The biggest downvote on the chess post was removed from @theycallmedan after @themarkymark flagged it using his posting key.
Where's your loss though? Remember, the money isn't really yours until it's in your wallet.
Which loss? Did I write about any loss?
(Don't worry about my rewards, just check the value of my Splinterlands cards ...)
I said a big amount of flags are due to pure retaliation.
Concerning the "substantial rewards": @themarkymark who pretended to downvote this chess post because of the high pending rewards posts himself nearly every day very short posts (partly copying any news on crypto which everybody can read in the net anyway) and earns far more with these short posts (at least it was like that when I checked his account quite some time ago).
What about my last post without disabling rewards? Pure retaliation flags again.
Furthermore I had a soccer tippster competition where I upvoted the comments of the winners of the specific game days to reward the effort and keep motivation of the participants high. @usainvote (an anonymous account with a big delegation from @blocktrades felt he had to flag these comments). Another example where policing the blockchain without any communication and understanding what the flagged posts are about caused several users to quit HIVE.
Some centralized oligarchs make decisions here like "(Too) high upvotes of comments are evil.", while automated curation sniping without own effort is just so great ... and then decide who fits into their rules and who doesn't.
The graphics of @arcange doesn't illustrate the fact that many dolphin accounts are second or third whale accounts. How many single persons are behind the few whale accounts?
In my eyes HIVE is for sure very centralized.
In Splinterlands for example there are far more different stakeholders with "substantial" stake, so the economy of this game is far more balanced than the HIVE oligarchy.
You did ask a question about who decides the value. Of course I would immediately think you are talking about Hive rewards.
Wow! You certainly have a lot more value there than I do.
About centralization though...
Who knows, I might be a whale. Or orca... I don't really care.
I've recently taken a "don't complain" policy on whales. They will cease to be of relevance soon enough. The fact of the matter is, they are not all "bad", and eventually those who downvote from spite, don't have enough HP to bully everyone.
In the past, when it happened to me, I managed to use the spiteful downvoting campaigns I was subjected to my own advantage. Though I have to admit it's easier when the reason for downvotes is akin to "you're being too friendly with someone I don't like".
Indirecty, yes, because in general I think it is not reasonable for a reward based platform if a few accounts have (so) much more influence on the distribution of the rewards (on the witness positions, on the approval of proposals, ..., ...) than the big majority of the users because it discourages users who don't get the support from (or even get attacked by) these few accounts.
Just as an example, how could a whale, who even cannot play that game, judge a chess post? Chess players can ... so to determine the value of a post, experts would make a much better job than just millionaires. Furthermore, as metioned elsewhere, there could be "sophisticated algorithms" which for example might double check sources etc. and thus suggest an evaluation of a post.
That doesn't change the fact that concerning single posts of course there is no entitlement that pending rewards are always final rewards.
That again doesn't change the fact that I disapprove the behavior to cut pending rewards for reasons like retaliation.
My guess is that people in power are on average not significantly better or worse than the 'average guy'. But as they have more power it is more important to find mechanisms to control their power than to control the power of the average guy, simply because they can cause much more damage IF they act in a bad way.
Must a dictator by definition be worse than you or me? I think not. Is a dictatorship bad, because a single person shouldn't have too much power? I think yes ...
Some use tools for good, some think they use tools for good, and some don't even know what to do with their tools.
Now switch the word "tools" to "knowledge", "money", "power".
I am saying there is no system that can fix this. Any attempts to create one... well we know well what has happened when we've tried creating these "fixed" systems. They end up being quite draconian.
Future will tell us ... at least there are interesting ideas ... read for example here.
i'm half way through so far. Thanks for sharing
If you only knew what accounts these guys own. What happened to bernie sanders? Which one of them is him?