Your only guaranteed returns on Hive are those of your Hive Power APR

in OCD2 years ago (edited)

Currently set to 2.97% and declining every few hundred thousand blocks is what the Hive blockchain guarantees in APR/Y to your Hive power. This one is a fact, the rest of what I'm going to talk about is not written in blocks.

There's a few misconceptions of the reward pool I've noticed lately so I wanted to go over them so others maybe understand it better.

"Get a whale friend to invest in Hive so he can give you bigger votes"

This may work to some degree but here as well it is not guaranteed that it is going to work longterm and it may not just hurt your post rewards but the curation rewards of your whale friend too.

Let's imagine you write amazing content and you feel you're getting too few rewards on your posts. Suddenly a whale takes a liking to you and starts voting you not just on your latest post but on anything you start posting thereafter using autovote services such as hive.vote or their own scripts they may be running. Hive has feeless transactions so it doesn't cost them much to do this, even hive.vote is free to be used and the only cost is resource credits on casting the votes, something that is of no issue to whale accounts of course.

Now you're very happy with the rewards you are receiving and make sure to post daily to collect that whale vote on top of your other votes you were receiving beforehand. It's all great but eventually at some point there are a few things that happen.

  1. The author becomes not just lazy but also pushes himself to produce something every day for that vote. It's his time to shine and collect so why would he waste a day without posting knowing that big autovote is waiting for him in the code.

  2. The author either stops engaging with his followers that leave comments or questions in his posts because he doesn't have the time for it or is too busy trying to think of what to post next.

  3. The author is exhausted posting daily but the vote is still there so let's just post something "different" this time, less effort and less quality, it's fine now and then right? Well it was fine the last few posts so let's just do another shitpost today and another one tomorrow and a few weeks have gone by and no one has batted an eye so let's just repost this old post I've written when I started out because no one curated it at the time.

  4. Downvotes start coming in and the author freaks out.

Image source

So how can one avoid this scenario?

First of all, don't take the autovotes for granted but at the same time don't try to maximize them. People often say "I don't appreciate a whale downvoting me trying to change the way I post" but no one mentions that autovotes often have the same effect on people. They change the way you post, so try not to let that happen. If you get writer's block one day it's not the end of the world if you don't get a post out that day, sure you may miss out on some rewards but there are plenty of more days and hive inflation to be had and if the whale autovoter is observant it means they're going to care what their vote is landing on.

No whale has ever removed someone from autovoting because they weren't posting daily, at least they shouldn't due to the way voting power works and how flexible it is here. As long as you don't sit on 100% voting power you don't really lose anything (unless the posts get downvoted of course).

So what does it mean to not let the autovotes affect your posting behavior and how can you increase your odds of not getting downvoted due to them?

It basically means don't become farmy, I'm sure we all have that inner voice in our head that asks: "are you sure you want to post this one? hasn't it strayed way off your usual posts you were posting when the big autovotes initially landed?" but you may post it anyway because you like the rewards and so does everyone, it's not a secret. The point is to be true to yourself first and then to your followers or other curators.

This doesn't mean that you can't shitpost or do some lazier posts now and then, your connection to your followers should be the most important aspect on #hive thus being consistent and engaging with them is crucial. Thankfully we have the options to set beneficiaries on posts we feel may be getting too much rewards from autovotes compared to the effort we know we put in or compared to the quality it is from your usual posts.

The sad part is that close to no one uses beneficiaries to forfeit part of their rewards

As a curator I've gotten used to looking at the beneficiaries of a post before casting a vote, some cause I want to know if someone onboarded those users which @hiveonboard usually places default beneficiary settings on them to let me know who onboarded the user, who created the account, etc, other reasons also due to curiosity and trying to avoid more "project hope" schemes to come to life that abuse the beneficiary setting for their own gain.

Either way I don't notice a lot of people forfeiting part of their rewards on their posts. There are a few and most send it to @hive.fund which is our DAO called "DHF" a.k.a. decentralized Hive fund which powers a lot of developers and their projects currently along with some charity organizations and various other things: https://peakd.com/me/proposals

So I keep thinking to myself, are some of these top authors constantly creating quality content where each of their posts deserve all of the rewards, or are they just fine with getting all the rewards on a daily basis no matter what they post? Surely not all of their posts can have a lot of effort and quality behind them but at the same time it'd be stupid to give away part of your rewards, right?

It's a bit of a thing that will probably be more prevelant in the future, though. Doesn't affect too many authors and I'm sure a lot of those authors currently in the top earners list wouldn't mind a few downvotes here and there to adjust things a little without it creating endless drama. So maybe their "forfeiting" of part of the rewards is priced in on the chance that they may get some downvotes they'd be okay with?

Without making this post too long as @victoriabsb would get triggered again I'll try get more to the point.

Neither post rewards nor curation rewards are guaranteed on Hive.

That's not meant to scare you off but it's just the way the platform works and how it fends off attackers of the value being generated and kept within it. Platforms saying downvotes shouldn't exist or where it is very taboo to be used are just being ignorant at this point as we've seen time and time how farmers farm when given the chances and we see it happen today on Hive still but here we have the tools to either abolish or lessen the impact of such farms or other form of "soft abuse" without it being direct plagiarism or identity theft, etc.

Of course a lot of this is subjective too but that's the wisdom of the crowd at work in proof of brain so have at it.

This post isn't meant to be a direct tutorial on how you won't get downvoted if you follow these simple steps, more like a general thing what curators such as myself think of some authors and their activity. It is often times the intentions of the author we judge over a longer period of time and many of us who do downvote luckily also take the time to debate and discuss it.

The good news is that bad downvotes can also be countered. This of course comes at a cost, because everyone who voted up the post loses curation rewards relative to the downvote amount. As an example:

If user A voted up a post to $1 and user B voted up a post to $0 they were both about to receive $0.50 and $4.50 worth of Hive power in curation return. If person C disagrees that the post should earn that much and downvotes it by $5 it'll mean the curation returns for user A will instead be $0.25 and user B $2.25. In that case user D can appear and be of the opinion that the post got overdownvoted and give it another $2.50 vote bringing the total back to $7.50 which means both user A, B and D will have 25% of their curation rewards lowered due to the $5 downvote. This of course means that there needs to be a user D to knowingly vote on a downvoted post even though he will receive less returns on it but luckily there are a lot of stakeholders on Hive who don't mind getting a few hive less returns if it means adjusting the rewards of certain posts and authors better if some downvoters are misbehaving such as downvoting due to retaliation or other personal reasons rather than the content or the value the author might bring to the chain.

Since there's barely any drama happening on chain these "evil downvotes" usually quickly get attention drawn to them and can be countered if the majority think they're undeserving. Sure stake place a major role and there's some whales around here that are way too big compared to the rest but over time it should equalize through curation and market swings, etc. It's one of my main focuses to improve distribution so that stake is spread out wide and far but it's to each of us to decide if we want or can remained staked up.

Alright so my last point for today is something someone said recently in a comment.

"I've built/bought my stake and I don't think I should use it on newbies who just sell it constantly"

The former part of the sentence was in defense of some potential votetrading actions (tl;dr: votetrading - you vote on a few other users daily posts in exchange for a vote back so you effectively just selfvote about 10x per day by only posting once per day, don't do this, if it seems unfair to others growing less quick over time than you it's because it is)

The latter is something I don't really like the thought process of especially in comparison to them rather using their stake on their friends or others who "remain powered up". In a way I understand it, we're all human and can judge others who constantly sell but unless we know more about them and their life we can't really withhold curation just because of that and we shouldn't. I'm sure those who do like Hive, what it does, how it works, scales, what it enables, etc, would love to stake up and grow but if they can't that's another thing.

Point is your account, depending on its activity, should have a certain return over time. 50% of your votes come back to you as curation, some times a bit higher if you self-vote and some times even more higher if you vote on a whale who votes you back or lower if you vote on 10 minnows and they vote you back but it wasn't even close to the vote you cast on them. That's not something you should nitpick and be bothered by, it's just the way Hive works and the reason it works is because most stakeholders are fine with this and don't attempt to "cheat the system" by joining backscratcher trails or actively votetrading with some same sized stakeholders even if they never consume their content or have nothing else in common with them except the stake.

So again, it doesn't matter if you've bought your stake, earned it, or constantly remained powered up and powered up some more, your post rewards and curation rewards are still not guaranteed nor should they be "more superior" than the votes of a smaller, newer user who just joined or someone who sells often, etc. If certain stakeholders deem your activity, content, or something else to not be on par with "community consensus", you may get downvoted and if others agree with it they may not help you counter the downvotes and even add theirs on top. It's not going to help you much if you cry about it or mention how much Hive sucks, etc, it's just the way it is and most of the downvote activity I see on Hive these days is far from unjustified.

There are plenty of good things you can do with your hive power that support the platform, its retention of new and old users and the value of your own investment. Hiding away in a bubble with your votetrading buddies earning twice more stake than others using their stake properly may get you far short term but your reputation and stake earnings will be at stake. Something to keep in mind, same goes for abusers such as sockpuppets, plagiarisers, etc. It's much more worth it to think long term rather than short term. I know immutability combined with no verification on accounts can be tempting to attempt to abuse but it's not going to get you far before you slip up and get caught or someone has something to say or vote against your activity.

Lastly, compare Hive inflation to Bitcoin and Ethereum miners, there people have made an investment, spend money on electricity and are rewarded with new mined ETH and BTC for keeping the network secure.

Here you only need a phone or laptop and electricity and internet, something most people in the world already possess. Then you are rewarded for your activity, content and other things with stake from others, give and receive kind of deal rather than for some reason only thinking about the "proof of stake" part in "dPoS" and assume you just need to shit out some posts to collect your daily rewards and vote on whoever and whatever to collect your daily curation rewards no matter what it is. That's not going to work here and you may have better luck on Steem or Blurt with that mindset and ask yourself if bad distribution of stake and having dejavu daily looking at trending is worth the extra APR you may be getting on their stake.

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People often say "I don't appreciate a whale downvoting me trying to change the way I post" but no one mentions that autovotes often have the same effect on people.

No one seems to complain when they get abusive upvotes.

While I get that it is all kind of farming for tokens, what I dislike is the maximization of the process, where people think that they are entitled to get something, regardless of what they offer. It is very shortsighted and I have seen a lot of potential high-earners over the years, burn their accounts to the ground due to their maximization behaviors - and I am someone who posts every day and gets relatively well rewarded for it.

I think for many of the higher earners, the downvotes are part and parcel of it, as there is a visibility aspect involved, attracting the attention - good and bad. But, what I would like to see is more engagement from higher earners, at least on their own posts. It is like some people don't care if anyone reads their post at all, they just want the votes. I feel crappy when I don't get enough comments on my posts, and it normally happens on the ones I put the most effort into :D

Steem or Blurt.... It is like a choice between getting fucked by a donkey or a horse.

I'm the same way with comments. The votes are whatever. I gave up trying to figure things out. I have done quick, fun videos that get 0 comments but for some reason a huge amount of upvotes and then something I put a lot of time and effort into gets 8 comments and makes $.35. I just take them both in stride because the post that got $15 wasn't worth $15 and I feel grateful to get anything more than comments.

More engagement would be great but it's not like I am out there being incredibly active and looking for new people to follow so I get what I put in. I am active on the people I already like because that's what I have time for. Sometimes I find a new person I like and then I am active there too but I see some people out there that are commenting on hundreds of posts every week and I wonder how they do it. Those folks deserve a lot more than I do and I hope they get it. I don't see them complaining about not getting enough, they just keep pounding that keyboard and making other people's posts better. Good for them.

I just don't have that kind of focus or time so I accept the few comments I get as they are usually meaningful and that's what I am good with.

Your comment was very interesting and aroused a genuine doubt. I'm very interested in making more comments but I don't speak English (I use the translator) and that limits me a lot.

Is it weird for a content creator to receive a poorly written comment or is it acceptable?

I use the translator to comment on some non-English posts and I usually will post both in whatever language plus English, in case the translator did a bad job, lol.
I appreciate all comments that are more than just "good post" or some such.

That's good to know, I feel more confident commenting using the translator 😁

I'm fine with it but I can't answer for anyone else. If I don't understand, I will try to get clarification. If you used translator for this, it worked very well.

Not weird at all as long as the content creator owns a brain and understands

Yeah tell me about it, I post a manipulation station post and get insane engagement, but longer posts with more importance I may not. Though I understand I'm not the greatest writer and go from place to place often when I freewrite these. Also there's not that much time in a persons life to read everything they'd want to combined with how social media is turning our attention span to the same length as dogs, etc.

If you constantly ignore your socializers though you're not going to have them appear often, even spammers just looking for a quick vote may leave you alone at that point.

Also there's not that much time in a persons life to read everything they'd want to combined with how social media is turning our attention span to the same length as dogs, etc.

Time is a critical factor and attention is hard to hold for sure. I find it hard to get new readers, but once they have read a few, they tend to stick around and read a few more over time.

even spammers just looking for a quick vote may leave you alone at that point.

Lol - reminded me of this and I thought this one was funny.

I gave "them" the benefit of the doubt when I asked if they were the same person a couple months back as they comment within minutes of each other - but I didn't check directly:

https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@menox98/re-tarazkp-rf0t2a

lol people think they get an advantage that way but don't realize they'll lose out long term. it's easy slipping up when dealing with multiple accounts, I used to do it on Blizzard forums back in the day when I played WoW rigirously and even there without an immutable timestamped blockchain it didn't take long for others to figure it out, not to mention money wasn't even involved.

I love abusive upvotes man.

😔

Steem or Blurt.... It is like a choice between getting fucked by a donkey or a horse.

Some people like it very hard, and they choose the horse. :-D


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The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @hivelift, @artist-freepae, @aschatria, @hivecuba ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.

I stopped to caring about rewards for now, meanwhile at the very first when I started on steem (in 2018), I cared way too much. I followed user created guides on how a post should be formatted, what to respect, that I should post daily and so on, so that I can get more upvotes and higher rewards. And this thinking was very exhausting for me. Don't get me wrong, I am every time very happy when I get some big fat upvotes, overall I just have changed my mindset. I mean, here I get at least somehow, some rewards without the need to fulfilling too many conditions to earn by advertisements somewhere else. And when there are comments under my post, that i see as an extra reward on top.

For me, hive became my blog platform and yes, that's it, here I am. Just that. Free webspace where I can more or less do what I want. I have given up to think about Blogger (Google) or whatever is outside there.

Great perspective. At a quick glance only suggestions for improvement I'd have for your account would be more engagement like this, maybe follow a few more users you are interested in (:P) and subscribe to communities you like to have a nice community feed you can browse which may make you wanna be more active socialising and growing your audience.

Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below

That is why you should write about things that interest you and not what you think people may like. Posting daily would be a chore if you had no interest in the topic and why quality would drop. I do agree that the 2.97% APR is the only guaranteed reward we have and why being part of the community matters as you cannot grow on your won.

THIS!

I've went in circles trying different types of content that I think might be interesting to others & I've arrived at a point where now I'm talking about things that I'm genuinely interested and that's all I want to do. Yes I post daily, but it does not feel like a chore now (although it has in the past). It is something I look forward to doing each day now and this alerts me to the fact that I'm on the right track. If you're not passionate about something, why do it?

Posting daily would be a chore if you had no interest in the topic and why quality would drop.

Bang on right there. I make several videos every day about everything I am doing. Usually I forget to post them which is good because when I go back to clean out my phone storage I delete half of them because they don't seem worth it or I can tell my interest is blah. I might go 4 or 5 days without posting and that's good because phoning them in wouldn't be in anyone's best interest.

I'm sure it seems like I'm phoning them all in to some people but in reality I do spend a lot of time/takes on most of them and because I suck at editing, I waste a lot of time there too. At least I am enjoying the process though.

If you have no interest in the topic then there is no passion and it will reflect in the post you produce. As long as you are enjoying it that is what counts.

This is a really long and informative post. What everyone needs to understand is that curation is not guaranteed on Hive. Make your posts with care and don't just write and leave. This is ridiculous. I've read a lot about it and this place is not a repository. This is a social platform.Create beautiful things and connect with people instead of expecting rewards. Create beautiful things and connect with people instead of expecting rewards. Everything will be fine. Thank you very much for this beautiful article. It definitely helped me understand some things better. I will reblog this and I am sure it will be useful for someone.

Yeah and even if you do get curation and autovotes, make the most of it with your content and activity, don't settle down and expect that's the baseline from now on no matter what you post you'll get rewards.

That's right. You need to stay in touch with people and respond to everyone who adds value to your post and not expect to be curated all the time.

The point is to be true to yourself first and then to your followers or other curators.

Service to self and service to others are both integral to obtain actual fulfillment.


I know that in the past I have fit into the mold for many of the tactics you’ve mentioned in this post. Each time that I’ve misstepped, I’ve awakened to the fact that I was being lazy, ungrateful, etc. Looking back at those times it’s a mixture of embarrassment and thankfulness to have been able to learn those lessons.

I can admit that I used to desperately crank out content on ocassion, knowing that the autovotes would come. Most of the autovotes have died off for me, but I remain hopeful about it all because I know that if I’m manually curating everyday, so are others. This way of using our accounts feels a million times more rewarding than posting something decent and nobody caring to comment about it, yet rewards were a plenty after 7 days thanks to automation.

I actually feel a desire to post daily now, not a need necessarily. I’ve got a family beach trip coming up next month and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to film/edit/post daily videos while gone. After reading this, I think it may be okay for me to just take that week off from posting and then get back to it when I come back home. That would honestly be the best for me to actually enjoy my trip. I don’t think people will forget about me in just a week’s time, at least I hope not.

Well written and very humble! I think when people are not afraid to talk to you about what could be described as 'difficult stuff' (I read some of the recent discourse) it means they care more than anything else.

Enjoy your holiday, whack a few Liketu out. Everyone likes to see smiley faces :-)

We are lucky anytime somebody decides to care about us, it's far easier to only care about yourself. So even when it stings a bit, it's better to suffer a tiny bit of pain in order to grow and become better at whatever the subject may be.

Thanks! I'm very excited. I will get to see my only brother for the first time in months. Here lately all we get to do is play PS5 together online, I guess that is better than nothing though.

I'm sure you'll get better autovotes in the future if you keep it up, and not those in exchange for your vote. But yeah since I knew what you've been up to in the past it was hard to ignore your intentions the last few months which is why I brought it up in the first place, I think I downvoted one of your low effort posts and upvoted another that was better and had less rewards. If only autovotes were smarter. But you can see the value in manual curation there and I'm glad to hear you are enjoying it, we need more of that stake being used that way and downvotes can also help disincentivize bad autovotes.

Your decisions are logical. I need to be less stringent on how often I downvote content. As of now it’s fairly rare.

D4718107-8581-434C-BC91-288AB97A846C.gif

🤝

People often say "I don't appreciate a whale downvoting me trying to change the way I post" but no one mentions that autovotes often have the same effect on people.

This actually makes sense! When those autoupvotes stop coming, you will find yourself mentally broke and stop posting. Since all your effort is not giving you enough dopamine anymore. Because all this while, you were chasing only money!

If you really want to make it on Hive, do these with all your heart & soul, upvotes will come:

  • Help Others
  • Network & Engage
  • Publish Quality Content
  • Power Up
  • Start A Project
  • Build An App
  • Invest In Good Projects
  • Be Consistent
  • Be Humble

It's quite easy if you get it. ;)

I've been on both ends of that spectrum, both when i stopped getting some bigger votes it felt bad but i kept posting anyway, then I started getting too much rewards so I couldn't just shitpost like I some times did. Thankfully the beneficiary setting came to life around that time so I could still shitpost without accepting all rewards on those posts and without punishing my supporters by decling rewards or getting downvoted. Tho some times I did downvote myself due to overvotes.

Thanks, @acidyo for this enlightening post. I'm a newbie here and just this week, I tried to post every other day (because I have a target), and also I'm on vacation right now, I have plenty of time to write but somehow it gets me exhausted.

On some of my previous posts, I got several upvotes (thanks to the curators) which made me happy but it's the comment that made me feel that I am an effective writer. Yes an upvote is a bonus,it's how I earned, but the comments, the peoples reaction and engagement to my post is fulfilling. 😊

So first of all, 2466 words later... Still not part 2 of the really interesting topic we want to read and that is your love story 😒😑

2.

Since there's barely any drama happening on chain.

How boring it has been i hope Hive gets more dramatic people cause drama is alway fun 😂 as long as I'm not involved in it.

3.

"I've built/bought my stake and I don't think I should use it on newbies who just sell it constantly"

Well if of all the newbies i have teach and voted at least some learn and grow their account i think i feel accomplished and i know a lot of hivers who would think and do the same so is a good thing yhe good ones are more than those who think this way.

So first of all, 2466 words later... Still not part 2 of the really interesting topic we want to read and that is your love story 😒😑

I couldn't agree more! We all like the more personal loved up acidyo! (We liked the old acidyo too of course, but the new version is better ;-) )

Also cause Gossip is fun to read.

Nice thought provoking post. It's good to re-evaluate one's habits and practices now and then. I've recently been thinking about my Hive activities and seeing if there are things that I can tweak to make me a better Hive community member.

I don't get whale votes and I don't expect to, because I don't feel I deserve them. I'm just doing short actifit posts daily. I don't consider them sh**posts or lazy posts; they are just posts that seem to accomplish their purpose - proof of #movetoearn activity with brief commentary of whatever is on my mind that day.

I do get auto-votes, some from people who use my own bot and some from however others have set it up. I'm happy for them and I don't take them for granted, and as I said, I post just for the purpose of recording daily activity and random thoughts so I don't try to maximize them or attract any new auto-votes.

I do get several comments every day, which I like. I try to up vote most comments and I reply to some as well. I also comment a few posts a day and try to find new writers when I can.

So for me, I'm reasonably happy with my interactions on here. But I was inspired by this post to look into setting default beneficiaries on my posts. I found that one can do this on peakd at https://peakd.com/me/referrals and I just added @hive.fund. One can see who others have designated as beneficiaries by looking them up on hiveblocks and checking the "JSON Metadata" box - for me, go to https://hiveblocks.com/@kenny-crane

I'd like to add one or more additional beneficiaries. So if you have any suggestions, please feel free to let me know. Thank you! :)

@poshtoken could use more support, all rewards it generates either pay for development or buy back some tokens from the market. Maybe you've heard of what it does

I'm a fan of poshtoken!

DONE :)

image.png

Btw did not even know about that peakd setting, need to check it out.

I like that some communities can place a beneficiary on your post before you hit post which you can remove if you really want to, we have poshtoken set at 10% in the ocd community.

Cheers and kudos for using beneficiaries even before consuming this post. :D

A lot to unravel here. I have been on the list and off the lists of whales, gotten votes with notes to change stuff about certain votes on witnesses and a whole lot of stuff. There's still a lot to learn this thing. Even after 2 years or being active, posts like this give me tons to think.

The danger if daily posts are on exhaustion and I would say something about the people with more stake getting the better votes, but that's not actually relevant. This is a place of creative with a reward engine added to it. What keeps hive running are the developers and I understand why not giving this people their due might seem like ingratitude. I guess s lot of us are just a bit too zealous over sour gains on the content we make. Thanks for that insight.

Over the time, I've been doing some things that worked and others that didn't. Looking back to my posts, votes and comments, I can only determine I've lacking on the last aspects. Sometimes it isn't about not having the will to do it, but having a reply. Not everyone is open to get into an exchange of ideas. But experience has taught me that when it happens, the best idea is to move on and go read or watch another post and comment. Eventually, the followers base will respond to this and comment count and exchange will rise to the top.

Of course, this doesn't mean the rewards will be there. Part of the the system is some sort of luck. I bet there's a whole criteria for big but luck also plays a factor in the visibility of a post of whether you get into a whale's voting list.

This has given a lot to think about. Thanks for a thoughtful post to read.

I remember stumbling onto you on @tarazkp's posts and liking the way you were engaging on the chain thus followed you and curated you from time to time. Unfortunately I don't have the time to engage myself currently as much as I'd want to due to other more important things going on around Hive I'm trying to build but it helps knowing most people realize i vote manually which means I've at least glanced at the post and read parts.

Hey, we all get busy on other stuff. But you mentioned something really important. It is far better to get your posts read than having an autovote on it. Voting is not a metric for the success on a post. At least from my viewpoint, comments and engagement are far more important.

Ultimately I agree with most of what you say this post. It's easy to get lazy as an author and simply expect rewards.

I must admit, I did get pretty annoyed when you removed $100 worth of rewards from my post the other day because it was a 'repost'. All I could think about is how hardly anyone saw the original post, while the new one did quite well, value-wise. It got me contemplating how the will of hundreds could be denied by the will of one powerful voter. I had to wait until I cooled off to think rationally about it, which changed my thinking quite a lot.

So here is my opinion on the matter. Over the years I have seen all kinds of moral reasonings meant to rationalize one philosophy or another on what constitutes a down-votable offense on Hive. (Or what deserves an up-vote for that matter!) No one really agrees 100% on anything of course, but there does seem to be a loose consensus amongst the majority of large stake holders.

And therein lies the heart of the matter. Hive is not, or cannot be a democracy in the traditional sense where one person gets one vote. (Let's ignore the US for now with its electoral college). I am sure that it would destroy the whole project if we ever tried to do that.

Once we understand this, then all of the moral contortions can be swiftly thrown out of the window. There doesn't need to be any explanation, because by controlling a large enough stake one automatically becomes the arbiter of morality in this nation.

This are only two things that really need to be understood about Hive rewards by the average user:

Your only guaranteed returns on Hive are those of your Hive Power APR

2 - Post rewards can be nullified at any time without justification by a large enough stakeholder - no moral explanations required.

I know this may seem cynical, but it really isn't meant to be. In fact, I am actually glad that my post got wiped to zero! If I had not felt the sting, I wouldn't have fully integrated these insights.

So if one wants to be prosperous on Hive, the most important things to understand are the collective values of the largest stakeholders. Luckily these don't change too much, too often.

 2 years ago (edited) 

2 - Post rewards can be nullified at any time without justification by a large enough stakeholder - no moral explanations required.

This isn't really true, if others find it wrong there are definitely consequences or repercussions of the person doing the downvoting unless the only thing they do is downvote and having nothing "to lose". There are very few of those around and I hardly doubt active, if you don't count the usual drama ones that attempt to retaliate on something they feel has been wronged upon them.

For instance rather than just countering the post with a larger upvote than the downvote cast, they could in turn figure out that maybe it was me who downvoted it (I did but it wasn't me who found the post and reported it) and attempt to hurt me in other ways, many do, for instance if you were one of the irrational ones you would've downvoted this post, removed our witness vote or found other ways to attempt to "retaliate". If others were to agree that it was overdone or foul they'd join in if you'd post about the "wrongdoing" which many often do. As I said in the post there's not much drama happening on chain lately, which is nice but my point is if something were to happen then attention is drawn to it rather quick.

On top of it all it's often quite simple to figure out the reason to certain downvotes even if a reason has not been given. For instance when I noticed newsflash downvoting a lot it didn't take me long to notice that his recent posts had been downvoted by a couple whales so now he was retaliating on autodownvoting anything they voted on. The immutable history of the chain makes it easy to distinguish the reason often times compared to say Reddit where everything is hidden behind centralized databases and you never know who or why got you downvoted.

You are right, though, that these "social consensus'" as I like to call them don't change often and are most of the time pretty obvious when it comes to certain things that are deemed frowned upon. It's true that it's not something everyone will get instantly because our reward mechanism is so much different from the rest but longterm I'm sure most people will get used to what "isn't allowed" and why.

I doubt youtube would care if a popular youtuber reposted content and earned adrevenue on it but it's not like youtube is rewarding him with google shares which not only inflate but could go up or down in value.

if you were one of the irrational ones you would've downvoted this post, removed our witness vote or found other ways to attempt to "retaliate".

No way dude. You are a good guy from what I can tell, and do a lot to contribute to Hive.

One of these days I'll build something useful to give back to Hive. I just have to figure out what that is!

Yeah I didn't expect you to, but those who usually abuse on purpose only care about the rewards so they go full rage mode lol. Rewards and downvotes on hive should be written about and taught in psychology classes how they affect some people.

This is also something that gives hive more perceived value, btw, though I understand your rational between "it didn't earn much back then, so what's the harm" I hope you understand that others will take that and attempt to maximize the mindset which bending the "rules" a bit can cause a spiral long term. The value here is that you can't just earn easy rewards and you shouldn't, over time I hope the downvote, especially well used ones become more popular so most posts had a certain up and downvote ratio where you'd really need to be an excellent curator, possibly even manual rather than auto to get to enjoy max curation returns compared to the rest because what you vote on receives the least amount of downvotes. It's one of the ways we can scale but it requires people to not use downvotes for personal vendettas or things other than what they deem that content/author to be worth it.

Easy earned stake easily ends up on the markets.

The value here is that you can't just earn easy rewards and you shouldn't

fair enough

Easy earned stake easily ends up on the markets.

I think this was a huge factor that drove the value of Steem down even during bull runs. Drove me crazy! Well, that and Steemit dumping all the time.

It's one of the ways we can scale but it requires people to not use downvotes for personal vendettas

I simply don't downvote at all for this reason. It's just too stressful! I would basically have to quit Hive if I got involved in flagging content. I have probably downvoted fewer than 6 posts in the 5 years I've been here. Maybe if downvoting were anonymous? Of course that would open another can of worms.

One thing about being downvoted, is that it always feels like a personal attack, even if it was done for the good of the whole platform. But that isn't a problem of the downvoter, it's an issue with the receiver entangled in his/her own ego.

Yeah it's definitely a unique feeling you don't get from anywhere else, lol, I guess could be compared to web2 just shutting down your account and removing income streams. As you say once you take a breather and think about it it gets easier to think rationally.

I was being downvoted for a few months by korean stakeholders with 50m SP for downvoting a shitpost on trending once, now Steemit is just full of that so good riddance there but also explains why we gotta stick to the rules so we don't bring back bid bots, votetrading and other things that give people "easy rewards".

No matter where you are from, if you work harder and put effort into earning Hive, especially from post rewards, you'll think a bit harder if you want to "just sell it at any price" like many did, incl steemit and bid botters back in the day.

Most want instant gratification and many are scared of hard work!

I believe the blockchain shouldn't be taken for granted and since we all want to get rewarded for our contents published the aim of putting more effort on getting those rewards should be put in place. Nobody is been forced to publish contents in the blockchain but since we know the impact and advantage to gain should however derive ones attitude in working hard for it

This is a whole lot of knowledge dished out under one post.
I am really glad I found this chain and I am optimistic about my growth here.
Thank you @acidyo for clearing up the air on these terms ❤️
And I will like to add that I am inspired by your lengthy post (putting out value), no doubt most people are here for the rewards thereby stretching themself trying to meet up with daily posts without minding the value they are giving out.
Funny thing is that I am guilty on this daily posting part but I still do my thing my own way while still posting daily all because I feel it may have a way for my account to be recognized on the Blockchain algorithm - if there's something like that.
Thank you again for the tips shared.
I am here to speak value with my Art❤️🌼🍻

Posting daily is fine, even more than once, it's just that if you know you're going to get some big votes no matter what you post it would be nice if you don't start farming it for the sake of the votes rather than posting the same way you've always been doing.

I understand your view now. Keep it Real.

"Get a whale friend to invest in Hive so he can give you bigger votes"

All my friends are poor anyway.

The worst thing is the feeling of those who follow you that you only care about the financial returns when you do not continue to post, especially if the same post is repeated.

I don't take my rewards for granted at all. I am lucky that a few people give me auto-votes, but I am not relying on any single account to get the bulk of my rewards. I would feel more pressure if I got bigger votes every time as my relationship with the community matters to me and I don't want to get a bad reputation. There are some people who forget that we all get a say in their rewards and that can involve reducing them. I see lots getting most of their rewards from automated schemes like Ecency boost. That seems wrong to me and I concentrate my votes where they do the most good. Most are manual.

I do set beneficiaries when I promote people in #FollowFriday.

looking at Hive and blogging like "I'm not here for the money, I'm here just for the fun, it is a sport / game" or looking like "I'm here for the money, and I'll work hard to deliver my shit all the way down on a daily basis" both lead to consequences I wouldn't consider optimal, but mixing them in a good proportion, I'd say, lets to skip lines 2-3 from the list.

Hello acidyo

I have come to know many things from your informative post.Thanks for sharing it.

I am scared a little bit reading your post.If I always try to post good content, is there any chance of getting down-vote? I generally post twice or thrice a week.I always try to put my best without noticing what I get from the content but when I got reactions from people , it provides me more enthusiasm.

There's no need to be scared of downvotes, moat are used well and do close to no harm.

Nothing in life is guaranteed, well, death is, but that's kinda like after life thingy?

I guess that's cleared up, so people really really need to understand these things, I personally don't like publishing under pressure of if it's quality or not, so I lay off when that happens.

Love the approach tho, almost wanna hear you give a speech, almost, because I'd probably be talking more than listening, ha.

I rather like the idea of a big whale auto upvoting me!! :P

I did get some downvotes for a bit, but it was never explained why.. after my own research i discovered what i was doing. I get that it takes time and effort to explain, but it might help out little fish like me.. 😉

I hope I am NOT just a shitposter.. I am just comfortable posting/writing what come to mind and not like having a certain content amount or quality to worry about.. i do try tho..

Your last point is really good. I think so many hivers take it for granted just what we have here.

😎🤙

Neither post rewards nor curation rewards are guaranteed on Hive.

This is a fact that I learned on a discord server IDK which one it was. Since then I never took them for granted. Tarazkp mentioned something in his comment:

It is like some people don't care if anyone reads their post at all, they just want the votes.

Sometimes I wish that instead of auto upvotes people would actually read my posts. Of course at first sight it makes me happy to see the number of upvotes and the good rewards. A lot of votes come from automated processes that will not actually read or engage with your content. I am following a few curation trails myself because my time is limited, what it does though it makes me miss content I actually would like to read. I see why manual curation seems to be the best way to reward good quality.

The farming of tribe tokens? What can I say it is addicting to see all those different tokens dripping in. Recently I started to use tags to drive organic traffic to the frontends. Maybe that would be a good rule of thumb to relate the first 3-5 tags truly to the content and then start the tribe tag thing?

Sorry for the long comment, but long post=long comment

Hitmeasap also mentioned in one of his SEO posts that it is much easier to be found if you use tags directly related to your content

That is so true, I'm actually want people to read it and tell me what they think about it.

Yeah as long as you don't include irrelevant tribes to a post it should be fine, same goes for tags I suppose but communities are more in now, not many check tags for curation anymore.

Greetings @acid I didn't know about the automatic votes and rightly noticed people that all their publications receive rewards regardless of whether they are of quality or not is great but indeed this makes it happen what you say.

The author not only gets lazy but also strives to produce something every day for that vote. It's his time to shine and collect, so why would he waste a day without posting knowing that a big autovote is waiting for him in the code?
The author stops interacting with his followers who leave comments or questions on his posts because he doesn't have time to do so or because he's too busy trying to think of what to post next.
The author is exhausted posting every day, but the vote is still there, so let's post something "different" this time, less effort and less quality, it's ok once in a while, right? Well, it was fine the last few posts, so let's do another crappy post today and another one tomorrow and it's been a few weeks and no one has batted an eye, so let's repost this previous post I wrote when I started because not one curated it at the time.
The down votes start coming in and the author freaks out.

Thank you for sharing this information in the end you have to be constant and above all do it because we like and we enjoy writing obvious rewards are an incentive and helps the quality of life of those of us who make life in #hive thanks for sharing blessings.💞

I learned a lot by reading this post. It's always good to stop and reflect on whether we're creating content to express ourselves to the world and interact with the community, or just for money.

I have always wondered how all these works but reading through this, I've come to understand a little of the basis of how some things work here on the hive blockchain.

What you said about people having auto votes is true and I'm privileged to have one and I always notice I'm always trying to make a post but it's not really because of the vote, it's because I've set a target for myself, so what can you say about that, is it enough to justify making a post everyday?

I just believe that I should make at least a post every day because it helps me engage easily with other authors and some days, i make up to three post because of some ongoing contest too and I always try my best to put in effort and quality but some are of course has less effort than others.

Thank you for bringing this to my knowledge, I really appreciate it so much, I guess I'm privileged to have seen this and I really do hope to put what I've learned into practice.

Your account seems fine to me, plenty of unique voters on the higher payout ones and it seems to be from manual curation projects so they've checked the posts out.

The issue is more if you start getting autovotos from bigger accounts and attempt to maximize it even if it lowers your quality and effort to the point where either no one bothers engaging with the content anymore or you're taking it for granted and not engaging with those who do engage with you or socialize with others on their posts. Say if all you do is just post and collect the rewards and don't care about the other aspects of hive and most social medias.

Okay I get it now, I just pray I don't drift away from the right.

One of the reasons why I love hive is because of the engagement in it, I'm always sad if I don't get much comments because it only means that my content was not really that good, so I always try to put in more effort every time.

It will be really nice to have a whale add me to his or her auto votes because it means more income for me but I will still need more people to engage with, it's the best part for me.

It's really sad when I engage with someone and I don't get a reply back and even others that engaged on that same post. I always love it that I have a comment to reply to and if I don't have any, it means I didn't engage well, so I try to improve on that too.

You've given me an advice that will come more handy in the future and I'm really grateful you thought of writing on this, thank you Sir 🤗. And please Sir, I will want you to always leave an advice on any of my posts you come across, if you don't mind 🙏.

Have a fabulous weekend 🌹💐.

It is more than simply hive power; it is our well-being on the blockchain. Thank you for sharing this with us today. Increasing hive power is a proven method to make a substantial investment.

I got great upvotes from ocd sometimes when i leave AND written diferent topics as normal,
I get this when i do am extra efforcement AND publish a resume of the communiti of coffee lovers, but it Is only one or three times per year AND Is great received this.

As far as ocd goes we unfortunately don't vote posts that aren't also in English or translated as we're focusing on niche communities rather than different languages right now.

There are plenty of other and big accounts which do curate Spanish content though so not sure why you receive them so seldom.

Yes i traslate this kind of post because i know it Is so important, yeah i received the ocd in fungi lovers too..
Thanks a Lot.
Beat regard.

The most important thing is to create content for the publisher according to what he prefers in his own touch and for audience. I love social topics that deal with man and his problems in life. Continuing to publish is better than automatic voting, albeit with big rewards.

Helpful suggestions. Any idea if dbuzz triggers auto votes? Sometimes I like shoot a simple what I'm up to buzz which is t worth an auto vote. I'm considering a separate account for dbuzz, but ideally I'd have one account yo post from. Both have benefits.
!LUV

It probably does yes, I wish projects like dbuzz and liketu gave you easier options to forfeit rewards through beneficiaries rather than placing a lock on how high rewards can go as that one punishes autovoters or accidental manual voters who may vote a buzz up past 1$.

Neither post rewards nor curation rewards are guaranteed on Hive

Curation rewards are guaranteed, if one curates well, isn't it ? If they cannot, then better they delegate and earn the reward. My point is that, this should not be barrier to bring in some new whales. And I think, being spontaneous in posting is the best way to go, at least that's what I do, no expectation of rewards. Writing big posts often is rewarded more, but then spending time for big posts is equally challenging. So when I get time, write long posts, or post whatever I like.

Yeah if you do curate well you have a much better chance at earning curation rewards close to max efficiency!

I found this incredibly helpful. 4+ years on Steem-Hive and I've learned to not rely on anything except ENGAGEMENT and connection. It really matters to keep reiterating over and over and over, that it is the social and the decentralized aspects of Hive that are its strength.

Reblogged.

Another way to get guaranteed returns on Hive is to get a fat delegation and collect curation rewards.

My delegations wouldn't change how I use hive, you'll see when they're gone, don't let the jealousy eat you alive in the mean time.

I just pointed out one way to earn, which you conveniently forgot to mention.
Oh, and BTW; I find a much more profitable way to put my HP at work. Delegated to Leovoter and don't need to deal with BS and drama on Hive.

Even curation isn't guaranteed as we've seen with certain accounts autodownoting certain other accounts. Just cause you have delegated HP doesn't change the fact that if you curate garbage content someone may go and downvote everything you've voted on.

I didn't need to mention that curation rewards aren't guaranteed with delegated stake since it's the same as curating with your own stake.

as for leofinance, not sure what they do with the HP they earn or how come their returns are higher by selling earned leo back to hive but there too if they curate garbage it's going to affect their apr eventually too not to mention the authors.

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I am grateful I read this, at least I've got to know more about hive.. I'm still lost in this platform but I'll do my best to work my account this time and.. I'll try to engage as much as I can according to my resource credits. A content creator who does not engage to it's readers is meaningless, all for money.. and just looting the platform.

It's funny how, under the pretext of good intentions, someone tries to centralize around their opinion what was decentralized.
I do not argue, now, more and more often, white is called black and vice versa, what was vile a few years ago is becoming acceptable.
I was taught from childhood that brevity is the mother of talent, and very smart, well-read people taught me this.
I was taught not to pour water in the text, turning it into something that looks like slurry porridge.
I was taught to look for the important and the main thing in the small, paying attention to one picture, one of its elements, forcing me to think.
It turns out that I have to break everything that I was taught to please you?
I understand, you probably like these deferambs that you read about your instructive post, but not all people share your opinion, even among those who wrote you an ode of gratitude.
Also, I was taught to speak the truth and remember those who supported me in difficult times, and these are my friends who did not leave me when my family was starving, and I will give them my votes, in tribute, which some people forget . This is one of the things that makes us human and not virtual avatars.
Yes, when the power of the voice becomes greater, it is possible to develop voting, but not when you share bread crumbs.
In every photograph that I publish, I put as much soul into it as Leo Tolstoy put into War and Peace.
It is a pity that real, not simulated thoughts, today, in the Hive, are worthless.
Yes, and as you can see, I only write comments when they are sincere and thoughtful and I don't need the traffic boost that should come from you. Do you consider yourself an expert in all areas?
I doubt it, I respect the fact that you have created a support base for the bloggers of the Hive and respect your human feelings, something you may not like, but do not act like the Russian troops do, which rely on fakes and and the opinion of one person, in order to destroy the lives of civilians.
Also, if we talk about farming, then, whales like you and other whales. created by you should be in silence, and not use your authority to write posts and get super profits. Delegations, this is also a kind of farming, because, from time to time, delegates receive their own votes from your accounts, or am I wrong?

Huh? Sounds more like dramatic rather than sincere to me.

I'm farming from people I've turned into whales posting once a week?

I don't care how much your posts earn, at least a hundred thousand dollars, but, based on your words, as an expert, please tell me about the value of your, this post. I don't think you can agree with yourself that its price is approaching fifty dollars. You know, there was a golden time when blockchain bloggers weren't trying to catch lice, but, as you said, were raising whales. Do you think the Hive has reached its pinnacle and it's time to drop out? This is not true, the Hive gets more benefit when people have something to brag about, for example, on twitter, but, often, this is at odds with reality. As for your perception, then, I cannot become you and make you see my feelings, there is no drama, I do not expect to receive more for my posts than they deserve in the eyes of readers. Would I like to receive more? Of course, but I don’t ask you about it, we already discussed it, I heard you and the fact that I, like a slave, wrote hundreds of comments a day, didn’t affect it in any way, I don’t see any reason to dream about more than I have today. But, this is not about that, you can do more harm to the hive with your conditions than good, you can’t level everyone under one, your own bar.
You said that once a week you can get a lot ... why in this case, you do not talk about labor costs? What's the difference, twenty posts with photos and original text for $50 a week and one post with no obvious labor input once a week for the same price? I think that twenty posts have much more labor costs.

Will try and disassemble them later

This is an odd reality indeed, not sure really what you are going on about or what it has to do with the things I was discussing in my post, such as direct and effortless votetrading to maximize rewards, i.e. accounts like @peterchung, but too early in the morning for me to deal with your riddled sentences right now, sorry.

I don't want to disturb your sleep, rest, you can always think about what I said if you are awake enough and you have a desire to think about something.

How much they should receive in cure reports. As a percentage with respect to authors?

Thought u were replying to a different post when I made the comparison, seems like some peojects seem to just use the reports as a cover to do shadier more selfish things that don't really bring a lot of value to Hive, just more rewards to them.

I've just been thinking this for a while and this post reminded me of it, as there are curation reports that have automatic votes.

Maybe in OCD it can be justified by the amount of authors that vote, but smaller project that two out of ten 100% votes are kept by them, I don't like it very much.

A good rule of thumb for us has been 10-20%, depending on the initiatives it can be more such as running the @lovesniper curation for instance is very time consuming and exhausting due to so many scam attempts and other activities the curators undergo such as leaving comments suggesting communities they may be interested in, following the genuine looking ones to curate them more later, etc.

Main point is to use common sense and fair rewards, comparing this to ocd for instance it would be as if we only used 10-20% of our voting power curating posts and then the rest trading votes with others who would vote our reports back, or even worse our personal accounts.

I posted my articles mainly at @owlyfarm,and use split 50% as beneficiary. beneficiary's option is nice to have and make used for.

!HBIT

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Wow, such an insightful post @acidyo 🙌🙌 I keep getting amazed on how much there is to know about Hive and the way it works 🙏

You got me thinking here... I've been lucky enough to get support from you and OCD community with some big upvotes and I'm now thinking if it changed the way I posted, unconsciously 🤔🤔. I know they are not autovotes but rather manual curation, so I think it's a little different than what you mentioned here... however, it's good to reflect upon it and remind myself that I'm not here to explore monetary rewards (although they are appreciated) but rather I want to organically grow whitin the blockchain and make true connections! And I'm glad I'm learning each day on how to do it in the right way 🤗

I think downvotes makes a lot of sense in this type of platform! There will always be the ones who try to abuse it and having ways to counter that is key to ensure long-term stability 🙌

Actually, I have a question about the downvotes I don't understand ... I see some accounts like xecency, xocd and others that have been giving me some downvotes while the ecency or ocd accounts upvote my posts... But they don't appear to take any rewards since their downvote is usually 0$.

Why is this happening? I'm asking this because I don't really understand it and I want to make sure I'm not doing any unconscious abuse 🙏

Sorry for the long comment, but you always come up with very insightful posts that leaves me reflecting heheh 😊

Take care and have a wonderful day 🙏

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