributing out a fixed amount of new tokens to users through the reward pool (the part of Hive's inflation that goes to author rewards and curation rewards). Whenever payouts happen, the blockchain distributes this fixed amount out to users who made posts whose payout time has reached the same window, and the fixed amount is distributed among them based on stake-weighted votes. So since the amount paid out is fixed, if you get less, the others get more.
Of course, you will not notice your own payouts going up just because you give someone a downvote simply because the value of one downvote is so small compared to the size of the total payouts of the rest. It's like how you can't directly notice the effects of one car driving on the other side of the world on the climate in your country, yet all emissions taking place all over the world still contributes to climate change.
I am glad that someone decided to write a post about this and I admire the guts it took to write. I have been involved with this platform since Jan 2018, and downvoting has long been one of my concerns especially when powerful accounts are doing the downvoting. Hive is supposed to be a platform in which users' content is not censored in any way, the kind of downvoting that @smooth is doing violates the idea of a DPoS blockchain community and is a form of censorship in my opinion. What is preventing any powerful account from running rampant and downvoting content just for the heck of it? It blows my mind why anyone would be downvoting other users' content like this. Doesn't this account clearly state that they do not even dislike the content they are downvoting...isn't that the exact opposite of what the downvote is supposed to be used for? I am often a humble person, a wise man once said that "in order to not feel like shit you have to keep your head above all the bullshit" but to be frank, this downvoting thing pisses me the fuck off, and I'm sick of being quiet about it. Let's be real this is why we left Steemit and built Hive so we didn't have to deal with myopic pompous shills swinging their wallets around. It gives off a sense of hierarchy and classism like these accounts I'm downvoting are mere peasants and I'm gonna squish them with my whale blubber, Nah, what you're going to do is start a revolt. What if we created a counter account to these actions pump it up and just counteract everything this whale and other whales who chose to do this, after all, who does the ninja mined stake belong to in the end. I will go down with my battleship for this issue because it has bothered me that long and I don't think Hive will be able to remain uncensored if powerful accounts decide to downvote content for no logical reason.
Thank you @wedacoalition, and yes, this power abuse has been going on a long time and needs to be resisted if we are to preserve censorship-free platform and grow the blockchain user base. I like your idea of building an account to counteract these downvotes with upvotes, but not sure how we could get enough hive and delegated hive power into an account that would make a difference, even a $10 counter vote would take a crapload of hive power. Others have already mentioned this, so there are plenty out there who wish to do what they can to counteract this insanity. I don't have the time to network on here to make such an idea come together, but I would certainly support and help as much as I could to anyone who does. I suspect that if we could get an account going to counter these illogical votes that seem to clearly target certain content and do so without leaving comments to explain why they left the downvote (and this is not the only whale doing this), then volunteers would begging to come forward to delegate hive power, and it would naturally grow on its own without much effort as there's enough who are sick and tired of this and ready to fight back. Certainly more downvotes against the downvoters is not the solution, just an attempt to help restore some of the diminished rewards. Even if it didn't counter the downvotes much in the way of total reward payouts, I suspect it would do much in raising awareness of such downvote behavior.
We need to network with @ultravioletmag who has proposed this same concept, and see what we can do to make it a reality. @offgridlife, @crystalhuman, @johnvibes, @informationwar, @truthforce, @thoughts-in-time, @logiczombie, @freezepeach, @r0nd0n all may potentially also be interested in helping out with such a project, as well as the plethora of users who have been targeted, including @kennyskitchen, @dbroze, @edicted, @naturalmedicine, and so many others.
If the freeze peach service became active on Hive, I'd throw some delegation that way, to the best of my knowledge it went out of service at the time of the Steem fork.
I totally agree, maybe we can get enough of us together to make an account to counter some of these downvotes. If it is their 'right' to downvote, it is certainly our right to counter downvotes, right?
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment and on another note, thank you for all the good work you do exposing Yemen genocide, maybe soon our work will pay off in the form of no more US bombs being dropped on innocent children and wedding gatherings in our names by the royal Saudi war criminals day after day after day after day.
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
tag @freezepeach
Hey logic, wanted to let you know that we will have a place for people to go soon, keep on the look out for an announcement post in the next 4 or 5 weeks(SOON TM).
NICE.
Hey hey, we will have a place for us to go SOON(TM). Keep on the look out ;) And we will have some decently high HP of support as well.
As always, you can delegate to @informationwar or follow our curation trail on hive.vote
Currently the IW trail + those who upvote follow via other services can upvote a post by up to 10 USD at times. We have more stuff that is going to be coming on board and will be a lot higher.
I am ignorant on how to delegate hive power and have been meaning to ask, as I want to delegate hive power to informationwar. I'm sure it is simple, but if you can give me the breakdown or a link to directions, I would like to do that, have been meaning to for some time now... THANK YOU in advance @truthforce, and pardon my ignorance.
If you login to your hive.blog wallet and click on HP theres a drop down menu to delegate. Or join the curation trail on hive.vote our trail is called informationwar
Hey Jason,
I don't know if it helps anything but I spoke with a dev from peakd and suggested a new idea that will help ease the friction between content creators and big accounts who downvote to balance out rewards. Hive has a rewards pool when one post if a post is doing too well a downvote is used to help balance out the rewards or the reward pool would be emptied by the first 100 users to post that day. I don't know if you remember flag wars but this has been an issue for a long time.
My idea is to inform users why their content is being downvoted so when you get a downvote an auto message or memo is sent explaining why balancing out rewards is a good thing that helps the platform grow, users should be told that this big account didnt downvote their content because they think its wrong or bad it just helps make sure rewards are more evenly dispersed. The point that I brought up to asgarth was that what these big accounts forget about is that a downvote can make a post less visible, I believe that no content should be given less visibility on this platform.
I dunno if my solution helps you or eases this tension, but I hope it will help people understand what is happening better and why.
-Joziah
Thank you, this would certainly help, but my issue with this is that certain accounts are clearly disagreeing with high rewards only in some cases, often directed at independent voices and dissident opinions, while at the very same time not doing anything to use their power to upvote vastly under-rewarded content, leading many to believe that it really isn't about helping even out distribution of rewards or helping Hive grow but about subjectively choosing which types of posts 'deserve' high payouts and which ones don't, with even how high is too high of rewards being entirely subjective. I would also propose that a manual message must be attached to the downvotes rather than just an auto-vote so people could get a personalized reason as to what brought about the big downvote. I think at least smooth never brings a post down to zero to leave visibility in tact, so I can recognize the good in that, but overall, I think the best way to balance out rewards is to hunt for under-rewarded content to support rather than over-rewarded content to downvote. Especially considering there are many other posts getting higher payouts that these whales will not only not downvote, but also upvote. It makes me think that balancing out rewards is really not the issue here, but is used as an excuse to police rewards of content they don't like. I can't prove that, but vote pattern strongly supports my theory, and the fact remains this user in particular goes around giving many downvotes while rarely upvoting anything but posts that are raising money for his own personal project. It all seems a bit disingenuous, non-transparent and tyrannical to me. Smooth has refused to clearly outline how he determines downvotes, so we can never know, it's all very subjective and leaves users confused as to why some high payout posts are never dinged for the greater good while others with certain polictical leanings are over and over again. I think you get my drift.
Thanks again for the comment, and for taking action, hopefully we can all become more aware of such patterns and workings of the blockchain, and use what we have learned for the betterment of all.
I don't get the same sense that you have that there is a powerful account that has an issue with dissenting opinions, I have been a truth-teller for a long time, and I have found a home here where I feel I am free to speak my mind, Gab and other platforms have tried to do this but when you think of it none of them are like Hive.
Smooth disagreeing with your reward payout is his right, as much as we might not like it, Smooth is his own account and doesn't owe anything to anyone. I told Smooth myself that his answers to why he does this are only fueling the flames. I said it was the main reason I don't support their proposals. His reply was to basically say that we content creators are very needy and whiney and we need to realize that we aren't the only people who matter and I told him without content creators Hive would be like github just a buncha devs sharing code. I think me and Smooth are friends :)
I spoke with asgarth and others that this gives off a sense of hierarchy that is very off-putting to independent journalists and writers. Please know that the best part of this community is that when you bring up issues like this the community hears you, I assure you that you are being heard and this downvoting issue has long been debated and I think it is time the community should try to come to a consensus on this.
Thank you again for putting this out there and I am making it my personal mission to try and reach a solution to this issue. I joined a few months before you and if you look into my work we write about similar things, it broke my heart to read that you felt like you were being targeted, your account and accounts like yours are vital to the success of Hive.
Thank you so much Joziah, I think you are right about Hive being better than most. If you have not been on the receiving end of habitual downvotes, be grateful, as many of us have, been going on since Steem days, on and off, different users, comes in waves it seems. Maybe this Smooth business is all about reward adjustment, but there are definitely powerful accounts who target politically incorrect content, maybe not smooth, but definitely altleft, it is habitual and very clear pattern for altleft and I do not think has anything to do with disagreement over rewards whatsoever.
For example, I have had 7 research-based posts in a row now downvoted, so hard to not see it as a pattern targeting me (which if so, I take as a compliment that I am ruffling feathers with the content of my posts), particularly when I go look at the users casting the downvotes doing the same to many others in the truth / independent journalist /conspiracy community. I saw smooth had repeatedly downvoted so many fellow independent researchers I support on here, it seems like pattern to me with him, but definitely is with altleft.
Your conversation with Smooth made me laugh, I have intentionally held my tongue regarding my opinions on downvotes for the duration of my stay here, so I'm not among those who typically complain about these things, but when I saw I was far from alone and that many are leaving because of such downvote patterns, I couldn't stay silent any longer. I am far more concerned about the bigger picture and ethics of downvoting over reward disagreement in general than any amount of personal rewards being diminished, as I often get good rewards anyway, and this was never about the money for me, but a free speech platform and building community.
You may not know, but I came here to what was originally Steemit because I was deplatformed on YouTube for my videos challenging the official narrative of the Parkland 'shooting' and pointing out lies about that official narrative, videos that had for the first time in my life gotten me a following of people who appreciated my content, so it is nice to have built up a solid following again here and to have met many like yourself that I probably would have never discovered apart from that censorship experience. So despite the frustrations of that initial censorship, I'm still thankful as it has helped greatly expand the independent researchers I follow and whose work I am now aware of and shown me the futility of fighting Big Tech censorship on their own platforms. I don't take Smooth downvotes personally, and as demoralizing as it initially is to be on the receiving end of such a massive downvote, I am not bitter and have already learned much from the experience.
Thank you so much for caring and taking time to talk the devs, I'm very glad the issue is finally getting their ear, the many people who see this as an issue appreciate any debate on the issue our relatively small voices garner, no matter what change comes about. I think anytime so much power lies in the hands of so few, such as power to decide how much users should or should not be rewarded, is a ticket for disaster, corruption and abuse of power. As the old adage goes, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Those with the power obviously believe they have the right to make such choices due to their investment, and to some degree I suppose they are right. To find a happy balance and particularly to ensure a censorship-free experience is of paramount importance.
This is why I join Hive https://peakd.com/hive/@wedacoalition/why-content-creators-should-use-the-hive-blockchain, but it is very similar to why you did and why I built wedacoalition.org
see you around friend!
This idea has been proposed in the past, and there was a general consensus at one point, that the person flagging the content should be responsible for giving a reason for their flag. After all, if they have the time and energy (and a good reason for it) to flag a post, it shouldn't be that difficult to show a little courtesy by leaving their own comment. Otherwise, it leaves one with some serious doubt about the true intentions in the first place.
yes peakd devs talk about adding this automatically
Yes, but how would this be added automatically? There is not always one reason for someone applying a flag to a users content. And if you are the target of malicious flags for other reasons than "over-rewarding", then the flagger only has an incentive to lie about the real reason for it. This is how it has been for the longest time on both steem/hive. I have been around and seen this behaviour from the beginning and people don't give an honest reason a lot of the time, or no reason at all. It can also be a whack-a-mole game of deception, for those that control a large amount of stake from multiple accounts. Not all of these accounts earned their stake, if you understand some of the original history of steem.
I never signed up to steemit with the intention of becoming a blogger. It had never crossed my mind. I only signed up to steemit to read content from a few authors I had great respect for that were on this platform (because I didn't realise you could read it without signing up at the time lol). Anyway, I (and a few others) were deliberately targeted for the political opinions of our comments, after only a shot time of being active on a few authors blogs. It was clear as day, that it was deliberate and targeted.
It was actually one of the very first things I blogged about (and how I came across what has now transformed into the deepdives community, and it was retracting my enthusiasm for a so-called free speech platform. Our comments and interactions were being silenced, and for a specific reason. It was not about rewards, as the rewards for making comments were minimal to say the least. Also had no stake to speak of, being a new account (keeping in mind that I really didn't know much about how the platform worked at the time).
https://peakd.com/steemit/@palikari123/targeted-flagging-of-posts-and-comments-from-accounts-heather2000-and-thinkingtime
https://peakd.com/steemit/@palikari123/here-we-go-again-nine-days-later-and-more-mass-flagging
To me, this is what its mostly about . It sucks to have your rewards clipped , but it sucks even more to have your voice/opinion silenced/downgraded by accounts who have ulterior motives other than just over-rewarding. There is a pattern to some of the "over-rewarding" flags, that will never be admitted to. But what really turned me off this place, was the attitude of some of the so-called influencers on here (which I had been aware of for a ling time, and it only got worse as time went by). The attitude that they are superior to everyone else, and that they should have the right to control what information is seen by other users. They still refuse to call this censorship, which is absurd.
I agree with you, and I have brought this up in discord, you make very valid points and they are some of the same points I brought up, but you have obviously been contemplating this for a long so forgive me if I don't know all the nuances of the debate. I made my feelings known in a recent post, downvoting equals censorship, but isn't not allowing downvotes also censorship? Decentralization goes both ways. If there are left-wing accounts on here systematically flagging content they don't agree with, that it is their right as users of this platform to do so. Just because it is their right doesn't make it morally right, it's wrong and a myopic use of the downvote.
I do not fully understand this issue to fully answer everything you mentioned but you have my word that I am being very vocal about this issue in hopes to find a solution. Ecosystems have to be balanced or else they collapse, the feeling that you have and other accounts have that they are being targeted disgusts me. I came to what was then Steemit to remove myself from cancel culture and politically correct swarms and I was tired of my hard work being cut down to shit. I have never been a victim of these downvotes that I know of but as a community, we have to hash this out.
One of the points I brought up in discord is what is to stop a huge entity like google from making a hive account and then just shitting on the content they don't agree with? The answer was that there would be a mutiny. There should be a mutiny right now. The last thing a decentralized platform need is a sense of hierarchy. If you are on discord I would love to chat with you on there bc I would like to find out all the info I can about this.
delegations assigned to freezepeach
tag @r0nd0n
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
I just dont know all this technical stuff at all, I had no idea flagging worked like this, I been on this platform since 2018 and I never got an alert like tht
Forgive me but I have no idea what your talking about
this is an ALTERNATIVE proposal.
currently, the rich HIVE accounts (OLIGARCHY) get to downvote whatever they want.
a much more fair system would be a RANDOMIZED CONSENSUS protocol (LIKE ALGORAND).
ooooh, bro I love it
nice.
From my vantage point, Steem sold its users a false bill of goods. I don't know whether it was intentional, a marketing ploy, failure of imagination, or what exactly happened. However, the blue paper touted two new key features in Steem tokenomics that allegedly made it both "smart" and "social." The features outlined are (1) rewards that incentivize content creation and curation and (2) a voting system that leverages the 'wisdom of the crowd.'
I don't think many can pick fault with the former. However, because the latter is impossible, it makes the platform seem wonky, off-balance, and in many cases, throws merit right out the doggamned window. So we have the code, which is the base level of law here. And this code says: "Welcome to the jungle, do what you will with your stake." The law of the code or jungle, in this case, is 100% amoral and gives zero fucks.
And this ultimately bred conflict between people who wanted to see the platform work as advertised. Those who chose to extract as much as the system allows them to do with their stake. And the animals who psychically feed off of the despair of others after they financially censor their reward potential for the crime of "wrongthink."
So the DEVS started in their behavior modification efforts. They did so by adding a downvote button and encouraging people to use a free daily downvote. I imagine they did this for multiple reasons: (1) To discourage those extracting maximum value with low effort. (2) because they can't control why people use flags anyhow, so they just embraced it and call it a downvote instead. (3) to discourage scams, spams, and plagiarism. (4) a failed attempt to try and force crowd wisdom to work by promoting more curation.
Four is a failed attempt because it doesn't matter how many more people you get to participate in the process. The hard truth of the matter is, if the votes are uneven, you can't successfully tap into the crowd's wisdom. Thus in effect, what we have at HIVE is a veritable meow-meow beans situation. It's a complete and utter shitshow. Suffice it to say--we don't have to stay stagnant. We can help to try and encourage more natural market behavior.
We need to accept past failures and move forward with better ideas. Putting the downvote button back where it was as a flag for spam, scams, and plagiarism would be wise. Also, I liked bashadows ideas about taking reward dispute downvotes out of curation rewards. In this way, genuine quality content creators don't get discouraged or chased off by the animals.
On a more disturbing note, even if we could effectively harness the crowd's wisdom, people are generally dumb and easily manipulated. And nothing shows us this better than the thought experiment done on The Orville S01E07. The episode is entitled 'Majority Rule.' It's on a par with that quote about the two wolves and the sheep deciding what's for dinner.
Fully agree, and thank you for your excellent, well thought out comments, you are saying much of exactly what I had wanted but not yet had time to say, particularly in response to the 'downvotes not punitive' claim, but in far better words than I think I could have said it, so thank you, and keep on keepin' on. We are ruffling feathers here with evidence-based posts blowing holes in the establishment narratives on so many issues, I am convinced if not for this there would be no such prolific downvoting or at least not near the degree that there is now.
Funny too how the lowering escessive rewards doesn't hold true on this or your recent post on the topic, further illuminating the reality of the downvotes being punitive :) This post is now my 7th research-based post in a row to be downvoted, 6 of them by whales significantly diminishing rewards, the last 3 by smooth. But I'm not on here for the money, that's just a nice bonus. As demoralizing as it is, it's also funny in its own way, the hypocrisy of it all, and I take it as a sign that our work collectively over the years (of the truth / freedom / independent journalism / conspiracy movement) is finally causing a major paradigm shift in thinking that threatens the establishment, status quo, and beliefs of all the statists / covid cultists / big pharma worshipers, as the world is more aware now than ever of the lies being used to keep humanity in subjugation, and the truth for the first time in centuries may actually threaten their monopoly on power in a very real and tangible way as the system nears its total collapse. All empires collapse upon themselves, and this empire of lies is nearing its end, I say, thus the insanity we see all around us is but a reaction to the inevitable fall of an empire, a desperate attempt to maintain control over the minds and hearts of the masses as the tipping point of liberated minds is reached which will bring the system to its end and usher in a new age of peace and freedom.
Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I see signs of global awakening and hope for freedom all around me. Things will get worse before they get better, still, but I feel that we as a whole are close, humanity is finally ready to be free, at least enough of us to create functional freedom- based alternative systems. Although your point of crowd wisdom being disturbing due to rampant stupidity is accurate, both on and off the blockchain, we are witnessing the 'crowd wisdom' of Covid1984 groupthink implode on a massive scale right now as dozens of states go back to normal with no consequences or resurgence of the 'virus' (yet), and it has the powers that be on all levels shaking in their boots. The more the truth advances, the more vicious the counterattacks will become, on here and in our daily lives in the world, especially by those whose trust in the system is so strong the truth threatens the entirety of their media-induced 'reality'.
Well said, we're living in exciting times! Your optimism on the matter is rather refreshing!
Yes indeed, I'm glad you find it refreshing, many who hear my optimism proceed to 'correct' me by insisting we are all doomed because end of world/NWO/Great Reset/Bill Gates gonna kill us all with vaccine/etc. scenario. I don't think so, but that kind of thinking sure doesn't help the chances of a free humanity! I think while outwardly they appear to be moving according to plan to take over the world, inwardly they are shaking in fear as they know more people are awake now than ever due to the blatant scamdemic lies forcing people out of their slumbers. 'They' being all Those Helping Enslave You.
On a different note, I just had a great idea come to me that I will share, that if those users whose rewards are being pillaged by the massive downvotes to 'balance rewards' had the ability to direct those diminished rewards to posts with smaller payouts of their choice, that would actually accomplish the stated goal and leave the discretion of where this distribution takes place in the hands of the author who got 'excessive' rewards due to popularity (or maybe occasionally random autovotes). I'd be much more ok with that if Hive really wants to institutionalize reward policing as integral part of the platform, as there is tons of content I would love to give bigger votes, and instead of going straight back into the pool to have next to zero effect on the under-rewarded users as a whole, it would make a big difference on some under-rewarded posts. At the very least such an option would make such downvotes seem as if they are truly being given out to 'balance rewards', and would have much more of a veneer of fairness to them.
As it is, I cannot buy that these downvotes are for the 'common good of the community' in any way whatsoever, the evidence from downvote pattern as you've seen clearly suggests otherwise, with this whale also refraining from upvoting under-rewarded content (and content in general for the most part) while constantly upvoting spam comments which rewards go straight to his own pet project. Quite the scheme, really, as you've illuminated quite well with all your links and screenshots here, so thank you for that.
If others can't see it, oh well, we've done our part in shining a light on this rampant power abuse (or helpful balancing of rewards as others call it)... :)
"Yes indeed, I'm glad you find it refreshing, many who hear my optimism proceed to 'correct' me by insisting we are all doomed because end of world/NWO/Great Reset/Bill Gates gonna kill us all with vaccine/etc. scenario."Generally speaking, I'm usually one of those people. However, your perspective seemed packed with optimism. It goes to show with a pinch of paradigm wiggling--things can happen. That and there's a fine line between anxiety and excitement. I had a realization regarding this other thing. Most of the people who couch their arguments behind the theory of conserving "the rewards pool" are like celebrities who pay lip service to global warming and going green. All the while, they hop from continent to continent like fleas on crack in their private gas-guzzling aircraft. It's just a bunch of hypocritical BS masquerading itself as good intentions. Just like everywhere else, there's a lot of virtue-signaling fuckery going on among certain HIVE power players at the upper crusty.
If you've ever powered down HP earned from posting rewards, please don't put the responsibility for distribution issues on anyone else.
Now the way Hive is currently designed, it's not ideal to keep HP distributed and thus keep more crowd-wisdom rather than whale-wisdom. If earned HP had a longer power down time, but still had all the same influence, we'd see something closer to ideal. This can be accomplished with one balance for powered-up (bought) HP, plus legacy/current HP, and once implemented, a second balance for earned HP from that point on. The separate balances would be summed for influence purposes, so you wouldn't notice much change, but would have drastically different power down schedules. Short for the powered-up/legacy HP and a year or two (as the original Steem design worked) for earned HP. If you want to see more crowd-wisdom on Hive, support this idea and spread it around.
"If you've ever powered down HP earned from posting rewards, please don't put the responsibility for distribution issues on anyone else.""If you want to see more crowd-wisdom on Hive, support this idea and spread it around."I powered down most of my HP a long time ago because I got disenchanted with the downvote activity and outright bullying I observed that happened to other people's accounts. Things haven't changed much, and some people in particular, whether they be thot police or thought police have chips on their shoulders and act like snooty bastards.
As a platform that requires users to retain five fucking passwords, the larger stakeholders ought to act like the bigger man and kiss newbie ass while praying to the gods that they come away from it with a positive user experience. Either this, or else they will get cursed with their bags until the end of the world. And by the looks of the current state of affairs, that might not be that far off.
HIVE's motto should be: "Get gud or die trying." It'll either go on our collective Tombstone at a plot in the social media graveyard next to MySpace or etched in the top of people's minds as the replacement for Facebook and the like. Also, there's no such thing as "more crowd" wisdom. We either have it, or we don't. Tapping into the intelligence of the collective is tricky business. And although we cannot do it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage people to act right for the greater good of all stakeholders. That said, I'll power up when it gets good, and I start to feel more comfortable around here. Until then, consider my bags packed and ready to go.
However, there's certainly a rumor afoot. Signs point to positive changes coming down the pike, without a doubt. As I see it, good things will happen to HIVE. But things are hazy right now, and I had better not say. I'm losing my concentration, and it's hard to focus as of late. Ask me again later on. The consensus has yet to come to order. Praise be the DEVS! Blessed be their fruit! And may they poison each others wine with a sprinkle of oxytocin.
I tried to comprehend the middle bit of what you said, but it didn't compute. That could be my fault. There's at least one fuse missing, and i'm defintetly a few fries short a happy meal. P-Funk, step to this, I dare ya. Serious though, that middle bit was hard to comprehend, the below part.
"Now the way Hive is currently designed, it's not ideal to keep HP distributed and thus keep more crowd-wisdom rather than whale-wisdom. If earned HP had a longer power down time, but still had all the same influence, we'd see something closer to ideal. This can be accomplished with one balance for powered-up (bought) HP, plus legacy/current HP, and once implemented, a second balance for earned HP from that point on. The separate balances would be summed for influence purposes, so you wouldn't notice much change, but would have drastically different power down schedules. Short for the powered-up/legacy HP and a year or two (as the original Steem design worked) for earned HP."Excellent post, matey!
I 'think' the motivations behind some of the downvoting behaviors are purely personal, and an expression of people who've had 'the taste of power' for the first time in their lives (immature, but a reality).
These same people are also ideologically leftist - so have no problem with using authoritarianism strategies to maintain control over 'their domain' ( as they see it).
Exposure to the wider world - of the shenanigans - may be one way to apply pressure for change.
The avaricious find losing stacks of money, as one of the best motivators to affect things going forwards....
I think someone disagreed with this post lol. Or was it for being over rewarded?
yeah, that makes his whole answer hypocritical. :D
Yeah, it's all about over rewarded content, right?!?! Even more blatant on @thoughts-in-time recent post on the same subject, even lower payout but still got the downvote. Makes it even more obvious this isn't all about high rewards, there's much more to it, and notice how the same users who continually go around defending the necessity of downvoting as being 'good for the platform' are the same ones who go around doing the downvoting and getting upvotes from these downvoting whales. It's defense of punishment of dissident content and nothing else. Anyone can form an opinion that content they don't like is getting 'too high' rewards and then downvote as punishment for content under guise of disagreement on rewards. If it was about reward disparity, the common sense approach would be an effort to upvote the under-rewarded posts, but the few upvotes smooth does dole out appear to be on already highly rewarded trending posts, while other clearly over-rewarded posts never get such downvotes, further illuminating this downvote scheme is not truly about 'correcting' reward pool 'abuse' or disparity, and it's obvious to us as blockchain peasants on the receiving end what it actually is about. Power elite aren't fond of competition, they see it as a threat to their power, particularly when this competition comes from those with dissident views.
I say give every user equal downvote power so weighted stake only determines value of upvote with downvotes having equal power across all users. This is the only way downvotes as flags can work in favor of the entire community, otherwise it morphs into classes of users - the peasant masses and the ruling class blockchain police.
This is an interesting sight to behold:
Yet somehow, content creators who drive traffic
here with the myriads of backlinks we spread all
over the web, aren't meritorious enough to earn.
Sorry Sir, but it's your own fault. Can you work out the reason why?🤣
Wait, I got it! I am only entitled to work the HIVE chain gang, for free? Otherwise, I am not entitled?
Close enough lol.
Please refer to my other comment, as it is extremely relevant to what you are saying here. As I said, I knew this was coming a long time ago. Also, let's not forget, these are some of the same people, who created groups to "take down", the so-called previous steemit elite and their corrupt and manipulative stranglehold on the user base there.
It really makes you wonder...
It isn't easy to defend something that isn't transparent. When questioned, smooth did explain his actions to the person being downvoted, but it appears not to be enough. I would like to see when these concerns are officially addressed for the HIVE world to review.
I also don't know enough about the system, but I know the effects of morale on a platform. I am curious, however, to know more about the specifications of the downvoting. Above what rewards value does the downvote occur? Is it just smooth that is downvoting based on his criteria? Do others follow suit? It's an interesting topic that I think would benefit the community as far as understanding how things work.
Finally, what's THETA? Is that a separate blockchain like HIVE?
From all the information available to me, I am convinced it breaks the gamification of the platform. Social media in general relies on dopamine rewards to keep the users coming back time and time again. Facebook understands this, which is why they have offered many different ways to react to content except a dislike button. This thread on Quora explains some of the psychological and adverse effects such a feature entails, and gives a lot of insight and extra reading to fully understand why such a feature will likely never be implemented. Twitter also has balked at the idea of such a feature, only going as far as adding a "I don't like this tweet" option for users to adjust the home feed algorithms. This is likely the best balance, as there is no direct user feedback discouraging further posting, but allowing the content consumers to express their displeasure.
What do these multi-billion dollar corporations know that we don't? Their entire livelihoods rely on their understanding of the social game theory that sustains the constant content creation on their platforms. We need to all recognize this as a problem, not just affecting a couple of unlucky people who happened to get downvoted, but as something that reverberates throughout to those completely unaffected. The psychological impact of getting $1 in rewards with no downvotes versus having a $10 post downvoted to $1 is massive, and the faster we come to terms with this, the faster we can actually reach solutions.
So what are the solutions? As it is right now, we absolutely cannot get rid of downvotes. Even with everything I said above, it would be disheartening (to say the least) to any honest person trying to earn on this platform when they see the farmers and the spam content making extreme amounts. This leaves us with a few other options:
Marketing strategies. For as long as I can remember, the rewards have always been at the forefront of any elevator pitch when trying to onboard new users. This has to stop completely, Rewards need to be seen as a bonus, as something extra, on top of all that HIVE has to offer.
UI changes. The UIs could stop emphasizing rewards so much, and instead take a cue from the other leading platforms on the web in designing the user experience. This is likely not possible with the types of budgets we're working with, but it is an option nonetheless.
Remove HIVE rewards altogether. This is my favorite option, but with some non-negotiable caveats:
The rewards would need to be moved to layer 2 tokens, each with customizable economics and features to cater to their audience. For instance, maybe a token for people who watch and review movies doesn't need a reverse auction window, while the token for people posting videos does. This allows for many possibilities to exist at once, creating competition and cooperation between ideas for each individual need, something that all the fiddling we do each and every fork can't accomplish.
Removing rewards should lower inflation. Lowering the inflation on the chain is good for all token holders, and this would be a big selling point.
Come up with a reason to have HIVE staked that makes it attractive. RCs aren't going to cut it. As it is right now, 99% of the users don't even need 50 HP to transact as much as they want. Removing HIVE rewards removes the biggest incentive to stake, so either RCs calculations need to be revised, staking rewards need to be significantly higher, a new idea could be added, or a combination of things to make staking something attractive to users and investors alike.
I think this is the best solution for the idea of having independent communities, and having the distribution of stake more decentralised.
I think downvotes ("flags") have a place, but they are currently not implemented ideally in the rules. I think they're also being misused by some whales, who are acting as gatekeepers of Hive payouts, chopping down people who grow too quickly, or who threaten their dominance. Perhaps this isn't technically against the rules here, but it's troublesome nonetheless, and I share many of your concerns.
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
Down voting creates a lot of angst between different users and sometimes even different communities. We understand why there needs to be down voting (for example: Plagiarism and Token/Tribe abuse) but outside of those reasons that's where things get pretty muddy and complicated. Overall, the discussion of what's proper etiquette when it comes to down voting is a convoluted but needed discussion.
I would want to see posts that are downvoted by people I disagree with! Isn't there a distributed moderation feature coming soon?
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
Sounds like a cool system, like impeaching the post! When is this coming?
well, as soon as we convince the king oligarch @themarkymark that everyone deserves a "trial by jury" (NOT "JUDGE DREDD").
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
You are truly clueless.
8^)
This is exactly what I said. The negative that is inflicted on a person who gets downvoted is pretty harsh, most people will not accept being "downvoted due to disagreement on rewards". It is a flaw in the system to justify downvoting because the rewards are excessive.
The point of downvoting due to excessive rewards is to deal with abusers, I do not think downvoting people who bring tons of users to the platform or have lots of interaction is justified.
i'm dumping my 20,000 HIVE and buying THETA.
not because i'm being downvoted, i'm strangely NOT downvoted.
but because i've seen way too many unfair downvotes.
I hear ya. If you decide you want to keep some of it and join our curation trail just know that we are upvoting a lot of people that you are likely seeing being downvoted :) Power in numbers my friend.
Do you have discord or element? Would like to have a chat with you if that's ok.
Discord TruthForce#9168
https://discord.gg/HnxkcbH4
You have already said somewhere that the rules are made by those who hoard and multiply the most money in the system for themselves. It's like the world out there: downvotes are not used horizontally, but vertically. Thus, in the real world, the laws do not apply to the powerful, who make these laws, but to the powerless. It is no different here. The killer argument that these characters bring to it is that "you could go somewhere else and do business."
Sometimes there is a war between the big guys and we have already seen that on Steemit.
The problem with virtual money-making is that it knows no boundaries, and that might not be one if there weren't people who know no boundaries at the same time. For a long time I thought that arguments, reason and a certain kindness could help such minds to come to their senses. Maybe that's true, but with some personalities it's hopeless. Presumably, the only thing that works here is public shaming and humiliation, something they have learned from early childhood at their worst and have gone from victim to perpetrator. With all the cool ignorance and incomprehensible phrasing and slurred speech peculiar to this disorder. ... But then, maybe not and it's getting worse, I don't know.
We wouldn't have this problem with a 1000mv voting limit in place.
The biggest hp account said he had to reap the pool to keep the one I won't name from getting as much from his reaping of the pool.
The one I won't name has been gone for months, yet the biggest account on the platform continues to reap the pool.
It was bs when he started, and it is bs, now.
Keep on keeping on, brother! I got my ears to the tracks and me thinks..
ALGORAND.
if something gets flagged, then an alert goes to a RANDOM SAMPLE of 100 accounts. If an account fails to respond in 24 hours, their option is forfeit and their option goes to another random account.
60 of these delegates vote on whether to remove the flagged content (in exchange for some compensation in ALGORAND) with a bonus for voting with the majority (if there is a majority of at least 60 votes).
if there's a 59/41 split,the content remains unaffected.
Edit - (better slideshow version of k rino song replacing original link below) -
If you aren’t familiar with these, they are gold.
saved and subscribed.
Awesome song, and album, friend! I haven’t heard em’ all yet but already familiar with Martyr and a couple others, immortal technique is legendary, opening line is powerful and captures the reality of the memory of the average human in regard to important lessons of history, “no, they will forget...”
GOONIES NEVER DIE
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