If it's possible to make both upvotes and downvotes anonymous, that will take the politics away from voting, and we would get a more accurate picture of what a post is truly worth. It would make the single biggest impact for PoB in a good way IMO. I'm sure many will see a post; think that's a bit overvalued, but don't want to downvote even a small amount due to having their name plastered up for all to see; it can turn tribal. I'm not sure how we would do that without taking voting off the base layer, but I don't think that's a good idea as anything to do with HIVE should be as secure as possible.
The last point you made on downvote curation is clever and accomplishes the same thing without the negative side effects. I'm in favor of doing it that way.
Regarding the latter thing, there would be some edge cases and possibly implementation issues to work out (but it might be easy, I'm just not sure). I do think it would be an improvement over the status quo, but how much of a difference it would make in practice I don't know. Without getting more downvotes deployed somehow as well, probably not much.
Regarding how to do anonymous voting, yes likely some sort of zero knowledge rollup type thing as you suggested but with proper auditing should still be secure. I don't see us being resourced to undertake that sort of development at the moment but with 5 million USD in DAO and growing, perhaps we'll get there.
Frontends could experiment with a 'like' system. Both up and down, separate from votes. From there someone could have a better idea if something should be downvoted or not.
On centralized systems, the downvote or thumbs down is typically used to adjust further suggested content. Vast majority doesn't touch it. Only rarely are they used as a form of genuine expression. When the numbers are higher than average, that's often due to outside contributing factors. For instance, the cancel culture types. They're bringing feelings from the past to anything new. The tallied up downvotes are not highlighting poor quality content. People will apply politics as well in order to help create the illusion of unpopular opinion. Due to the anonymity on the surface, people can act nefariously and get away with creating an illusion. The anonymity is an illusion in itself though. The system or platform knows exactly which accounts are doing what. That data is valuable to them. Creating the illusion of anonymity encourages people to act 'honestly', but what's honest in society isn't always clean or pure. It can be dark and disturbing.
Facebook has the angry emoji. But what's interesting/peculiar about that product is how some content shows up to intentionally piss people off. It's placing certain subject matter in front of those who will disagree in order to help create the illusion an idea is unpopular.
The more I think about this, the less I want to see anonymity applied to voting. For instance, anyone offering a donation on Youtube superchat takes center stage for a moment. The names of accounts donating will even flash across the screen during twitch streams.
Donations are completely different from voting. If you want to spend your own money, then it's up to you whether you want to take credit or not, and you're certainly entitled to do so.
Voting in this context is allocating a shared pool that only really makes sense to exist at all to the extent it is allocated efficiently to increase the value of Hive. For that you need people to be able to both upvote and downvote without harassment or retaliation.
If I purchased tokens in order to support content, that's coming out my pocket. Well, technically it's value moving from one wallet/account to another. Voting is a new form of tipping. We just call it something else and pretend we're not tipping.
I often wonder why it's necessary to stick to that old original vision from Steemit.
If I buy LEO (as example) in order to support content, that is coming out of my pocket. It's like buying a subscription or the rights to tip. It's also one hell of a good deal. Consumers can support/tip content creators at no direct cost since the money they spent remains in their possession. Consumers buying the tokens with the goal of tipping/voting is what actually has the potential to literally increase the value of the token. One content creator with enough of a voice could pull millions of tokens off the market at these prices and make one whale out of thousands of supporters.
If the entire platform was loud about that concept, consumers become the investors (but not the only investors). Instances of actual content is supported organically and gets a lot of eyes. Those eyes share and those instances of content traveling outside become free marketing for the entire platform. That sharing behavior is actually what helped Youtube explode onto the scene and become massive.
I look at some of these instances where downvotes are used to lower rewards. I suppose one the main contributing factors would be those voting aren't actually consumers. Acting as promoters, but blind. Pushing the work up to the high traffic area and even there it's struggling to get views. If a promoter did that in life with those results, they'd be out of a job.
But I often wonder if people would be bothered if a 'big name' showed up, made a few 'whales' out of thousands of consumers, then earned the most each day, plus had eyes and engagement galore. Downvotes in that scenario would seem out of place. But if those consumers, over time, got lured into the trap of setting and forgetting (auto votes without views), that would defeat the purpose of the whole thing. At that point the content creator did nothing wrong, yet they'd be penalized, because some third party offered a service/interference. **Hmmm. Just thinking out loud at this point.
Didn't read all that but I disagree with the very first paragraph. i don't agree that voting is tipping. Voting is fundamentally social and collaborative. If you want to tip, just tip.
BTW, this doesn't mean that you can't buy HIVE to support content with voting. You can, but it has to be within the consensus of stakeholders that content is worth supporting. And often it will be. But if you want to act purely independently, and not give other stakeholders a say over it, again, just tip.
That's fine. Attempting to describe how content consumers are stakeholders and votes can be considered a form of tip. Wasn't presenting an argument. Merely an idea.
Fair