I hope you take your time unpacking the points I have made, and do your very best to prove me wrong on any or all of them. Nothing will more convince you of something than not being able to disprove it, and if you can disprove it I might be able to quit being wrong and become right about it.
If you have any questions I will do my best to clarify anything you find poorly stated, or provide evidence that has convinced me of these things. The disagreement of honest folks is valuable because it enables honest discussion, and that enables honest folks to learn things they didn't know, which is more valuable - at least to me - than money.
I prefer to find facts and truth where I can.
I genuinely believe the answer to "what a downvote is," will never be defined.
A downvote and how it is used is going to be shaped by the personality and weight of the stakeholders at a given point in time. The personality and weight of stakeholders will always change so how a downvote is used and what it is will always change.
I think what you have proposed is your definition, and your definition is true to you.
To me real world analogies will fall short of capturing what HIVE is because what HIVE is will never be defined.
There can be infinite interpretations of downvotes, except in regards to their economic affect. Content creators market their content, and upvotes on this platform are the equivalent of sales. In that context, downvotes are clearly taxes, decreasing the net income of creators - and providing the income removed from the creators to the preferred recipients, because ~36 whales extract >90% of rewards, so when downvotes remove rewards from a creator and return them to the rewards pool, it is the whales that get them. Redistributing private wealth is the purpose of taxes IRL too, and just like on Hive taxes rob the poor to pay the rich IRL, which is why Larry Ellison and Peter Thiel are up on stage with their hands out to President Trump.
This is just the financial reality of downvotes, regardless of any other interpretations.
For me, I see that Hive is a platform that enables voluntarist government (were it not for DV's) to provide political services to members. For example, an HOA (home owners association) could decide to use Hive to operate. The rules and operations of the association could be proposed, discussed, voted on, and funded, entirely through the platform. For example someone could propose planting flowers around all the mailboxes in the HOA. All the members could discuss it, and establish budget that could be provided through upvotes. Homeowners that didn't want to do whatever was proposed by the HOA would not have to join, could quit participating at will, and their payment of funds would be entirely voluntary, as there isn't a mechanism to force them to pay money on Hive*. There are ways they could be coerced, and they could be downvoted for their failure to comply the way Hive is coded presently, which is why DV's prevent Hive from being able to support voluntarist government. The platform presents a new political technology to humanity that could enable truly voluntarist, non-geographically based government, for the first time in history, which I find not only amazing but likely to be seriously implemented as the West continues to destroy itself going forward.
But, that's just me, and depends on a lot more things decentralizing, which is beyond the scope of our discussion. However, were it not for DV's, Hive could very well serve to provide a mechanism for voluntarist government to be implemented, which I think conveys a little of the amazing potential of the platform with a bit of error correction. Before Ned sold out there was discussion of what communities could be, and being able to control how votes worked was on the table. Communities ended up simply being interest groups, and not able to adopt different mechanisms for rewards to be handled, which I think is a shame. Were there such ability for communities we'd be able to test and demonstrate IRL different policies, and communities that best enabled curation, rewards, and etc., would grow while those that did worst would shrink and disappear.
The whales had no interest. They preferred their total control of governance.
Edit: *there wasn't until Hive, because the DHF is a common pool of funds in which Hive users have equity proportional to their stake. Because the DHF can be spent by majority stakeholders, the minority of stake on Hive can be forced to spend the DHF. I have discussed with some whales the reduction of our proposal VP when we vote for successful proposals, but so far they have all feigned incomprehension of the idea, despite our VP is reduced by curation already so it's not some novel concept.
I agree with you that disagreeing with honest folks can be beneficial.
In this instance you brought up communities and that got my mind racing.
I think communities could really use some love on HIVE and I look forward to seeing them be developed more 😊
I agree. I'd also love to see communities become more than just interest groups.
Yea I don't know what all that needs to happen but it would be nice to see if some positive change can be made on that front.
There are a lot of headwinds when it comes to getting changes on HIVE so who knows if anything will happen but it is worth exploring.
"How to make communities more than just interest groups?" That is an interesting problem that may be fun to solve. I look forward to digging more into this. 😊
The Pub is a new community that started when all the drama happened with Bro token so I actually have a community I am a part of on HIVE where I can start exploring this more!
If you make any headway, I'd be pleased, and hope you'll think of my interest in communities and keep me informed.
I am guessing the most I will be able to do is just have conversations with people so at least there are ideas flying around and communities are more top everyone's mind.
I wish I was more optimistic I will get anything "tangible" done but HIVE is social media to some extent, so I do think just talking can make a difference sometimes.