Let me preface this by saying that I think to a certain degree it is human nature to expect things in return. Let's say you've spent and invested a lot of time here, made good connections, generated content that gets consumed, etc, you know, all the "right" things that people seem to be in unison over that the network/shareholders should eventually reward you with some monetary value if you've kept at it. I don't think it would be crazy to expect to see something in that scenario and I don't believe the network has kept many accounts down in that case either compared to say most of the other platforms who mainly focus on rewarding the top 0.5% while the others have to get through minimum barriers to even make a few cents per day.
I also understand that this feeling can be subjective. We all think differently, are in different periods of our lives, live in different countries and economies, etc, etc. There are however times where it feels like some people expect this too early and for too little. I do wonder what it is that makes them believe they're owed rewards in those cases.
I'm not going to grasp at the lowest hanging fruit here where a lot of what I assume misinformed newcomers come barging into discord servers dropping their links or asking why their posts aren't getting curated when you see they've done jack all but post and expect rewards to just magically appear because they exist - which in and of itself is going to get harder to prove over time with tech and AI.
There was this case recently from a user who's joined the chain around the same time I have, so he's one of the early birds so to speak, but compared to my involvement I think it's safe to assume he hasn't spent as much time on the chain as I have. Naturally he also doesn't earn the same amount of author rewards, but this isn't really about that. The weird entitlement that I couldn't understand in this case was that he had invited a new user to the chain, which he confessed was his fiancé, who someone else had some time ago recommended to me to curate in one of my "who are new users I should follow" posts. For some reason, he was dead set on upvoting all of her comments with all of his voting power. This is something I see happening from time to time, some stakeholders favorite some users extra which to a degree is also okay as long as those authors in the receiving end of that voting power are putting in effort and time. But why every comment to the tune of spending all of your voting power on just one user? Naturally this stood out as I had just started following this user from a different account's recommendation so I asked why that was the case where he was upvoting every comment of this user.
The answer was that the user's posts aren't being rewarded well enough so he's taken it upon himself to spend all of his voting power on her comments to "make up for the lack of author rewards this new user (his fiancé) was earning".
What do you think about that scenario?
To me it was quite weird because for one, this user should know better having been here as long as I am that author rewards aren't supposed to be guaranteed and autovoters don't instantly land on users quickly since autovoters don't often adjust their lists (something I'd recommend they do more often honestly). More than that, this is a new user, they're still in the process of "proving themselves", investing time, effort, etc, into the network, and even so they weren't doing too bad because people had noticed and were recommending her to curators and she wasn't really doing "bad" in terms of hivepower. I guess some people only see pending rewards in $ so assume that someone is not doing as good as they could just because the price of hive is low currently, they don't think in terms of how much of a % of inflation is this user being allocated.
I tried to reason with him, I told him that I had just followed this user and am curating her which was the reason I had noticed this weird comment spam voting activity, i.e. they're in the process of doing better curation wise so his small stake (small in terms of having been here for almost 9 years) and voting power being used this way is only going to drive negative attention toward this user rather than giving her a real genuine chance of receiving curation rewards from more people in a natural hive way which many others are proof that it works.
I quite literally told him that him going out of his way this hard to spend all of his voting power on a single user, something that would make this place a shithole if everyone did the same thing, was quite literally affecting my curation on this user who I assumed was innocent at the time. I.e. 100 comment votes of his in a week would barely even be worth half a vote of mine on her content that he's now jeopardizing by insisting on continuing to do so because this user seemed to deserve the curation in general, as others had also noticed since she was very engaging and socially active.
Either way, after someone else jumped on to tell him off for his activity he decided to stop doing it (as if I had any ulterior motives to recommend him to stop so that another big user had to step in to also voice their opinion for him to consider it), which was great to hear.
Thus I continued curating the user for a while when I saw a post of hers on my feed, until I started noticing something.
She had pretty much stopped commenting completely.
???
Why? Were you only commenting and engaging so much for the $0.025 votes that user was giving you?
It's just baffling to me, they basically sabotaged themselves because every one of their comments couldn't get upvoted anymore, not understanding that the two go hand in hand together. If you're engaging genuinely a lot and others notice it, you have a higher chance of doing well in terms of author rewards, engagement, following, etc, etc.
I just really couldn't understand where this sense of entitlement comes from. Is it because they've been here so long that they think they can vote however they want and others shouldn't have a say in it if they feel it goes against curation?
I decided to unfollow that user after a while because they had quite literally stopped commenting almost fully compared to how active they were when all of their comments were getting those small upvotes. Naturally this came with a nice little "retaliatory" unfollow or was it a witness unvote or something.
Dunno, some times this place is quite weird, or at least people who make it weird. We have something insanely fair here that I'm sure no one else is even going to attempt to replicate because no one wants to give away so much power or make it so easy for rewards to be distributed in this way due to selfish reasons and yet we have people acting selfish even though this chain is barely worth anything.
Have you noticed this kind of behavior? I feel like all of those vote-trading, buying votes through delegations or other forms are kind of in the same boat. They feel entitled to rewards and over time their effort does not match the rewards they're getting, but if you dare to downvote then all hell breaks loose and they lose their minds real fast like taking drugs away from an abuser.
Again, I'm not saying that this entitlement or feeling of getting something back for having invested time and effort into this place should go unrewarded, but are we just going to ignore that 99% of content creators on other platforms end up making nothing having spent even more effort and time there? Is our bar not low enough here, where we instead have to stomp it under the ground so everyone gets a participation trophy?
There are times when I find myself looking from a distance with philo-binoculars, like you are here, and wondering why the animals in the wild bite their own tails off too.
The truth is, there are unsatisfactory answers in life, and this is one of them. It may have to do with how much people can think of the future versus the now. Someone who feels there is a shark in the water cannot even register the advice on how to swim with proper form. So, people like you or me sound to them like we are simply disconnected from reality. Our advice is tossed in the garbage.
All that said, there is a reason why equality of outcomes does not exist in the wild, and it will never exist in the online existence either. There is a non negligible portion of the world population who, for one reason or another, do not like the social part of social media. As oxymoronic as that sounds, it seems to make sense in their heads somehow. Or worse yet, it has never even registered.
All we can do, my friend, is observe and, funnily enough, make these sorts of observations too. If you are lucky, there will be a wondering soul who stumbles upon this reflection and ends up doing some self searching as a result. But you, knowing the script, how it works, and how the movie ends, is probably just as important.
;)
When I joined the
Steemitchain, I assumed it would be another crypto flash-in-the-pan that would go nowhere since I created my account after the initial hype bubble had burst, but I was interested in censorship resistance with any rewards as a nice bonus. I think I had the right mindset for a beginner, because I didn't enter with an assumption I would get rich quick, or even make this my living.Anyone who wants to thrive here needs to concern themselves with being a good curator, commenter, and creator first. Rewards and reputation may follow, but are not the best endgame.
You're part of the minority I feel like, but happy to have people like you around and hopefully more in the future once they realize how frugal their content/accounts are on the company's databases.
I think every person tries to judge from his own point of view not always look what's happening around.
I also follow one couple on hive who support each other, but they support not only each other but also other hiveans who read their posts and support them. And here I think it is right way when they also engage with community!
And of course people who try to make good posts once find their niche. And their post become more noticeable! I follow several people who first time had just 50 cents for their post but as so they didn't give up now they have stable rewards.
As a street photographer, I’m used to walking for hours and not getting a single good shot. Sometimes Hive feels the same way — you post, comment, engage… and the rewards come (or don’t). But that’s exactly the point. The value isn’t in guaranteeing the payout, it’s in understanding that this is a long-term process. I really liked how you laid it out — harsh but necessary.
And thanks for continuing to say these things, even when they sting. They’re necessary for this place to work.
I think that approach would be amazing to see how it'd unfold if we didn't have autovotes or autovote services, you some times get votes and some times you don't, depends if someone read it and was curating at the time.
Unfortunately since hive has feeless transactions there are autovotes and you're basically penalized if you don't vote. Along with if you plan on going afk you're not sure if you can trust certain services to delegate to for curation rewards for long, so many choose to autovote instead.
This is what usually gets abused, some authors get used to the autovotes and start posting strategically so they can make the most out of those autovotes and over time the content quality fades, the effort drops, they don't care if they're getting read or reading and engaging with others, place autovotes themselves and expect that to continue on forever at the cost of the stakeholders here.
Hey, just a newbie question: I have some autovotes set up, mainly to support friends whose content I genuinely enjoy. Sometimes I’m not available when they post, but I make sure to go back and read their work when I can. I don’t do it to chase curation rewards — it’s more about showing support even when I’m not around. Would you say that’s also part of the problem, or are there healthy ways to use autovotes without hurting the ecosystem?
There are definitely healthy ways, one is to overview them as you are doing. Most of the issues come when bigger accounts do it, say for instance my account which also receives a lot of autovotes. I'm sure many of them don't get overviewed at all so I could technically start posting twice per day and cash in those votes and force myself to post constantly to the point where it feels like that's my only intention, to then further start ignoring comments, stop putting in effort into the posts, etc. I fully expect that people ought to then remove their autovotes on me if they notice this and are around, if not then other stakeholders should start adjusting the rewards down a bit with downvotes. I should not take this personally like many do, nor should I start retaliating or shitting on the platform because that begins to occur, downvotes are there to protect for scenarios like these and other forms of abuse or excessive farms/unfair upvotes, etc. Even though it's all subjective to a degree and different for many where the lines are some downvotes should not hurt people to the point where they'd react that way as long as they're used with good intentions and for the betterment of stake distribution towards effort, attention and quality.
Noted. Thank you
Thanks for taking the time to explain it so clearly — it makes total sense. I understand better now why the system ended up this way and what's at stake for curators and stakeholders. I’ll keep that in mind to keep contributing with purpose and not just posting for the sake of it. Big hug, bro 🙌
I'm late to the party here, but it means I get to read through more of the conversation in the comments.
Your anecdote reminds me of some of my family members who don't like being told what to do and certainly not being proven wrong, so will stubbornly try to prove a point even if it means cutting their nose off to spite their face.
I often wonder how many people actually compare Hive to traditional social media and ask themselves what it actually is that draws them to it and if they are expecting different things here. As an example, I'll post on Instagram and yes the amount of likes can give you a bit of a buzz, but if you're getting no interaction on it, then they start to feel pointless. I'll look at accounts that get far more likes on their posts than me, but next to no interaction and the difference is that they are following far more people and have more followers in return. How many of those likes are actually coming from people viewing your reel in full? Are they just scrolling by and liking?
Another indicator of interest is when they share your reel. Sometimes mine will be shared and I have no idea why. It gets more likes, but not necessarily any more interaction. I think the concept behind getting more likes in most people's minds is more chance of sponsorship so a small chance to earn. The chances of that are remote, though.
Anyway, I think the same translates to here. Some of my favourite posts are here are the ones that spark the best conversions in the comments. They aren't always the highest rewarded ones either. I've had ones that just happened to get caught by whales at the right time, but got very little, if any, interaction, which was really disappointing because it didn't feel like it reflected the reward.
With the UK and Australia currently and soon to demand ID to use social media platforms, I'm curious to see if Hive will start to see more people trying it out or coming back to old accounts here.
The rewards are not just for content. They're mainly for networking, which is both a skill and work, too. If I see some of the folks that earn a loooot more than I, I look at the network they established. Their consistency in posting and commenting. I was lucky to find mentors here that pushed me into the right direction, so I get some rewards for my posts, which I do find in line with the network I established.
Not with the quality, though. Sometimes I do a post that I really like a lot, and it doesn't draw any attention or up-votes. Sometimes it's the other way around, I do a good post, but not excellent, and suddenly there's a whale voting on it, followed by a whole trail.
Hence my conclusion that it's the networking. And no, hive doesn't own me any rewards. It's a nice extra, and I'd probably engage a little less if they weren't there, but they're more of a motivation of becoming better and working on my contributions.
Invoke Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative--"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law
well as you say on web2 you can spend hours and hours making a youtube video, record, edit add effects and so on, publish it, get 50 likes and that's it, dead end... here the chances to get something are bigger
i can understand that someone makes a 400 words post, spends a few hours and get 1$ then gets pissed off seeing one making a post with barely 100 words in2 languages an a picture and earn 30$ because of autovotes, friend votes and such, but that's the way it works, if you don't like it power up and downvote the overrewarded...
regarding the case, yeah if you do this you obviously attract the eyes of who's bigger than you and with the good or the bad manners you get put in the right place, it's bad faith behavior, you want to upvote any post? ok but vote others too, don't vote any comment, just one made towards you... balance things! unless you have a bilion of hive then you can do what you want really but everyone else might still quit and leave you alone in the chain
I like that approach, too. Balancing things out, supporting those I like and are beginners or in my range a little more, and the big ones a little less, taking into account the content quality... Curating is an art! There's a lot to learn there, and it would be great if people took the time to learn it, and not spam- or auto-vote.
(Doesn't mean I'm great at it. Still have a long way to go...)
Yeah, vote trails are an other issue as they promote lazyness and people not curating manually
Have you seen my latest data on this?
There is room for improvement in the behaviours of curators, IMO. They're the ones distributing the rewards.
Pay per word highly in favor of short post and by far, not even little... I doubt a 50 words post is worth heaps
Last week, on HIVE:
Payouts:

see the average between 50 and 250 has not that much difference, but the effort behind is very different... i don't look the max as it depends on whos posting/autovotes etc...1000 words earns 4x but the effort is not 4x of 50 words
Who is posting should have no connection to payout.
What they're posting should, in my opinion.
Curators shouldn't tolerate "well-known" people getting big rewards for "small, shitty posts" (my own words there).
The averages are definitely closer to reality, but I struggle to fathom where there's a huge gap on the average and the max. Was someone else's 100 words worth 100x more than the average?
Maybe hive SQL can help here?
Acid observation is correct tough, some accounts should be excluded
Have you looked at what the max reward posts are? Maybe some aren't "content" but stuff like ocdb onboarding/poshtoken comments/burnposts/hbdstabilizer, etc. Just wondering if you've filtered anything out at all
I mean you gotta consider what kind of posts in terms of tags/communities they are as well. If it's quality photography what does it matter that it's less than 100 words.
I'd be interested in seeing the bulk of content in those split up sections.
I can definitely have a go at carving it up by a single community - eg, photography lovers is one of the biggest ones - and well, images are subjective, but there are underlying measures of quality to photography that can be objective measures - is it compositionally sound, is it in focus, is it exposed correctly, etc...
He’s being romantic lol🤭, sorry I mean I think I agree, but the gift of a man makes way for him hence the entitlement mindset.
Maybe part of the arrangement should on the value of the curation we’re giving back would be determined by the value of your posts, so this way they’re aware they have to put in the same energy they started with.
Where there’re no defined terms, they’ll always be situations like this.
I’ve probably shared links on discord promotions but never have i nagged so I’m not exactly guilty but i get the message.
Thank you
A real gift would be a hive power up or delegation, not thinking they can use all of their voting power on one person. :P
I agree
I agree
Like you pointed out, he got it all wrong by going all out to upvote every of her comments, because he thinks she deserves it, thereby neglecting other users he could have curated too. Granted he has liberty to his HP, but that wasn't a good step. And to think that he almost jeopardized her chances of getting bigger curations by his actions. Good a thing he listened to the voice of reasoning and stopped.
To the new user, I must say that it's a pity she misused this rare opportunity that was served her on a platter of gold. Not many new users got this opportunity, including some old users too. I hope she realizes her mistakes soon and get back to being active again. Who knows, she might get lucky again.
Many new users expect more author rewards when they join a community because they do not have a proper understanding of the behavior of that community. So when the content they submit does not receive author rewards through the whale voting power, the new user becomes disappointed when they compare the author rewards of old users' content with theirs. After new users engage with other users regularly and develop new relationships, it is not difficult to receive author rewards. This is not the situation that was seen in the Hive community now, which was about 7 years ago. Even if a new user posts high-quality content, they are entitled to the privilege of receiving high author rewards. At that time, even after a year of the initial period of posting content, I hardly received $1 per content. But by increasing engagement with other users, I developed a better outlook. Therefore, patience will provide a good answer to everything.
What a pair of wankers, and that is what is wrong with the blockchain ....greed
My first few posts when I started on here in 2020, were quality stuff but I didn't even see double figures rewards, did not bother me, it was good to be here. Through the sage words of my guru @slobberchops , I listened and learnt about engagement and tarting my uploads up a bit.
I have never looked back and am happy with what people see as a just up vote. Though newbie auto votes do still piss me off!
It's good to see you still here. Nobody else I ever onboarded stuck it. Kudos to you.
tbh, if it werent for your encouragement I might have lost it early doors
Will always support you dude.. so long as you keep up the profanity!
Guaranfuckingteed!
Entitlement is pretty common around here. That's why we have seen so many self votes, 'because my posts are worth it!'. Selfish behaviour tends to get noticed and others will react to it and you can end up making less. With Hive being so small we have to act in ways that could help it grow if we want to see our stake gain value in the long run.
I've never taken my rewards for granted, but I'm grateful that people support me. I try to spread the benefits.
I'd say it's a value issue. I would never up-vote myself (did it once by accident, when I started following a curation trail that then upvoted one of my posts 😅), as I find it to be selfish. I rather put my votes towards others, and trust that it will come back eventually.
The whole value thing is important in the overlaying question. Why engage? Why create content? Way too many people do it with the money as their main reason, and sometimes their only reason. On all platforms, but here especially as the reward is direct.
Also, I guess the entitlement comes from Hive being "free". It doesn't cost me anything to up-vote you, on the contrary, it benefits me, too, so I have to do it, because, why not?
Hive is different and we are figuring out how it can work. Some say you could change the system to not allow self-votes, but people would find ways around it. All the data is public, so it's best to be honest.
I did self-vote back when my own vote was tiny and my posts made nothing, but I've not done it in years except by accident and then I undo it. I can earn okay anyway and making a possible little extra is not worth the cost in other aspects.
I used to use curation trails. Then I'd feel guilty when I would get curated and I'd (unintentionally) vote on my own post.
That was years ago. Ah fun times. I am a manual everything person now!
I only follow a couple of small trails as I want more control over where my vote goes. Most of it is manual.
I just wish my car was still manual, like my hive account ;)
Ew, I've only ever driven stick
Welcome to the manual side!
Like you, I have been manual a long time. For not as long, but longer than most people round these parts :P
I like that anarchic aspect of Hive. That there are just unwritten rules, and either you respect them, or you don't. Nothing is forbidden, but everything has consequences. I think it shows more of a "true face" of people than the canceling and prohibiting, so I for myself have a better time as it's easier to see who is who, and who I want to connect with, and who I don't.
About the up-vote - how can I undo it? Just slide it back to 0%? In case it ever happens :-D
Amen!
That should work as long as it hasn't paid out. You don't get the voting power back though.
Good to know, thank you!
Most of the unwritten rules are usually quite common knowledge stuff you shouldn't be doing anywhere, but people who abuse like to be all "you pulled this rule out of your ass just to downvote me" or the overused term "i thought hive was decentralized" as if that means you can do whatever you want.
I've been self-voting a bit lately, mainly to counter some malicious downvotes by a flagrant vote buyer who decided to autodownvote all my posts as he went afk cause I downvoted some of his posts. If however I'd abuse that I'd very much hope the community would stand up and hold me to my actions.
That makes sense to up-vote yourself then. Another solution would be to ask some other big investor to have a equivalent auto-vote on you. Given everything you do for the hive, I'm pretty sure some would be more than willing.
Yeah but I'm kind of purposely selfvoting a day or two late so I lose some curation rewards in the process due to the late day voting penalty so that the other voters get some extra that the downvoter may attempt to take from. It's a bit of an advanced thought process behind it, lol.
The problem is blogging is not unique to Hive. The rewards are what make Hive unique.
I think Hive needs to be more than a blog. Especially with AI which will become impossible to catch.
But when Hive is used for non blogging that leads to upvotes being used in a way other people don’t agree with.
There are no right answers here and it will be interesting to see if anything materially changes about Hive overtime or if it will just maintain the status quo.
The most unique thing about Hive is probably being able to earn rewards, similar to blogging and all the genre's that entails, through comments. I don't know of any platforms that allow regular community members/followers/fanbase to earn by engaging.
The whole AI thing is widespread, I'm sure others will figure out something eventually or we'll all have to just make videos or something harder to fake to ensure we're real and unique, at least for starters until we've built up some trust that people here already have pre-AI era.
The lack of fees is also a big thing that makes hive unique, being able to tip your favorite creators with no fee. Some times we take all those things too granted and start thinking about how to have the cake and eat it too with curation misuse.
"Curation misuse" is very subjective and means different things to different people.
I believe the people with the most Hive stake get to make that call and use their stake how they wish.
I just don't think a smart rich person outside of Hive is going to be interested in playing that game. The only way you win is if you buy more Hive than the other person but then you still lose because you just become someone else's exit liquidity.
Maybe it's about what you do with the influence then and not try and figure out how to abuse it at the cost of the other stakeholders or to try and sell it off to someone else at a higher price.
Not sure where this discussion is going but we've had a good 2 years of misuse under our belt and a majority of stakeholders, even former bid bots agreed to stop such activity, so I don't see why a few smaller newer projects think they should be allowed to, or new future investors and/or earners.
I would argue downvoting uses influence at the cost of the other stakeholders being downvoted…
That’s why they leave, because it has been communicated they are not worthy Stakeholders.
I’m not trying to take the conversation anywhere, I think downvoting is necessary and was just sharing my opinion.
I rarely blog and don’t power down my Hive. I don’t have an agenda.
I wish everyone success in their endeavors and I hope everyone finds what they are looking for.
The communication is to stop doing what they're doing, even after plenty of literal communication.
It's not like people are talking pseudoscience to them, it's easy to see and determine that what they do is against cueation. The rules of the chain are easy, ~50% for you as the curator, ~50% for others as authors. Not 90% for you because you delegate to a project that gives you your 10 daily votes back to you after taking a fee no matter what you post or if anyone reads it and no matter if no one else gets any inflation, etc through different schemes but in the end the same outcome.
For sure man. I think that is a good example for rules of the chain.
I do think there are more rules than that though and I do think there is a lot of subjectivity for who gets downvoted and why, and even that is always changing.
At the end of the day, the more we can get along and work towards the common goal of making hive a better place, the more Hive will be successful!
Cheers man!
Maybe they've been onboarded with a guarantee that they will earn big here. That's not how it is.. 😒
You have no idea how many onboarders are using "you can earn a lot of money" as the main argument when trying to onboard users. This is the worst you can do and the reason why retention is so low. Supporting low effort content just to make them stay is the other.
I used to think that if you just post something, you’ll automatically get support — but now I see that it’s not that simple. It actually takes time, effort, and being part of the community in a real way. I agree with you — it’s not just about expecting rewards instantly, but about growing and showing consistency over time.
My husband and I are both on hive. We use to try in the beginning to up vote each other but quickly dwindled. Occasionally we might still but usually not. We spent money getting into hive not a whole lot but more than we should have being we bought in when it was high. So technically we have lost money. But we got over that and still feel like there's money to be made on hive. I go thru periods where I'm not as active so most of my HP is set up so I can earn passively. It's been slow but constantly earning whether I post or not.
I enjoy the snaps, it's quick and simple and I take whatever it gets. I'm happy to see something but ok if I don't.
It's a bit sad how the markets work overall, if/when hive pumps everyone comes in here and is interested and you may find yourself that many of these people buy at the highs rather than buying at times like these. Which may then change their expectations over time where they're like "i can self-vote 10x per day because I'm down a lot on my investment" and if they get some pushback there they blame the whole platform and "evil" stakeholders.
Few have the patience as yourself for instance or understanding that one thing isn't connected with another.
No, hive gave to me ton of money, fortunately is our piggy bank account,
If you want to grow in hive do not see the rewards from others, they kill your brain.
same goes for the person you just muted , i warned him several times that with spammy comments he will get downvoted one day .
I even considered throwing a downvote at one of their posts because I noticed his recent comments on others' also being spammy, yet if I did others would instantly make me out to be powertripping or weaponize legitimate use of downvotes against me. There's a weird stance some people place on downvote usage, like someone else here in the comments instantly bringing up the example of whales doing bad downvotes and that no one dares to get in the way which I doubt is true, but in reality it's such a small issue and most of the time those downvotes are justified so no one says anything because they don't wanna get involved.
yup that is the downside of being a big fish they are all watching ... waiting to blame .. and point fingers .
Let's stop rewarding the posts, and see how many users would stay here. The best way to see the answer of your que.
Would you stay if there were no awards? Would you put the same effort in?
I would stay, because it is about the philosophy of HIVE - once something is posted, it is a permanent, "amend-only" record of what I have said, and the same goes for everyone else. You can't unsay it on the chain.
Passionate creators are going to create whether there is a reward offered or not. They do it because of the fire that burns within themselves.
I'd most definitely stay too but can't say how my posting/commenting would change. I'd probably argue a lot less or care less about what others who misuse the platform are up to. So probably a lot less stressful and annoying xD
The way I see it, I don't have anywhere else to go. My people are all here.
People in general are selfish. Throw money into the mix and they just become irrational. As a social experiment, walk into a crowded room sometime and throw a handful of one dollar bills into the air and watch people climb over each other's backs to grab a dollar.
That sounds like a nightmare lol.
I feel like online mob mentality isn't studied enough, people know and understand this out in public during riots/looting, etc, but not many seem to understand that it's a lot easier and can get out of control online when it comes to hate threads or brigading. It's weird how many content creators let themselves get affected by such events.
Yeah, that's true. If you've been around a while, you've likely witnessed a few flame wars.
It's been a breeze the last 4-5 years compared to the early days in that regard!
Yeah, that's true.
HIVE is just waiting for an anthropologist to come along and do a study. Only, I imagine, when the study results are published, everyone would disagree with the outcome of that study and it would see maybe 10c in votes :D
I earn little, of course, but I have my small circle of readers, and that suits me very well, I don't do it for the money (even if I take a few dollars) I put almost all my earnings in HP or token engine, I do it for fun, and I find cool texts or projects that innovate, sometimes work sometimes less (I myself made tokens 2 collapsed, 1 is holding at arm's length but it amuses me ^^) !LOLZ
lolztoken.com
But take a look at me now.
Credit: reddit
@acidyo, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of hive-103505
(5/10)
Funny how it works. Joining Hive should be driven by values like freedom, ownership, and decentralization—but more often than not, it’s greed that gets people interested first.
The most important part of HIVE to me, is the non censorship here. That is why I post to HIVE and have done so for years. I am compiling my Epstein documentary and HIVE has been essential for finding my old show notes and all my notes on Epstein from countless live streams.
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Hive doesn't own anyone anything. However, the problem is that when a user puts a lot of effort in their posts and some whale who has a problem with them and/or dislikes their content (even though many others enjoy it). That's what happened to me.
The truth is that Hive is even more centralized than $ or €. Content quality is irrelevant. All that matters is having a big enough HP, which will naturally give you protection against DVs because you can retaliate and because it is in the interest of other users to get on your good side.
I see said whale and even others get a lot of money for subpar posts (at best), engaging in vote trading including over $3 votes in each comment that is traded back and forth. Why would anyone that can't invest many thousands of $ waste their time here? I used to make about $13 per week and most of that was from the Splinterlands contests. I did because I like the game and enjoy writing about it but also because it was a little extra money to spend on the game (while never powering down). I won't do it when I don't feel welcome, even if it's just 1 person.
I'm sure @azircon had a legitimate reason to downvote, I've seen him do it often and I don't believe he does it for nefarious or opinionated reasons, else that would've garnered bad attention towards himself from others. There are always bigger whales in the sea.
Acid. If you look at Olaf's previous posts, you will see no engagement, and no content of value. No one talks in his post, and until I removed his rewards he doesn't talk to anyone. That is not a model hive behavior we want.
Also he is actively making detrimental comments to individuals and project, which doesn't help his case at all. You know that I have done this for a long time and we simply do not need extractors like Olaf in hive or in Splinterlands.
His ridiculous comment of 'vote trading' is so moronic, just for that I can DV him for eternity :) I am not going to spend any time ridiculing myself to answer his comment, I suggest you ignore Olaf. There are lot of disgruntled people we come across and lot of it is from entitlement.
I have put 300 words of junk of a auto-battler online, I deserve a vote from the curation program of the game I play.
NO. IS MY ANSWER.
Can't say I agree with the eternity part, people can maybe change :D but agree with the rest of the things. Oblivious extractors who hope to just shove out content and not care if it gets consumed or not should not get used to it, part of the issue there lies also with the curation however.
That bit meant to be a joke.
I think no one with any long term experience at hive will have any disagreement the moment they look up Olaf’s profile.
He certainly did it for nefarious reasons. And it wasn't just to me. Like I said, hive is more centralized than most systems where a few whales control everything and do as they please. They abuse the system and drive away anyone they don't like.
This is not true, you can easily look at hivebuzz ranking to see that it's plenty distributed. Whales acting in nefarious reasons can be countered easily and it can cost them social repercussions and potential earnings/opportunities down the line.
We've seen how whales who do nothing of value are treated at times with cases like trasnsisto/newsflash where most people, except a few hoping for a quick vote would just ignore them, compared to say whales like theycallmedan who build valuable things are respected on here and end up doing really well.
Well we can clearly see azircon abusing many users and engaging in vote trading. If he didn't have money, he would never get to so those things or get the amount of votes he gets on his posts.
There's also nothing I can do to ever get a post that isn't DVed to 0 now.
You could prove that there is demand to read your posts and people who have a good track record to want to defend you from downvotes.
I don't see azircon trading votes anywhere.
Anyone can look and see many upvotes on my posts. Some are automatic but many aren't and I've had comments about how people learned from my games. I'm not going to keep making posts that take significant effort while earning 0. And not just earning 0 but also reducing the curation rewards my upvoters get.
As for azircon trading votes, that's his favorite past time after nuking everyone he doesn't like.
Look at these comments all upvoted in 100% by galenkp:
I don't have computer access to take a better look right now but there are some people he always or almost always votes for and they do the same for him.
And yet my $13 a week, most of which came from Splinterlands' contests, are apparently a problem, even though they take much more effort than his posts (any of them farm more hive than all my posts from one week).
Maravillosa información, vale la pena re leer... Digerir y poner en práctica.
Well, it difficult to get upvotes here on hive, but I believe that hard work and patience pays. However, very few people might have that patience, that's why it's difficult for new people to stay.
But talking about one person spending all of his voting power on just one individual, has already shown the level of his selfishness, denying other creators opportunity to earn. I hope he understands this.
But for struggling content creators, if they at least have some support, by upvotes it would be so encouraging. We all are humans, so it is very natural to expect the upvotes you see on other peoples content on yours too.
I tell you that there are people here who have been posting for many months now, but they do not have engagement and upvotes on their content, even including mine, although I believe that one day, my time here will pay.
However, I come to believe that to make in here on hive, you need to invest money to buy vote. That is what I have believe now. Because if you don't have enough Hp to delegate to some individuals, you can't earn their vote. Especially from curation trail. This makes this platform totally centralise.
It takes courage and patience to be here. Let's be real to ourselves; no one would be here if not for content monetisation. even in traditional social platforms like; X, Facebook, tiktolk and others, people get engaged because they hope to be monetized.
All am saying is; so many people have been denied upvotes, not because their content are not good enough, but because the don't have HP enough to buy those upvotes by delegation.
Everyday, we are spreading the good news about hive on X and other platforms. (I also do the same). But it baffles me how we intend to keep the new members we are hunting for, when almost 70% of the people we have already hardly gets an upvotes on their post.
What an interesting insight. With that mentality and belief, no wonder you get no upvotes.
Entitlement is bad, self reflection is good. That's how you move forward on Hive
What has made you believe this?
This is literally a reason I get downvotes on my posts cause I attempted to stop such activities. There are some still ongoing and harder to get in the way of, but I believe there's always some solutions, if its not possible to downvote at times, it is possible to never upvote them yourself. The chain will remember who they are.
I really don't think your overview of how things are here are correct, I run a pretty big curation project and we do a lot to curate users based on different criteria that are not how much Hp they have, how much they delegate to us or their KE, etc. So I respectfully beg to differ in that case.
It's just mind bloggling how twisted some people's thoughts are, and they try to justify their own short comings as created by someone else
I think they've pretty much made it so they're not gonna be successful here.A lot of the accounts I follow/interact with it started with comments they made on others work. Also between folks upvoting good comments, comment rewarder and the amazing work of topcommentrewarder commenting can be very rewarding in a tangible way.
But if the only person you can convince to give you a vote is a fiance...maybe the issue is the content and maybe the issue is not engaging with other people enough.
Rewards are earned through effort, not trickery, and distorted behavior kills opportunities for collective growth in a fair environment like the Hive.
Is it individual effort on a single post, or the aggregate effort over time across a user's entire posts?
While upvotes on comments are nice, comments main purpose is to build relationships and market yourself and your content. The upvotes on comments for several months don't add up to one post that gets noticed. So it makes sense to focus on creating great content first, then on building relationships and saying something that is real and then on marketing your content via comments as a third pillar.
The scenario you described is really counter productive, that is like a negative marketing and spending all of your upvote power on one low account that is related to you is also a bad idea marketing wise as you have nothing left to share...
I am a broken record here.
It's got to be about the content, and about the engagement. :)
A passionate creator is going to create and engage in the stuff they love whether there's a reward or not. People do that everyday on countless other platforms.
A thought-provoking post! It’s a good reminder that value on Hive comes from genuine engagement, not just expectations of rewards.
$WINE
Your story reminded me how some time ago I liked a girl from Hive. This was long time ago. Anyway I liked most (if not all her posts-even those that were past payout...🤦). Sure back then my vote was very tiny like around 0 tiny. But I could have used my HP better.
I am investing time, effort and money in to Hive. Been here since 2017. Have not cashed out anything yet... And no one owes me anything. Future is not promised and I already got my rewards for the past efforts. Would I sometimes have liked those past rewards to be a bit bigger? yes. But people gave me rewards that in their eyes matched my efforts. Perhaps my content was worth more but I did not do good enough job engaging with others so I got less rewards. Or perhaps my content was not as good as I thought it was. Either way getting less rewards was probably my own fault. But at the same time I will probably only be able to achieve financial freedom with Hive rewards. So getting bigger rewards is always nice.
I agree that expecting some return for genuine effort is natural, but your example of the user trying to game the system shows how misplaced expectations can backfire. It’s a reminder that Hive’s strength lies in its organic engagement. The curation part of Hive can be discussed as there are incentives on Hive to not just vote the best content, if you look at the economics. Anyways.
This new user’s drop in activity after the upvotes stopped is telling. Genuine effort should drive participation, not just chasing rewards.
This types of post are always interesting because it can showcase how people view Hive from different perspectives and motives.
What do you think could help newer users better understand Hive’s balance of effort and reward?
I’ve been talking about that, and even discussing this topic recently with several Hiveans. Hive is not really about money in the first place to me – I had become fond of it, found people to follow and engage with over the years, and now, I could imagine doing it without the financial incentive behind it (although I do admit it’s pretty neat that I can post a craft brewery review and get the money I spent there back on my share of the post payout). On the other hand, I do not depend on Hive as my source of income – I don’t need the extra money to secure my living, and that’s not really the case for a good portion of Hiveans. If you approach Hive as it was your job in a way, knowing you need to earn certain amount each week/month, then you are likely to expect to be paid accordingly for the effort: “I spent two hours editing photos in Canva to make them look this cool; and an extra hour writing the text down and translating it, so I should get my bucks, dudes. Vote for me!”
You can see that spirit in #beersaturday (no pun intended). I am aware you’re not into beer, yet I’m quite sure you can tell that there are people who know their pint, distinguish differences in taste or if a brew fits the respected style. They perhaps travel to breweries over the world as I do (I actually pin them to Worldmappin, and when I happen to talk to the founder of that brewery, which is not really uncommon in such establishments, I’ll tell them where they’ll find my review in a week or two, hand over a Worldmappin sticker with a QR code to the map and so on, and eventually mail them the post itself, but that’s a different story), or at least visit dedicated taprooms and beer stores to sample craft specialties. Their posts are quite naturally well appreciated. Btw, these posts are precisely the ones I’d publish even with no rewards, it’s became my tradition over the years, and I’m quite proud I’ve visited and charted breweries in 10+ countries on 3 continents for Hive (or just two, depending on if you count Cyprus as an Asian country).
Then there are people who just take a selfie with a supermarket industrial beer and sort of rewrite its advertisement. “That’s the perfect fit for a night out/gathering with your friends/sunny day at the beach/… This beer is famous for its taste. People here love the brand, and for a reason.”
The author did the task – went to a store, invested into a can of beer, went home, took a bunch of selfies, edited them, wrote the best they could (taking into account they likely have no real knowledge on the topic), and then earn less than the beer cost. Is that fair? There’s time and financial investment, and there’s also the lack of knowledge and experience. Who can tell?
Having more developed, rather independent communities empowering growth of their members and maintaining curation (as fair as possible) would help a lot in my point of view. I contemplated on this topic a few months ago, feel free to browse the post, as this comment is already long enough.
I feel like the problem is people confuse platforms with charity sometimes. Support should come from merit, not relationships. If everyone did that, the system would break fast.
First, I would like to thank you for discussing this here in the platform. It is true that some are too entitled in this platform, although a lot of us, for sure, is in focus of community building. When I started Hive, I was also in the same behaviour. But looking and understanding that this platform needs to have network of individuals who share the same interest of working as community, I changed myself. And I hope I am doing better now. What goes around, comes around, both for the active and for the entitled ones.
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The truth is, as humans, we all feel entitled to something we spend time doing, which isn't a bad thing if we have the right perspective and strike a balance.
For example, instead of expecting a particular reward on every post we make, we can be happy to receive whatever support we get because there are other social platforms we post content and get nothing as rewards.
We can also try building our engagement by commenting (sincere comments after reading through), we can also support others by voting no matter how little the value of our vote is.
Many people come in with the wrong expectation, which is not their fault because they were told they would make huge money from hive, hence the "entitlement"
Hive is a long-term investment. It's not a rich quick scheme. That's what I tell people when they complain!
Hi Acidyo, i read your post and think you are very smart and experienced person, I almost completely agree with your point of view — one should first put in the effort and achieve results. Whether others give rewards or not depends on whether they think what you’re doing has value.
Greetings, young man, when I joined Hive I knew I could upload content and be rewarded for it or not. If I get rewarded, I'm happy; if they don't, it doesn't torment me. I'm on Hive to write about things that are important to me. For a long time, I've tried not to worry. Maybe if I were more consistent or dedicated more, I'd hope they'd value my work, but for now, when I publish, I do it more from the heart and to satisfy myself.
Have a happy day, everyone. I'm going to gosh because that's my favorite part here on Hive. I'm almost done raising $30 in Hive for my pets, and that's very good.
I can really understand from the stand you visiting from sometimes let take life for example you got to work a really far length to get recognition and if that doesn’t work out you try different approaches either good or bad for that recognition to be possible so we cant really have the say to judge what people do to get that recognition but all we have to do is guide them the right path i hope i make sense
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A lot of people are onboarded with promises to get HUGE rewards on anything they post and blabla.
It's understandable for them to be mad if they dont get rewards.
If they are not here for anything but rewards.
I love receiving rewards on my posts, it's great, but I don't think I have the right to have them Mandatory. If I try to strive for them, I do my best, but I understand that in Hive you can receive rewards sometimes and sometimes not, and when I receive them, I'm happy.But when I don't receive them, I continue as normal and write and play and share my content because there are always opportunities to be rewarded. You just have to continue, be persistent, and create valuable content. En mi escuela si quiero tener buena nota tengo que sobresalir y hacer lo mejor que puedo y creo que en Hive es lo mismo. Pero la diferencia en Hive es que todos los días tenemos oportunidades eso es lo que me encanta que si hoy no te va bien mañana tal vez si. Y que muchas veces el esfuerzo vale la pena. I love Hive for everything it's given me, little or much, but it's the best thing I've ever had besides my family and my studies. Hive is the best.
regarding upvotes through delegations. many communities pay a reward for delegations, the higher the delegation the higher the payment. for most communities once the delegation is made there is no further effort required to receive a daily or weekly payment. it's automatic- you support the community and the community supports you. some communities instead of or in addition to that give automatic upvotes for posts that their delegators make. i don't see why this form of reward payment is necessarily more controversial. if the delegator does not make any post there is no reward. even a low effort post requires some effort, at least you have to log in and do something. that being said it would be wise for communities to set and uphold some standards for qualifying. a daily one word post saying HELLO is clearly not something that is going to help build and maintain engagement. but when setting such standards consider the fact that even the best haikus contain only 17 syllables and minimalism is both an art form and a lifestyle
Many people forget that Hive is not a vending machine—it's not like you'll get money just by posting. There's still the importance of effort, valuable content, and sincere communication. You said what many people think but don't want to say. Thank you.