RE: Another Hostile Takeover
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To seize the opportunity to buy a single entity - preferably a failing one, so it comes cheap - is one thing. Hostile takeover of Steem was only possible because SteemIt had disproportionately large stake (and even that was not enough). To replicate the process on Hive the attacker would have to take over stake of several whales, or buy enough Hive on open market to outweigh them. Direct access to printing press would probably not suffice, and if attempted anyway, the price would shoot up so much that even the minnow account would buy you a house. I think we are safe.
the majority stakeholders seek their own profits above the security of the community
False dichotomy. The profits of majority stakeholders are in the community. The coin has no value without its users. That's the whole premise of Proof of Stake governance.
Changing witness voting to splitting 100% of VP across 30 witnesses would equalize the effect of stake on governance
You mean if I have 300 HP and vote for 30 witnesses, each of my votes is worth 10 HP, but if I only vote for 6, my votes are worth 50 HP each? Sorry if I misunderstand, but that's the only thing that came to mind that would make a change (always splitting stake across 30 witnesses would just change the numbers, but nothing else). Assuming that's what you meant, the change would be for the worse. There are many nasty consequences, but the following one is enough to drop such idea. In changing world you need to constantly adapt to survive. In such place the power to veto is the power to destroy. "Change in my way or you won't be changing at all." And above idea would put veto power in the hands of minority stake. Thankfully that will never happen because
that is contrary to the interests of the extant oligarchy
and everyone else on the platform.
You illustrate sound understanding of the issues, and I appreciate your statement regarding why you support the status quo. While you point out the power to veto is the power to destroy, you neglect that the power to veto is also the power to prevent destruction. It is exactly that veto that would have prevented Sun Yuchen from seizing Steem. While Hive remains relatively less censored than other social media of consequence, it is less censored because our overlords are less censorious, not because Hive's structure prevents censorship.
So, we disagree on whether reliance on the whim of overlords is acceptable in that regard. I reckon the value of the Hive community is discounted substantially by the excessive weighting of stake in governance, and sadly, expect to be proven right (again) sooner or later, whenever it will be too late to do something about it.
Thanks!
What censorship you are talking about? It is extremely hard to stop someone from transacting on Hive unless you put that in consensus code - Hive structure does prevent censorship.
You could be downvoted to oblivion in which case your message could have hard time reaching new readers, but to my knowledge front-ends respect their users and give them the opportunity to read posts even if the author has low reputation or their post was muted. Therefore downvotes are not form of censorship.
People interact with Hive through front-ends. The common part of them is Hivemind. Hivemind node operators could censor, even change the content of the posts, simply by messing with the database directly. That's why it is good we have many such nodes, and everyone is welcome to set their own. It would be even better if all front-ends allowed users to choose which node to interact with. Even if such events occurred (I don't know of any), I'm not sure it could be qualified as censorship.
Finally front-ends could filter out or change data selectively. But we have many front-ends, so the same story as with Hivemind. F.e. I had one of my posts muted by community moderator. And while I disagree with the decision (obviously 😉 ), I was very angry when I saw that the content of the post is different from what I actually posted. It is a bug though, only when viewed on hive.blog, other front-ends work correctly in that regard. On ecency.com no replies show, even though there are some. Only peakd.com works fully correct. Bugs are not censorship (but they show the potential). I find it ridiculous that my post remains muted even on my own blog - issue in Hivemind. Still not a censorship.
Confusing downvotes with censorship is an old cockroach will always crawl back no matter how many times you flush it.
Your answer nailed it.
This is false. Censorship is not only the complete eradication of information. It isn't even possible to do that. By your repetition of that false representation that censorship is only the complete eradication of information you but virtue signal.
Censorship is suppression of speech. Downvotes are suppression of speech. They do not only reduce the visibility of your posts and comments, they also reduce your reputation, and impact other things as well. I have been on Hive since 2017 and have seen hundreds of users driven from the platform by flagging campaigns, and only the spammers, scammers, and plagiarists unrepentant benefited the community when so censored.
Financial disincentive is a form of censorship. That's why Ye just had his bank accounts at JP Morgan closed. That's why people are kicked off Paypal, and why Youtube demonetizes videos. Throwing people out windoes and double tapping them in the back of the head are also censorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
While being flagged on Hive is a lesser form of censorship than being murdered, it is censorship, and it is built into the code because it is necessary to censor spammers, scammers, and plagiarists. Censoring people for dissent is contrary to the mission and purpose Hive was established for, and is one of the primary reasons it has failed to leverage it's use case into token value.
It is impossible to completely eradicate information, and claiming anything less than such complete eradication isn't censorship is clearly false. It's either incomprehension of the clear language used in every authoritative source defining censorship for centuries, an excuse of oligarchs to censor, or of patronizing suckups virtue signaling, and has no basis in fact.
Reputation is far from perfect mechanism, but currently I have not heard about any idea that could replace how it is computed. If there was, since reputation is not consensus, if it was computationally sound, it would be quite easy to test alternatives on real data, even provide dual/multiple reputation systems for users to choose from. There are two things to consider when proposing different system:
Aside from above you could also clone some open-source front-end, or write your own, and make it ignore reputation. It would be up to the people to decide if they prefer that over existing solutions. Yes, I know, people don't always choose what's best for them, but that's reality.
I'm not a fan of stake based comment-vote power. It too much resembles real world where voice of the rich means a lot more. Moreover in real world the rich have to actually spend their money to push their message, while in stake based system you just need to be rich. I think the correct system would have to somehow capture the "content value" the person brought to the Hive community. If we had that, we could even drop the 7 day payout period, so the authors could earn on their content without time limit (even better, in the long run "timeless content" would always earn more than short lived posts). But like with reputation, no one proposed any solution that would work and could not be easily gamed. Until miracle happens we have to stick to what we have, with its benefits and shortcomings.
We actually have it pretty nice in Hive where whales are just 10 thousand times bigger than minnows. In real life differences are much more dire.
Dissidents are always on the margins of society, even if they are right, because people prefer "order" over "justice". Being able to speak freely does not shield you from the social consequences in real life, why would it be any different in Hive? Any dissident should be prepared for that reality.
I disagree, that is, it depends. There are situations when you are entitled to financial reward and others when it is just a nice bonus decided by someone else.
It should not be legal for a bank to close anyone's account outside of court order, because it should not be even known if a person has an account in particular bank (so there is no "it hurts our reputation" argument). Banks have enormous privileges, printing new money being one of them, so requirement of absolute neutrality is not too much to ask for. However the same bank might have a point to refuse to credit said person, because certain actions do have consequences that might lead to increased risk of failure and default. It is prudent for the bank to take that into account. I'm not sure what is legal status of Paypal, maybe it should be neutral (preferably) or maybe not. As for youtube demonetization - the real customers of youtube are not content creators but advertisers. It would be preferable if youtube allowed them to choose between different systems, so they ultimately decide where they want their adverts to show (sort of like subscribing to blacklist works in Hive). Currently as far as I know there is no such system, and youtube unilaterally decides for them where ads can show. Not a perfect system but the pressure to make it better should come from advertisers. "But the content creators bring value to youtube". True, but since creators still use the platform, even when they are demonetized, it proves that the sole ability to reach vast audience is rewarding enough for most.
In Hive "customers" are content creators and users, and they both get to decide what to promote and reward and what to bury (subject to imperfect but without alternative - for now - system of stake based voting). As you've yourself noticed, Hive needs that system to weed out bad actors, but as any tool it too can be abused. We just don't have anything better. So even if you are technically right about definition of "censorship" I still don't think it applies to downvotes, because no content is entitled to any rewards - the default is no payout. If something is upvoted and then downvoted back to zero, it just means different users had different opinions on the same subject (and yes, again, it is regrettable that one whale can erase upvotes from hundreds of other users).
You are correct to assert the problem is complex. It took me 5 years to understand why witness votes are weighted as they are because of the complexity of the machinations underlying Hive governance. A colluding oligarchy with 30 100% weighted witness votes can elect a consensus that only the whole platform could oppose by colluding, and that is absurdly improbable.
Downvotes aren't the same thing as not upvoting. IRL you either buy a product or don't. You aren't able to lower the price of the product the manufacturer gets for it. Downvotes do that. They aren't the opposite of upvotes. They are an upvote against that content being published. As you say, the default is no votes at all. Upvotes encourage and reward creators, and lack of votes discourages and fails to reward them. Downvotes actively suppress them. They destroy the value of their content to the creators, like if a competitor for your job was able to reduce your wages in order to make you quit so the job would become available.
That's why they are necessary on Hive, because that financial disincentive nominally counters spam, scams, and plagiarists. Unfortunately it also successfully does the same thing to people that speak out against prevailing policies. If scientific debate worked that way we wouldn't even have clubs, pointy sticks, or edgy rocks.
Censorship is necessary for Hive to succeed, because Hive cannot succeed unless spam, scams, and plagiarism are prevented from monetizing content. Censorship of content that isn't spam, a scam, or plagiarized can also destroy Hive's success, and that degree of success depends on how censored Hive is. There are other metrics that Hive's success depends on, so censorship resistance alone isn't the only thing that determines whether Hive succeeds, and to what degree.
I would submit based on the token value, user metrics published daily by @arcange, and personal experience that Hive is barely able to not completely fail, and that mostly due to Splinterlands today. Wanting Hive to do better isn't something horrible. We all want Hive to do better, eh? However for an oligarchy that captures ~90% of rewards, better can be the enemy of good enough, and only dissenters that do not threaten to tip that boat are tolerable. I also submit I am pretty stupid, because it took me 5 years to grasp how the governance of Hive is maintained through the weighting of witness votes that enable the oligarchy to be assured of their control, and neither an upstart whale nor an agitated demos of plebs can threaten that control.
It even took two years after Sun Yuchen demonstrated how that control was exerted, by tipping that boat with the Founder's stake, before I figured it out. Clearly I am not a credible threat to the extant oligarchy, and doubt they will care what I say one way or the other. The real blackpill is knowing that you are irrelevant no matter what you know, say, or do, and then you die.
LOL
Regardless that we will be able to wrangle over minutiae forever, I appreciate your considered opinions on censorship and how it affects Hive. We may not agree on everything, or even anything, but at least on Hive we can have that discussion and our accounts aren't banned.