So, this is a post about my early impressions of using Threads on Leo Finance, which is now in its Beta phase and people seem to be having fun.
Threads is a microblogging interface through Leo (link above) where people can post short-form, Twitter-esque content for rewards. And, even though it is on Leo, it doesn't have to be finance related, it is there for a bit of fun.
I don't know all of the technicals for it and I am hoping someone who does will add some comments for clarity here, but it appears that at the Hive blockchain level, the Thread posts are comment posts, which is good, because they don't clutter the normal Hive feed with nonsense, short-form content of little value.
I do.
The idea was fine, but what ended up happening was that it got a lot of pushback because firstly, it cluttered feeds (this isn't an issue with this now) and secondly, they still attracted HIVE rewards, which apparently, Threads do too.
Because, while the majority of people might use it as intended for some fun, whenever there is value on the table, there is going to be people who will look to maximize their gains and I envisage people self-voting or "overvoting" certain people with a very fast feed stream and very little visibility or oversight. This will mean that at some point, there is going to be...
Like it or not, people take rewards seriously, especially when they are in HIVE, the token at the base-layer of the blockchain that secures it and is often seen as the investment layer. There is an endless amount of people willing to find ways to exploit the mechanics and economy to improve their own earnings, even if it is at the detriment of others.
For example I can post:
Give it a 10% vote and get:
I generally don't selfvote, even on posts that take many hours to write - that is for demonstration purposes. But, that is 46 cents with me as a curator and creator taking the 100%, which as you can imagine, might make some people upset if this is what I was doing with my full vote which is over $5 dollars currently, 10 times a day.
Of course, it is great if people didn't behave like dicks, but the fact is, people will and they will be able to justify their behaviors in many ways. But, no matter what any of us believe to be true, there will always be people who disagree and see it from another perspective.
As much as I want to have microblogging on Hive, I suspect that in the current form, at some point (it is the first few hours now), there is going to be pushback, as there has been in the past on the zaps and d.buzz. There will be arguments and downvotes and all kinds of opinions about fairness and freedom and censorship. None of those conversations are bad to have, but for the majority of people, they don't see the full scale of these various issues clearly, especially when looking from an economic perspective.
Now, the above selfvote can be removed by me, but why shouldn't I take the 0.75 HIVE for myself? After all, that "post" took me about 3 seconds of my precious time to write, snip and paste into this "real" post. Of course, someone is is not going to think it deserves that reward and will come along and wipe it away. But if they don't.... will I do it twice tomorrow? Three or four times the day after?
And, while this post sounds like I don't want it now or am being too critical and pessimistic, it isn't that - it is just that I have been around a while and seen many different kinds of dramas over the last 5+ years here that centered around the distribution of the rewards pool. And nearly every time, the outcome is some kind of downvoting and hissy-fit cycle, with people "quitting" and heading over to Blurt or some other nonsense site that has no future.
Ultimately, I do believe that Hive needs microblogging, but I also think that there should be a way to "block" certain token rewards, where for example, the interface can insert a marker code into the transaction that says "Apply only LEO votes" or, "Exclude HIVE votes" or something like that. But currently, there isn't that sensitivity or granularity possible, and still be on the blockchain to take advantage of the immutability and the security Hive offers, which is partly because of the HIVE it distributes.
A lot of the future of Hive is going to come through trial and error, evaluation, feedback, redevelopment and repeating the trials, and the Leo Team have been very good at getting things out and working over the last couple years. Hopefully (and again I don't know all the technical details here), Hardfork 26 will introduce the Hive Application Framework (HAF) and the team of seasoned Hive developers at Leo (and all the other apps) will hit the ground running with it, improving everything they do and creating more than they could earlier.
Anyway, I am sure that a lot of these issues I have raised here will have some kind of solution for them, but I do think there are going to be some fireworks at some point, as some people learn how to exploit what has been created. Like it or not, behavior is pretty predictable and we have a fair amount of insight to it in this community already.
So, what are your thoughts on Threads so far, how will you and what are your predictions on how people will use the interface and, will there be drama?
Note: I don't think I used Threads properly for this post...
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Awesome. I will cehcek it out, I mean it's always been something we liked IDEA of but keeping it separate.. because reward pool. So yeah there will be drama. It's the Blockchain after all. What was the Quora like one we used to have? That was kinda fun.
Yeah, there have been a few!
I like the idea a lot as a discussion and fun interface that can be more dynamic, but I think that there will have to be some kind of technical implementation for these kinds of interfaces. I am looking forward to seeing the stats on comments though :)
Kudos to Leo though for taking leap. Long form doesn't work for everyone but there's some interesting, intelligent, sociable commenters here that would have a blast on Threads I'm sure.
Oh for sure - I am hoping that this ends up working very well and starts to grab some attention :)
You liked Quora??? More like Bore-a to me ;^)
No it was a Hive version. I did spent a couple of hours on it once ... If I remember @bozz was a great commenter there
Musing
Ahhh that's it!
Oh Musing? - Hmm, I actually don't remember that one.
So we had 2 Quora knock offs and now we have none haha?
Quello was beautiful too!
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Oh wow!! I missed that one. The Hive Blockchain is deep and wide!
They eventually moved to a different chain. I don't know if they are still kicking around though.
This is kinda recent.
https://musing.io/
Seems they are on Avalanche
Their loss
Quello!
Damn, I had a ton of content on that site which I need to dig up via the blockchain and repost.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Oh yeah some people's posts were longer than posts here - I didn't think it was Quello though, for some reason I thought it started with 'M'...?
Twas Musing! Thanks @bozz
You can do this on any comment on any post on Hive. The idea that this is exclusive to Threads is not accurate. Threads is nothing more than a commenting system.
There is nothing to stop one leaving comments on posts that get little attention and self voting to a high reward.
I don't think I said it was exclusive. However it is about behavior and assumption in this particular.
This happens all of the time and requires monitoring, which raises another question.
From my understanding, Threads is creating a container post that is having all of the comments added to it and when it reaches the maximum comments (I can't remember how many hundreds this is), it creates another? Has anyone told @arcange to exclude these posts from the hivebuzz rankings for daily and weekly "most commented"?
Done. Thanks for tagging me.
brilliant :)
You're welcome. BTW, will you attend HiveFest in Amsterdam?
I am doing my best, but I will be late to make the decision due to work commitments. I really hope to!!
Yes they do, the cool part is they don't trigger automatic votes, any rewards made from threads should come from manual votes.
This can happen with comments as well, we've seem it happening hundreds of times before where people just spam comments and vote them on the 6th day lol
Lol I can see this happening already, I guess it's just a normal cycle where people who are not happy with what they see, leave. I don't think that's a bad thing, the decentralized nature of hive will steer the threads ship like with every other feature and dapp over the past 5 years.
In general, I don't believe that the reward pool part is a big concern, we've been there before where people just spam and self vote comments, threads is not an enabler to that behavior, that's been an issue for years.
I liked the way you used threads for this post by the way, and I don't think there is a right or wrong way of threading, which in turn becomes one of the best features of this, you can pretty much write about whatever you want and it will still be ok.
After all, in the backend and simplified, threads are just a simple hive comment presented differently (and way more attractively).
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
That is cool. Unless the vote is made to follow these uniquely (which most want know how to do).
Yeah for sure, it has always been possible. but I just wonder if this encourages more of it, based on human conditioning.
If you have a look at some of the people who "went to blurt" and are doing similar there, they are also some of the people who would downvote and create drama around this kind of thing :D
I like Threads so far, btw :)
We've had deep philosophical discussions about ProofOfBrain and ProofOfHuman or even ProofOfEffort and at some point, it's getting mind-numbing.
If people do wanna waste their life on building Cyrcle Jerks or Voting Booths while HBD is so powerful, that's on them, because it doesn't make any sense. HP is for curation and for RCs, not for making fat stacks. As long as that stays the way it is, we will not see the madness coming back. But, we will see some rough up- and downvotes again and that's totally ok.
Don't take it personally, stay chill and hedge against failure.
It is the "don't take it personally" part - because when some people get downvoted, they go insane! :D
That's true for the first couple of times, but not forever. Whales might be cautious about overly smashing minnows and vice versa minnows might at least don't go nuclear over small slaps on their wrists. That sounds like good life advice coming from me, how uncommon.
The Leo team can just auto set a certain percentage of the rewards to go to the DAO for all Threads. That would reduce the efficiency of auto voting and hopefully drive those activities elsewhere.
It would be an interesting way to discourage "bad voting" (if that is a thing) on some kinds of posts.
I strongly agree with the fact that some people will be tempted to use threads for their gain by maximizing their profit, and how is that possible is because if you can make 30 threads a day and give yourself 0.3 cents upvotes each this will add up.
Threads in new and there are so many changes that can be done to improve the value and how people use them. Time will tell and someone figures it out.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
The microblogging is very much nice and acceptable to bring people together and this however is a way to have fun and earn in a little way as well which is pretty cool
Is Threads available now on LeoFinance mobile app?
Not sure - I haven't had a look at mobile yet.
Now bring on the app for smartphones!
Right, I have noticed that you use comment-style threads. I always try to keep my threads short, but has some value about the content. Also, the main photo of a post together with thread might make the post attractive.
I think when they have started to produce quality contents, they shouldn't take rewards seriously as they will already get bang for buck.
I haven't checked it out but at least this method will not spam people's feeds with it. There will obviously be some pushback in regards to rewards so I hope the 2nd layer token is created for this.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
If there are no cracks, time will make them. Slime and Time, partners in Crime ;)