Got it. You believe your power gives you the right to subjectively determine value of posts, irregardless of the value others see in them. You get to decide what adds value in a way that calls for payment (and usually do so not by supporting content, but by nullifying rewards of content others happen to find very valuable). Thanks for confirming that for us all. You insist this is not abuse, and then turn around and engage in self-voting of comments and habitual voting of spam comments to funnel rewards into your own project off of which you also directly make hundreds in curation rewards daily, behavior a vast majority of users would consider abuse but can do nothing to counter because of the monopoly on stake owned by the few, the blockchain oligarchy. Typical behavior of a tyrant. And that isn't a complaint, just an observation, I could care less about personal loss of rewards, and far more about psychological effects this has on users the platform over, and long term effects of the growth of an otherwise thriving platform.
Enjoy being a reward policeman of the platform, and one of the few power-abusing whales on here who is actively driving many productive and appreciated common users off the blockchain to other far friendlier and less toxic platforms.
I believe that we all stakeholders vote and then the blockchain determines the reward at the end of 7 days. If you don't believe that, you don't understand how Hive works.
There's no monopoly, or anything remotely like it. Anyone can buy or earn stake and mine is less than 1%. With that comes the right to vote on rewards, along with the burden of having your stake diluted to pay for rewards. It goes hand in hand.
Actually not anyone can buy stake, you need to be rich in real life to do that to compete with the likes of some big accounts on here. You can earn stake, sure, but when much of it is often nullified by users like you it makes it a bit more difficult and time consuming process than otherwise... Maybe you don't realize that many people getting rewards on here are struggling in real life, especially in these more difficult times due to lockdowns putting so many out of work, and some people this is their primary means of income, and when an up and coming blogger who normally only makes peanuts gets a first or second bigger payout dinged by big downvote, that would be incredibly demoralizing. I'm used to the downvotes, I deal with it and move on, but not everyone is in a position where they can just invest huge money into a platform they came to seeking alternate ways of making income starting from nothing, just to counter big downvotes. I know people in Africa, South America, Gaza Strip, other impoverished places all utilize it to help pull themselves out of poverty, and you never know when someone's rewards might pay for their family's dinner the next week...
And you can continue to say the 'blockchain' determines reward all you want, despite it only doing so based upon the votes that are cast, as you yourself said above, blockchain votes allocate, before changing your wording to blockchain allocates in later comments. I understand that the only way blockchain determines reward is based on the votes, and downvotes lead to lower rewards, while upvotes lead to bigger rewards. Technically it is the blockchain allocating, but directly based upon the votes that are cast, so don't pretend your votes are not responsible for determining value of someone's payout by nullifying rewards, that is exactly what they are doing or you wouldn't do it to counter what you deem to be 'excessive rewards'.
You sound like Bill Gates would if he were to claim he has no monopoly on power, attempting to convince the people whose government policies (backed by him) have just made jobless and homeless that there's no monopoly, because anyone can be as rich as him. The issue also isn't about your 'right' to downvote, it is over whether this is good for the platform and whether it constitutes abuse. We all accept people can choose how they downvote, I and many others choose to reward content we like and refrain from downvotes, whereas you and some others seem to instead focus bulk of your energy nullifying rewards of content you don't like and using your stake to self-reward via spam comments. To each their own, I'll keep on keeping on and if I eventually tire of the situation, I'll just leave like so many others.
Enjoy being reward policeman of the platform and aiding in stifling the growth of an otherwise thriving platform.
Look this is just wrong as a matter of how things work. Voting (down) doesn't "nullify" rewards, it allocates them between users. If one post is downvoted, others earn more. If one post is excessively upvoted, whether by ethusiastic supporters or, more often by autovotes or apathetic or oblivious votes, others earn less.
You can not make a compelling case in terms of growth that the rewards of many thousands of users who end up being somewhat larger as a result of reduced concentration of a few high paying posts isn't overall a good thing. You're just myopically focused on your own rewards and those a few others, and ignoring the bigger picture.
Well, given that Ignite Marketing have been paid many thousands of dollars to basically pay 'influencers' on the web to promote hive, post here and bring new people in - let's see how many leave due to this conflict of interests at the payout level. It would be shockingly stupid (but predictable) if the proposal pool were used to pay for marketing that brings in people from other networks who then leave when they see the 'not random' large downvoting (probably not even understanding how the mechanics work) - rendering the marketing spend a complete waste and even negatively effecting Hive's PR in the process.
Marketing is a thing, it is complicated - it is based on psychology and perception.. The very things that are the only things backing the value of cryptocurrencies in most cases. Sometimes, just because you calculate a formula based purely on maths that leads you to think you are 'right' TM - you can easily be missing out on the bigger picture that includes human factors, psychology and emotion. In this case, I feel you are - or at least are not fully considering the big picture. To me, the difference between these two angles is the difference between systems engineering and information science - the latter does not treat reality as if it is a cold machine.
I don't believe any influencer worth anything in terms of bringing new people in would waste their time arguing about a few $20 or $50 downvotes that still leave them with significant rewards at the conclusion of the voting process. If I see evidence to the contrary I'll consider it.
I think you are missing the point here. This isn't about 'influencers' missing out on a few dollars in hive rewards, they mostly will already be being paid good money on other networks and through other avenues. The issue is the damage to their own reputation on those networks when they start hyping hive to 'non influencers' who come here and it doesn't live up to the hype. For the most part, the strongest feature of hive atm is it's uncensored communications (as compared to mainstream networks), especially at a time when mainstream networks are on an extreme angle of heavy censorship and control. It doesn't matter whether you can give a lengthy maths explanation as to why heavy downvoting and soft censorship aren't a problem and are fine - the majority will just see a reflection of the control they are trying to escape and go in a different direction, away from hive. The result is that Hive's image can go down instead of up.
I already personally know of quite a long list of medium to medium/large 'influencers' who tried to use steem/hive and turned away for this exact reason. It's obvious, predictable and not going to change without some kind of evolution of understanding taking place here.
A simple solution is to decline/donate rewards. They get the full anti-censorship benefit of Hive with little to no issue of downvoting ever.