RE: My last post?
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OK ... so, I was pulled in only this January because Xeldal started voting up and you started voting down, and I appreciate the context of your side of the issue. Thank you for sharing. I come down hard sometimes, but I try to be fair, and in fairness, I see what you have been trying to do.
Yet you do realize, as a highly intelligent person, that as long as you are DVing people who CANNOT know this history, you are going to be backed into the bad guy corner, right? I'm not going to stop writing. @xeldal is apparently not going to stop upvoting. In a bear market, those upvotes are especially welcome to MANY, and AGAIN, everyone Xeldal upvotes is not spam. I'm not. You know that. But I get it; you are doing your best to keep someone you feel is supporting spam from growing. Yet in expanding these DVs outside ACTUAL spam, you have made the decision to introduce yourself, NOW, to dozens if not hundreds of people as one who takes potential resources away from good content in a time in which people truly need all they can earn. I care enough to read and understand better, but I also have the luxury of sitting in a home that's paid for, with plenty of basic resources at hand.
@xeldal, I have read your posts from way back -- you also are a highly intelligent person. You also have an opportunity here to stop this madness that is hurting people that are not spamming and should not be involved in this matter. Just how much is it worth it to you to keep your part of this going while innocent Hivers are getting hurt in the middle? I don't know your side of the story as well, but I'm sure you have one and it is rich with history -- but for TODAY, I can think of something you can do today to help everyone. I would think withholding the $42 DV you and @enki tend to drop on Mark would help a lot to end this whale war. I would think you upvoting whatever you want and not DVing everything Mark upvotes would help a lot. Both of you can be heroes for Hive today -- NOW -- or you can both keep up the madness and hurt Hive's short-term and long-term chances. What's that $42 DV worth to you and Enki today, Xeldal?
GENTLEMEN, whales, and global countrymen all -- PLEASE make peace, so that Hive can flourish and not be crippled. Everyone has a side to the story. Everyone is responsible for what they do from here on out. If tomorrow is the same as today, you will have chosen that. If tomorrow is better than today, and Hive's innocent content creators can breathe easier again, you will have chosen that. It is entirely up to you.
You fail to factor in the thousands of downvotes a week I prevented and the thousands of upvotes a week I no longer give when I stopped voting on authors. I can assure you it accounts for way more than the small percentage I have downvoted.
I'll take your word for it, Mark. I'm not disputing your version of longer-term events because I don't have evidence either way ... but the other Hivers you are DVing don't know either. They know what is happening to them NOW. I'm not spam and you and Freeborn rolled through again today on me -- even if it is just to take off Xeldal's votes, y'all treat me like I'm blacklisted here, and it has a psychological ill effect. You just think I should take it on the chin, and I can while even caring enough to try to understand your side of the story ... but the point here is, the New Hivers that come in here need not be burdened with having to manage years of context to understand why they should be discouraged, coming in the door. Hivers creating good content shouldn't either, Mark.
Remember WHO YOU ARE, Mark. I read your whole post. Look back at all the good you have done. Is this fight with Xeldal the absolute best thing you can do, going forward? Does it even fit with your total reputation? THINK, Mark -- think! If I BELIEVE YOUR POST, you're better than being reduced to just a whale war ... why would you allow your broadest legacy to be DVs in a bear market when you KNOW that people have been surviving because of Hive starting in the pandemic? Xeldal is powering DOWN; he's not going to get significantly bigger even if you let his non-spam upvotes go. I'm not saying "don't fight against abuse." I'm not saying, "Just take the abuse because nobody cares anyway." Despite the fact of our unfortunate introduction, I do give a darn about you because you are a human being in a tough, tough spot. I'm saying, the way out is up to you.
Mathematically, you know you might end this positively by voting UP what you agree is the good stuff Xeldal votes, right? That stops you from DVing each other, and suddenly, good content makes both of you and everyone else so profitable that spam becomes less attractive for everyone. EVERYBODY DOING GOOD GROWS, and spammers get less. You know with your skills, you can inform people that the best thing to do with real spam is to MUTE IT, the most underused ability on the chain -- certain abusers are getting muted out by whole communities, and that may be the wave of the future!
There has GOT TO BE A WAY, Mark. You are highly intelligent, highly skilled. You still have options and choices, NOW, to fix this thing. You do not have to be trapped ... but that which is your choice is YOUR CHOICE, not mine, not Xeldal's. You make your reputation, DAILY, with people who have not been here as long and cannot know all that has happened. You can stop being called the bad guy TODAY, and from here forward. It is UP TO YOU.
@themarkymark
This is one of the detrimental effects of DV wars that saddens me the most. Because DVs cost the DV'er nothing, yet they cost good-faith curators, sometimes considerably, it drives good-faith curators away from certain accounts, authors, topics, or away from manual curation altogether, as in your case.
Hive was a much better place when you felt free to distribute your upvotes in what you saw as a meaningful way. The value of Hive has diminished as a result of this conflict between you and newsflash, then xeldal. I'm not talking about market cap value. I am talking about the informative-content and decentralized-governance value (via manual curation) that you personally used to willingly provide to the chain (which, quite honestly, was in no way 'worth your time' in monetary terms).
Prior to this DV war, you were consistently adding value to the chain. I have no doubt that you could have been making more (in monetary terms) by just focusing on coding and projects, rather than writing and curating. That's why this is so sad and frustrating to me. Even when you were reaping author and curator rewards, you were 'losing' money, in terms of opportunity costs. But you were willing to do it and the entire chain was better off because of that. With you walking away, your continued efforts at growing the pie are being taken away from all of us.
This is by design. Rewards are supposed to go according to stakeholder consensus. If there is disagreement, then rewards go somewhere else. In cases where the disagreement is consistent, it's a waste of your vote power to continue voting there, because it isn't going to be part of a consensus and get paid. You need to vote elsewhere if you don't want to lose out.
If people could just send rewards unilaterally, without regard to consensus or disagreement, it would just be tipping (which people can also do, without concern over downvotes).
Thanks for the engagement. I truly appreciate it!
Yes, I am all for systems that facilitate consensus and that are at their core community-driven. With that said, when a single whale account can repeatedly nuke posts to zero, just because they personally disagree with the content or dislike the author or with one or more of the curators, it is not 'consensus'; it is merely the weaponization of stake. If the community genuinely prefers a Hobbesian state of nature for the blockchain, then so be it. (And if such is the case and if it becomes clear to me that such is the case, then I will likely do as marky and 'walk away' from day-to-day involvement.)
However, if one prefers a Lockean state of nature, as do I, then some changes are warranted.
As a relative newcomer to Hive (I've been here for a little over two years), I see the ease with which DVs can currently be weaponized as a serious drawback to the future growth and health of the ecosystem.
Greater transparency can and will improve the situation, without the need for any protocol changes, and I am actively working with some well-respected members of this community to accomplish those ends. However, we should also seriously consider potential protocol changes. I will be presenting some ideas in that regard, and hopefully something meaningful will come from the ensuing dialogue.
I get the fact that adequate tools are needed to combat spam and fraud and the like. I also appreciate (and agree with) the importance of consensus with respect to reward pool distribution. My thoughts and concerns (regarding the current system) are threefold:
First, I genuinely fear that the ease with which DVs can be weaponized can and will blow up in our faces if and when Hive gains some of the widespread recognition it deserves.
Second, if under the current anti-abuse system we are unable to maintain the active participation of valuable longstanding contributors, like marky, that should be a wakeup call, imho. (Even if marky is okay with 'walking away', I am not okay with that. Not when I believe we can do better. Not when I believe we can achieve a both/and rather than either/or solution, if we put our minds to it.)
Third, although I am convinced that 'free DVs' have their place and likely 'saved the day' when malicious actions by a few were threatening the continued viability (and thus the very existence) of the blockchain, it is an extremely blunt instrument as currently configured. In light of my first two concerns, I refuse to simply shrug my shoulders and move on. I have been and will remain diligent to explore new ideas, to dialogue and brainstorm with any who care to join me. I have no doubt we can hone the tools at our disposal to provide much more precision with much less collateral damage.
We'll have to agree to disagree. A single whale CAN nuke SOME posts. But they have to prioritize which posts, and that's consensus. The ones they're nuking do not have consensus. The others that necessarily survive with successful payouts are consensus.
Nothing is going to blow up in our face if Hive gains widespread adoption because there will be too many posts and too much engagement for any peculiar preferences of an individual to make a difference. We pay a lot of attention to it now because the whole thing is small so every controversial outcome becomes a big deal.
On every platform on the internet, ever, there a variety of bad outcomes, but they're usually small and not at such a systemic level that it destroys the platform. People's accounts get hacked, get locked for mistaken reasons (and sometimes never unlocked, etc.). There is also blatant copyright infringement (someone posted an entire Disney movie on Twitter in HD the other day and it stayed there for a few days before being removed), impersonation, aggressive disinformation campaigns, etc. Perfection isn't achievable. Same here.
Erm... do you mind to paraphrase that a bit, mate? Please, define WTF is "community" consensus under the premise that you are describing.
If someone chooses to downvote something, it gets less rewards. The more stake downvoting it (whether from one person or multiple), the more stake disagreement there is, and the less rewards it gets.
At the same time, OTHER posts which do NOT get downvotes (or get relatively little stake downvoting, even if some), get more rewards. Those are the ones where the community has broadly agreed to direct rewards.
You can think of a downvote as a sort of veto on payouts. Anyone (or multiple people) can stand up and object, essentially veto that payout, though strength of that veto depends on stake.
Ok, I suppose your premise might be a bit better understood now. But what I find very very weird and highly misleading is the fact that you would have used the word "consensus" in all that malarkey about the downvotes. Since clearly there's not any consensus at all when through an arbitrary downvote you end up snatching and sweeping with the rewards of the authors and all the curators of a post.
The consensus is all the stuff that doesn't get downvoted (or is downvoted less).
Someone can arbitrarily downvote a few things, but they have to choose what to downvote. No one has enough downvotes to blanket everything, or even most (maybe more like 1% in extreme cases).
We'll have to agree to disagree here. That's not "consensus" in the slightest. Stuff that doesn't get downvoted or is downvoted less can happen for multiple and varied reasons.
Reasons as if the content of that "stuff" has not been seen by anyone or only seen by a minimal audience of true peers with the sufficient awareness and low HP stake as to know beforehand of their lack of power & influence and the uselessness of their downvotes to disagree, censor or cause harm to all those who show ideas contrary to their way of thinking.
Or that stuff so bland, so innocuous, so useless, so from a docile and servile herd that only seeks to fawn, flatter and please to the most powerful stakeholders with high HP stake to ingratiate themselves with them and earn favors and privileges for the stupid things they are forced to publish in order not to be questioned, punished and eventually ostracized if they dare to publish really interesting and important "stuff" with a minimum dose of controversy and critical thinking that really will motivate and make people think.
In my opinion only that kind of "stuff" is what doesn't get downvoted or is downvoted less. And it also has nothing to do with consensus at all.
I really don't know what do you refer to or what do you want to mean with that of "they have to choose what to downvote."
Over here it is clear, evident and notorious that all those addicted to spread downvotes are only those wealthy individuals with high HP, influence and power to try to manipulate, alter and skew the volume of the content published on the platform by its users only in favor of their own agenda and petty interests. No one else downvote shit here anywhere.
Many of you use downvotes as a retaliation tool. Others as a way to force their own whimsical, political, economic or philosophical agenda on others. And many others as a mere form of malevolent amusement by causing damage, confusion and disappointment in poorer people who does not think in the same way as you. That's what I see as the closest thing to a "consensus" of what is really happening here.
Yeah, if you have read carefully everything I've said in this comment. Define me now what the hell are extreme cases?
Cheers!!
That's extremely unlikely for anything with large payout.
It's really very simple. People have only a limited number of downvotes and most don't even use all of those. Only a VERY, VERY small amount of content ever gets downvoted. For some reason you are fixated on that and ignoring the large majority that does not get downvoted, and therefore in effect gets a nod from the stakeholder base because for whatever reason no one objects to it.
Extreme cases are the very, very largest stakeholders with a few percent of the stake (I'm one of the largest and I have a little over 1%). But with downvotes you only get 25% vote power, so someone with 1% of the stake can only downvote 0.25% of the upvotes.
The majority of stuff can't be downvoted heavily, and in practice it's far more than that (90-95%+ that is NOT downvoted). People have to choose. When they choose something to downvote, that is a VERY strong indication of disagreement. You don't have to agree there should be disagrement, but recognize it for what it is.
Once again, I do thank you for your engagement.
And, yes, I do agree that we disagree. My goal here, though, is to discern and discover some meaningful feasible space wherein we do agree, or at least where we can agree.
On this, we both agree.
So what you're saying here is that any post that gets passed over by 'any and all whale DVs' has thusly received the consensus blessing of all whales and thus is allowed to bathe in the HIVE inflation reward pool.
I think it's important that we define our terms. When I use the term 'consensus', this is what I mean:
Given that definition (which you are, of course, free to disagree with), one could say that a form of consensus is being reached on those posts that are passed over. However, one cannot say that any form of consensus is being reached on those posts that are being nuked. Consensus is thwarted because there is no viable (i.e. sustainable) mechanism wherein dissenting voices (i.e. those who believe a nuked post DOES warrant a portion of the reward pool) can have their "opinions ideas and concerns ... taken into account."
In other words, we do not have consensus on the overall distribution of the reward pool. What we have is a semblance of consensus that, in reality, gives unchecked veto power to each and every whale. Each and every whale is free to single out individual accounts and/or ideas that they dislike, and completely and totally remove them from participation in the reward pool.
And, whereas other whales are essentially defenseless in combatting the unilateral nuking of individual accounts and/or ideas, this enables each whale who chooses to exercise this power to systematically eliminate his/her enemies by simply being focused and persistent.
This is exemplified by the situation with @themarkymark, @newsflash, and @xeldal. The current protocol affords no mechanism wherein the innumerable accounts who value marky's contributions can have their voices heard.
A better consensus mechanism for the overall distribution of the reward pool is what I am and will continue vying for. A change to the mechanism so that true consensus can be more readily achieved.
No protocol will be perfect. However, I am convinced that we can do better.
This is consistent with the sentiments @theycallmedan mentioned in this post in August 2021.
I have some additional ideas that I believe will further improve on Dan's proposed Counter-DV concept, which I hope to share soon.
Here are two relevant excerpts from Dan's post:
No, non-whales can and do downvote as well, and can have a large impact on rewards especially the moderate payouts that don't have whale upvotes.
If whales upvote and bestow a large windfall on a post (in fact even a single whale can), then it's fitting that other whales can also downvote that same post, no?
The problem I have with your argument is that @newsflash (at least previously, if I understand correctly that it powered down) and @xeldal are extremely large stake accounts. They have a large, one could even say enormous (relatively speaking) investment in the chain. If, for whatever reason 'good' or 'bad', they happen not to believe that @themarkymark should receive rewards, it's pretty unlikely that @themarkymark receiving rewards could ever be said to have consensus. You can adjust things around the edges somewhat, but that fundamental fact is hard to avoid.
I don't disagree with any of that!
For what it is worth, number of accounts does not matter at all. A swarm of 10000 low stake bot accounts should have little to no influence. I prefer to speak of stake or some other demonstrably effective reputation mechanism (extremely hard), and not 'accounts'.
As I understand it, @newsflash and @xeldal targeted @themarkymark as retaliation. They decided to "go after" @themarkymark because of his voting behavior on other posts that they didn't like. This is a negative outcome whether it succeeds or not: @themarkymark, as with anyone else, should be free to express his position positive or negative on posts without fear of retaliation. The most likely solution to retaliation that I see as plausible is making votes anonymous. It's widely done in the real world in part for this reason (also because it inhibits vote buying). Technically this is difficult in a decentralized chain but certainly not impossible. It's more likely to practically achievable after moving social voting to a layer two app rather than trying to build more and more complexity into the base chain.
True. If I adamantly assert that a given post deserves high rewards and you adamantly assert that it deserves zero, then there can NEVER be a true consensus (according to the definition I provided above) on that given post, because I will never 'accept' your desired outcome and you will never accept my desired outcome.
The challenge is, can we adjust the mechanisms to allow 'disputes' such as the one between marky and newsflash/xeldal to be determined more widely rather than just mano-a-mano.
The current system affords supporters of marky only two options: [1] upvote marky's posts and consistently lose curation rewards or [2] employ downvotes against other posts, with the express aim of inflicting curation-rewards damage to the original downvoter(s), to try to dissuade them from persisting in their attacks on marky's posts.
A Counter-DV option (like the one originally suggested by @theycallmedan in the aforementioned post) would allow others to costlessly pile on Counter-DVs (in accordance with and limited by their respective stakes). This might then invite others to pile on DVs. In the end, we get a truly stake-weighted near-consensus on those 'contentious' posts.
My suggestion with respect to Counter-DVs would be to have them either be weaker than DVs and/or less frequent. As such, the total 'value' of DVs able to be implemented would be greater than the total value of Counter-DVs. This allows DVs to be the dominant mechanism for combatting online abuse. However, it provides a mechanism for disagreement over rewards to be more balanced, because stakeholders can costlessly throw their stake into the decision-making process, both for and against rewards going to a single post.
Agreed. When I said 'accounts' I was referring to real people with real skin in the game. And stake-weighted skin in the game is as good a 'reputation' metric as any, imho.
The problem with the current system is that those voting 'for' a contentious post (via upvotes) do so at their own loss, whereas those voting 'against' (via DVs) do so at no loss to themselves and force a loss upon their enemies.
We need some balance in this regard.
Yes, that is fitting, provided there is some community-wide balancing mechanism, rather than a mere unilateral downvote.
Let's consider two extreme cases, under the scenario where Counter-DVs are free and are worth 50% of a full DV, but no self-supporting Counter-DVs are allowed.
First, Alice publishes a one-sentence post saying "Good Morning!" Bob (a whale who knows Alice or maybe is Alice) upvotes the post with his $100 full upvote. Charlie sees this as entirely inappropriate and issues a -$100 full downvote, fully negating Bob's upvote. Bob cannot reverse Charlie's DV, and no one else in the community is willing to support Bob's clearly inappropriate behavior.
Second, Alice publishes a well-written post. Bob (a whale who knows Alice or maybe is Alice) upvotes the post with his $100 full upvote. Charlie sees this as entirely inappropriate and issues a -$100 full downvote, fully negating Bob's upvote. Bob cannot reverse Charlie's DV, but asks for help from the community. Ten accounts see Bob's request but agree with Charlie and pile on an additional -$50 worth of DVs. Twenty accounts agree with Bob and pile on $100 worth of Counter-DVs. The net result is that Charlie's attempt to zero out Bob's upvote on Alice's post was partially effective. Instead of the post receiving $100, it only received $50. However, it took $300 worth of voting stake (Bob's $100 upvote plus the twenty accounts giving $100 in Counter-DVs, which required $200 in combined upvote power) to award Alice $25 in author rewards and Bob $25 in curation rewards (which represent 50% of what Bob would've received had he upvoted a non-contentious post).
Although the second scenario does not technically meet the definition of 'consensus' (because Charlie's plan to zero the post, which he was adamant about, failed, as did Bob's plan to award $50 to Alice and $50 to himself), it is much closer to a 'consensus decision' because it represented the stake-weighted combined actions of 32 accountholders instead of just 2.
To me, this comes much closer to 'consensus decision-making' even though it does not strictly meet the definition of consensus.
No there are two others ones completely different from what you mentioned:
Again, I don't agree at all that number of account holders is relevant. A 10000 account botnet is not more convincing to me than even a single highly invested stakeholder.
Perhaps this is the core of our disagreement.
The only mechanisms for newsflash and xeldal to literally 'spend their money' would be through tips or direct payments. With that said, I assume that you did not intend the literal meaning of the phrase 'spend their money'.
In the non-literal sense, the mechanism for newsflash and xeldal to 'spend their money' is through their upvotes not through their downvotes. This is the only way the phrase 'spend their money' can make any sense (to me) beyond the literal sense.
I should have used the phrase "$450 worth of upvote potential instead of just $200" in lieu of "32 account holders instead of just 2."
The reward pool is a shared resource. It's funded by inflation of stake which is a tax on all stakeholders. When consensus decides to spend money, it is effectively spending ALL of the stakeholders' money, of course more of the larger stakeholders, less of the smaller, as with any sort of pool with unequal shares.
There are only certain types of expenditures that make sense to come out of that sort of shared pool. They're generally expenditures that, in some broad sense at least, the community of stakeholders agrees should be made. In such a mechanism large stakeholders are going to have a large say. Of course, it's not absolute.
If you want upvotes where other stakeholder won't have a say in opposing that payout, including VERY LARGE stakeholders not having a VERY LARGE say (I could be mistaken but I think every account we are talking about here is top 20 if not top 10 or maybe even top 5), that's called a tip. It can and should be done without a shared pool.
Bitclout/Deso is similar to Hive where it is a content publishing platform, but there is no reward pool/inflation and everything is tips.
No one tips outside of the ones who got a massive share of the initial supply and they mostly just pass it along to their group. The default "single click" tip is $0.01, which is used a bit, but still is fairly rare.
With inflation, users will be happy to distribute rewards as it doesn't cost anything, for a tip culture to be successful, we are going to need millions of users with very influential users at the top. Tips are always going to be less than 1% of the user base, probably more like 0.1% or less. I have no incentive to open my wallet and send a tip for some pictures of flowers or a post telling me about the top posts today on Leo Finance.
I didn't mean to suggest I expected a lot of tipping.
It appears you folks are at the tipping point of this conversation.
I suspected not just my thoughts on tipping.
Okay, I see your perspective, although I do not entirely share it.
Unfortunately, it seems I have failed to lucidly communicate my perspective.
I sincerely believe our perspectives are not all that different, nor are they fundamentally incompatible with each other.
We both wholeheartedly support stake-weighted governance over the reward pool, with a desire for something close to true consensus as the overarching mechanism.
Maybe I will find a way to be more lucid in my explanations in the near future. Or maybe I’m trying you’re patience too much. If so, I do apologize.
Nonetheless, I do appreciate the time you’ve taken to listen and respond.
Happy to engage and likewise appreciate your engagement.
Consensus can also counter those downvotes if they so chose to. In the end, the votes are a community effort. The real problem is most people won't be bothered to, or even care.
That's just going to be human nature at work and a you problem not a me problem issue. You also have the fact a third party won't fully understand what is going on and won't be easy to make an educated decision on which side to support. They will have to further invest time, which many won't want to.
Destroying an innocent person's income is in no way shape or form acceptable. Collateral damage is abuse.
And it shouldnt ever happen on Hive.
The dvwar is literally the pot meeting the kettle. Why can you not see that?
I'm simply removing one person's vote, nothing more. In fact by me not voting authors, I have removed way way more downvotes and "lost income". If I vote you right now, you will get downvoted. I also used to upvote you, but now I don't due to that fact.
But do we know this is STILL true, @themarkymark? I have suggested how you test it -- it could be that @xeldal is willing to let this go.
Find a non-spam author Xeldal upvoted -- upvote that author. See if he removes his vote because you are there. Maybe start with some New Hivers he is upvoting. Make their day.
Find a good content creator. Upvote that person before @xeldal gets there and see if he DVs. In fact, I'll volunteer so no one else who doesn't know what is going on has to go through the foolery.
What you have gone through, you have gone through -- it is a LOT, Mark -- but I keep telling you that you have the power to change things yourself. You are wrecking your reputation on Hive because the average person on Hive does not give two dead flies about what happened three years back when they see lost potential earnings and your name on that loss, and will NEVER READ THROUGH THIS POST. Those few who do will get your side of the story ... and that of those voices for peace who addressed both you and Xeldal in an attempt to end this. If you want to keep doubling down so you can be right in your own eyes, that's a choice ... but only one. Others have been highlighted, so, if content creators leave or never get started here because of your choice from TODAY, we will know your why, but also that other ways were possible that could have built a better future for Hive. I am attempting to reason with you, but I am also highlighting for the chain, for both you and @xeldal, that if Hive fails and reasons are sought, that there are people who chose to be reasonable and people who chose to follow their personal agendas, rolling over people who did not deserve to be pulled into this when other options were available. You can do nothing about where Xeldal chooses to write his name in that record. You only can choose where you write yours.