RE: After dedicating 5.5 years to Hive/Steem, I've been informed by KING ACIDYO that I added no value
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I'm perplexed that none of these low value make-up nor elementary school level crafts trending posts don't get downvoted to remove at least half of their earnings. They increased exponentially to spam level, because they've become an easy way to game the rewards.
That being said, the Abundance.Tribe and formerly NaturalMedicine are two communities who are responsible for a good amount of retention on Hive. While I understand where Acidyo is coming from I don't agree that this conversation hurts Hive.
On the contrary, free speech requires you accept the speech you disagree with or are even appalled by. The problem is autovoting, which has destroyed interaction, because it took the need to scroll and read content to assess the quality out of the equation.
This splinters the platform and separates everyone further into tribes. Because of this, no one sees what happens outside their own. They stay in these tribes, partly for the interaction, but mostly for rewards. Proof of this was the attempt by acidyo to push others into the more niche communities, yet users keep using his, because they feel there's better discovery for 'THEM' there.
Same with Gems. I've watched users use NaturalMedicine and Abundance.Tribe earning more than they deserve, but end up posting to Gems for the larger votes on lower quality content. I believe this happens, because we are inherently selfish. On top of that, too many are overlooking the real problem; high stakes not curating quality content.
Part of it is fear of retribution. Another part is complacency, because votes are limited. I think cleaning up the trending feed as a whole is a better solution than targeting a minuscule topic range. Allowing the seemingly negative or even damaging topics to live alongside the positive is necessary to show free speech does exist here.
This whole thing that only the positive should shine through is not realistic nor representative of the real world. I think the Abundance.Tribe is guilty of this as well. I forget which pillar it is or the exact words, but requiring nonconfrontational speech is not healthy nor free speech.
My words are my responsibility, but your reaction is yours. I had a problem with this one pillar since day one, but figured I'd see how far you guys considered it as necessary. It turns out it's pretty important to enough of you that have power it became a problem for me and it hinders free speech by putting the blame of another's reaction on the messenger, rather than where the blame truly lies. This is in opposition to common sense, responsibility and Anarchist philosophy itself.
That being said, I hope you stay kenny, because if it isn't about rewards, then the downvotes won't matter and you'll carry on and keep the conversation going. I look forward to your suggestions. I myself think changing how staking works here is the only solution, but it seems most don't want to lose that power they bought in many cases. Power should never be for sale...
P.S.- if it isn't about rewards, you should have never mentioned that you worry about those who use this as their sole income. This isn't supposed to be a welfare system, UBI nor the only way to earn an income. First off that's socialism, which is in opposition to Anarchy. Second it stifles the growth of those receiving it without question. While they may be creating quality content, they aren't earning new skills to get them by when/if these earnings are affected... This was never meant to be nor should be anyone's sole income.
First off, thanks for the multiple great comments you've left over the last few days. I really appreciate your voice & opinion on the matter, and that you're more than willing to call out folks on all sides of this conversation.
Yep, and it seems like all the folks going around down-voting "controversial" content all agree that the not-controversial trash that usually dominates trending - is trash.
How they choose when to enforce, and when not to enforce, this idea of "reigning in rewards" is one of the telling parts, imho.
Exactly!
This is the entire idea of free expression, and open debate/conversation - because anything that's covered up will always fester, and lies can never survive in the light of day.
If all of us are just "no fact truthers," then why can/will nobody here even make the slightest attempt at actually challenging the things we say?
Just censorship.
I can certainly agree that auto-voting can and often is a big issue, especially when many folks aren't mindful of what their votes are doing.
As I mentioned above, and in other comments to acid, one of the reasons that I post less often on my account than I otherwise would is because I have two whales with me set on a pretty high upvote - sometimes more than I think a given post should make in rewards.
I agree with both of these statements, and I know that most of us "controversial" folks are more than happy to have things topping trending that we disagree with, especially if there is a willingness for debate/dialectic in the comments.
I'm very curious which of the 8 pillars you interpreted as a need for not having real talk?
Yes, everything in my experience is my responsibility, everything in your experience is yours, and so on. This is the most foundational understanding of reality that I have.
That's why, when someone got reactive about what you were posting, I reversed their pushing you out.
It's also why, when you were reactive by them doing it, I couldn't force them to make reparations or anything.
You could have just come back in, but you chose not to... Yes, with the reason given being that you wanted them to invite you back in, but still your choice.
Alas, as I mentioned in your first or second comment on the other post, I think that issues like that were bound to happen by trying to just smash together a giant curation list I was building and the idea of a community of some kind.
One of the issues with money-based systems is that they greatly reduce the amount of real connection, real communication, and real talk that people are willing to have, because of the financial concerns.
Whether I stay or go, I will most certainly be pushing this conversation, and the desperate need for Hive to re-orient itself (or for an actual free-speech fork) for as long as I'm here.
At this point I'm most likely going to only curate on Hive - so that I can keep supporting awesome content and people, and the cabal has no way to do anything to me without showing their colors by attacking hundreds of innocent creators.
My content, however, will likely become exclusive to Odysee at this point, because I get WAY more reach & interaction over there, even though I've barely been on the platform for a year - Plus there is no dPoS, up/downvotes are only for show, and nobody can make your posts disappear.
But that's the thing, Hive/Steem has always been about the rewards, for everyone. It's the only reason it hit a million users back in the day, the only reason any bigger influencers ever came here and posted, etc. Think azircon would have dropped hundreds of thousands if he wasn't looking to profit off this place?
My argument isn't that I'm not here "for the rewards" - but rather that I'm here for the rewards I get to distribute.
I understand your reasoning and since I don't really use Hive seriously, I shouldn't have even suggested you stay.
As for my choice about coming back into the Abundance.Tribe, I couldn't get past that pillar(which I'm not even going to bother to find), of which the 'said' user inviting me back could have helped me to overlook it. In the end, it's listed as a requirement that members adhere to all the pillars and I cannot.
I know myself and my direct approach tends to rub ppl the wrong way, so here I am doing just fine without the tribe. 'His' inability to humble his power even a little told me all I needed to know.
I'm not greedy, because I've built an extensive skillset and can live outside the system without money. All anarchists or 'variations of' should be able to as well. If anyone depends on Hive to live off of solely, in my opinion they are leaches and cannot be any variation of an anarchist.
That being said, I wish you the best and understand you did not take a position against me and I harbor no ill fealings towards you, nor did I in the past. I simply don't agree with your full set of pillars, but do see the positive your tribe has added to the platform.
It's all good - I've been getting bombarded with Telegram, Discord, and comments about sticking around :-P
The thing is, I've been watching these problems get worse and worse for years on Hive, and I've watched our ability to combat them decrease as well, as the stake shifts more and more into their hands - One of the reasons for this downvoting of the opposition is that it guarantees they keep gathering stake at a faster and faster rate than us.
This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Robert Heinlein, in Time Enough For Love:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I wouldn't go that far - since we're in a very odd world-state right now, where money is required for most things, and there are only so many ways to convert time into money, without requiring a whole lot of starting capital (like building a business or even launching a smaller project.)
Besides, most people who reach the philosophical realm of anarchy still have a lot of de-programming and re-programming to go through, to get rid of decades of state indoctrination and media brainwashing... Plus there's all sorts of different angles to take.
Plenty of the an-cap types are dedicated to crypto because they see it as the way out of the old system, and many of those folks don't have nearly the skillset they need for the real world (outside of Babylon)
That said, I also agree that self-sufficiency is absolutely necessary for true freedom.
Thanks, I appreciate that!
That whole debacle was one of the big pieces that started shifting what I thought/hoped for TSU to become. While there is certainly less of a cohesive "community" now (no discord, no "members," no autovotes) - the project has been able to support FAR more people by making these changes.
Hope you're having a magnificent day!
That's all DPoS is.
I see the value in Dpos if implemented right. Stake is valuable and there should be perks for hodling, but it doesn't need to give one more power than another in governance, for example. I don't think it needs to be done away with, but think it could use a restructuring.
The problem is, those who get to make the decision to do so are unlikely to give up that power. None of the forks(alternatives using the exact first layer) have addressed this, so I don't see them as an answer to much.
It's pretty simple really. If you want to remove stakeholder votes from rewards, then remove stakeholders as the ones paying the rewards from inflation. Create a new system with rewards paid for and controlled by a subcommunity with different allocation rules, or rewards coming from ad revenue and allocated in some other way, or something else.
I don't think it is necessary for DPoS to involve rewards at all. The social posting and rewarding system just happens to be an app that was built on the chain, but it's not the only way, and not part of DPoS itself.
I think only people who secure the network should even be rewarded with Hive. 2nd layer solutions that are out now easily can reward people in specific tokens for a community.
Fine with me. The social app is basically an app. It happened to be built into the blockchain, but from a software design or blockchain consensus point of view there really isn't any reason for it. The model of "smart contract" used in Bitshares (predecessor of Steem, predecessor of Hive) was code included in the core blockchain consensus code itself, but the world has moved on and that's not really seen as ideal at this point. The social app should probably be second layer, yes.
So stakeholders are paying inflation that they have not earned or received yet, but post author and voter rewards aren't theirs until the receive them?
Rules for thee but not for me.
Stakeholders are paying for inflation every single block no matter what they do, because they are the ones being inflated. If you show up looking for rewards with low or no stake, inflation doesn't cost you anything. And that's perfectly okay, the system is designed to potentially reward you, and maybe you will get some rewards, but you're not entitled to them nor entitled to much of a say over who gets them.
Stakeholders can't avoid being inflated (well, at least not without a hard fork), but they can and do have a say (in proportion to their stake, i.e. contribution to the cost of inflation) over what that inflation is used for.
That means, if I understand it correctly, that those who are squinting at their payouts here are stupid enough to believe what it says on the box? Well, insofar as I myself trust the advertising that is made for a product, I haven't learned very much in life, have I?
However, shouldn't it then rain downvotes for postings that do marketing and have catchwords on their packaging that suggest something on the social app that can't really be adhered to there, because the actors suggest to the curious customer that he can find a livelihood here? In any case, I see the upvotes fluttering in everywhere in praise of these "unimagined possibilities". Consequently, you should basically take the wind out of the sails of such postings too, because they suggest something that goes against the purely rational principle of block building.
If you took away the social app altogether, what would be left? A pure cryptocurrency that wants to experience being traded and financial transactions without banks as intermediaries in between? But where is Hive traded? Not on binance and kraken, as far as I know. As we are experiencing, anonymous transactions are not tolerated or crypto trading platforms are pulling out of it, or am I seeing this wrong? I am not a pro at all of this.
A cynic might say that it is these hopefuls who take the advertising for granted and spread enthusiasm that basically ensure that their own illusion is maintained. The emotionless calculating stakeholder who is in charge here can be quite happy with that, can't he?
If I understand Hive as a casino (which I think, comes closest to what it is), where I play with chips, wouldn't it be the case that I also want to exchange these chips at some point?
Why then all the fuss about social engagement, as read above? Why the mantra of "holding"? Why is it that individual bloggers are expected to engage in their comment sections? Things are being mixed up here that seem to contradict each other.
The jester would probably laugh and say, "Well, we never said you couldn't make a living on Hive, however, we don't rule out that possibility either."
That's basically a form of promise without a promise. It can be done, of course, and we see it being done. Looking at it that way, one could interject that those who believe the advertisements are also the ones doing the advertising. Advertising is always tied to the emotional sensations people experience through it. To that extent, I could dismiss it as romantic nonsense. But still give my thumbs up - lol
You just can't say that too loudly, because then you'd probably be stoned from all sides, both by the hopeful bloggers and by those who are in charge here, because it just doesn't play well, does it?
I don't worry in that respect, I do not put my woe and well to this place, for the better wisdom. With my acquired stake I can, as they say, do what I want, can't I?
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Where does it say you are entitled to rewards on any particular post?
I think, I made that obvious.
You have the marketers, right? And you have the white paper. Those two don't go always together, that much seems to be clear to me.
I did not say anything about entitlement, did I?
There is some marketing. It could definitely be better.
Every post is marketing.
Not all are effective
One thing that posts resulting in folks coming to Hive to read them feature is payout, and prior to that, potential payout. Since it's not a feature on most articles folks investigating a topic find on articles, it's likely to be noted with interest.
In cases where a well researched and written post is affected by significant downvoting, that is tantamount to a flag on Hive itself, potentially eliminating the marketing power of such posts altogether.
When such things happen, we're shooting ourselves in the foot.
It's all a matter of degree.
:) The answer is: probably nowhere in this exact term, as far as I can tell.
But it's the suggestion which is out there, big time. As I said, you can say "it's nowhere said, so why would anyone assume it?" And my answer is "because, in various and colorful ways, its the underlaying message". Would you really say that this is not the case?
The marketing around rewards has never been great. I don't disagree with numerous wrong impressions being given. We should work to improve it, but communicating about a complex system to an audience who aren't experts on the technology isn't that easy either.
Agreed. Basically, advertising is never very accurate. It's over the top or it's meaningless. Advertising, by its nature, wants to draw attention to something and uses the simplest of means: emotional appeal.
My initial assertion that anyone who does not know this has not yet learned much in life stands by it :)
I don't believe that anything can be improved in advertising for this reason. It is what it is. It cannot tell the truth and it cannot convey complexity.
So I would agree with you that it is not easy and even add: it is impossible. I like to come to this realization. It has to be "talked through" for me.
It is what we do NOT say that an observant and life experienced mind nevertheless recognises.
People need to know for themselves what they take away from something they want to be a part of. To see oneself as a victim because one has been "misled" is therefore a less than honest argument, just as it is dishonest of marketers to suggest that there is some kind of equal opportunity for all. So insofar as we recognise that everyone is nevertheless hypocritical as well as carrying a share of knowledge with them, we can rest easy, can't we?
Where it gets tricky is when a trend is suspected that involves the overwhelming of currently politically unpopular views. There is undeniable evidence of this, which does not stop at online communication. What appears to be the stronger power out there is also expressed here. Where there is a powerful overhang in the experienced "outside reality", here in the online communication space there is a very sensitive reaction to any form of oppression or where this is perceived as such. I think we know the hottest issues.
My (unasked for - lol ) suggestion to you would be to perhaps make a surprisingly different decision from the ones you are known for? I don't know you, so I can't say whether you have this or that tendency for me.
I do that sometimes as to not make it easy to be identified to this or that camp.
True
This is a fundamental problem that confounds centralization. Accumulating stake is an effect of parasitization, and that is the source of overlords which derange human society.
For ~250k years, humanity lived in egalitarian tribes that had little ability to project force, because surplus wealth was almost impossible to create. Everyone had to provide their own goods and services by hand because technology was pre-industrial. Upon the advent of agriculture surpluses became possible, and centralization enabled parasitization and overlords, who used surpluses to sustain security specialists, gangs of armed thugs, that preyed on society, and societies.
Today decentralization of means of production is the cutting edge of technological advance across all fields of industry. As individuals and communities avail themselves of suitable means of production, overlords are prevented from parasitizing their production, which inures to the producers themselves. Centralization is being deprecated, and overlords sustaining gangs of armed thugs with it.
Decentralization is the cure, and centralization is shown to be a temporary phase necessary to the advance of technology from the Stone Age to the Space Age.
Government is centralization. When we are able to manufacture our means of personal security we are not required to purchase them from shartmart, where WMDs suitable to eliminate gangs of armed thugs on which overlords depend are not sold.
Hive was capable of being decentralized, and marketed as such, but instead HP is centralized, which centralizes political power. While this fraud lasts it enables oligarchs to sell free speech produced by content creators for tokens through the mechanism of curation rewards. Using flags, oligarchs are able to prevent upstarts from joining their ranks, and return HP to the pool, where they are able to extract the vast majority of it into their wallets.
Free speech has been marked for destruction, and CBDCs are being introduced presently. The UN has begun taking sites off the web by preventing DNS resolution, and CBDCs are only able to be forced on people bereft of other forms of money. It is obvious that Hive and cryptocurrency exchanges will be eliminated shortly so that they will not be used to prevent enslavement to CBDCs, social credit algorithms, and the vaxpass.
The global monetary system is beginning it's final collapse, as Evergrande defaulted, again, which is causing the ~$60T Chinese property market to collapse and the effects to spread throughout the global monetary system. Neither fiat, shiny rocks, nor cryptocurrency will be available to people shortly.
People that have exchanged their financial resources for nominal means of decentralized production will be able to provide their necessary goods and services without being dependent on CBDCs. I am unaware of another way people can remain free of subjugation to overlords who completely control extant centralized production of essential goods and services.
As the ongoing genocide of humanity continues, it becomes increasingly impossible to conceal, and despite the fact that people desperately try to maintain their illusion that they have not been fooled, the survivors will increasingly become aware of reality, and the fools will continue to die.
Eventually this will become a hot war, and the troops necessary to overlords to project force will themselves grasp that they are being chemically castrated, injected with experimental genetic therapy, and are not overlords that will become owners of everything, but instead property of the very overlords they serve. Many have been purged already who have refused to become GMOs, but even those left will die or grasp they have been fooled, and overlords will become unable to project force.
I do not expect Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab are going to become Rambos, dual wielding assault weapons and defeating massive mobs of protestors armed with sticks and rocks by force of arms. I think they have DUMBs to retreat to for that reason, and have undertaken to create GMOs to replace reason with obedience and preserve their ability to project force.
However, individuals able to manufacture their own means of security from hordes of weaponized GMOs and swarms of drones will not be limited to 1000 year old firearms technology, and the ability of individuals and communities to manufacture WMDs will render armed gangs of thugs and swarms of drones obsolete.
Not without horrific cost, sadly.
That is when decentralization will restore human society to it's original egalitarian state, in and for which it evolved. Oligarchs will no longer be able to project force, eventually the DUMBs will be occupied by corpses, and people will take to the stars, as is our destiny foretold by the prophets of ages past.
Hive is metaphorically an organoid of society, and is one of the last vectors of free speech because of it's peculiarities of governance. Use it to study centralization and communicate forthrightly while it remains.
It isn't more.
I agree, Hive 100% follows the structure of Centralized Western society. Your comment was extremely detailed. I hope you've posted it as a blog as well.
I am glad I am not alone in seeing how things are proceeding. We are facing significant threat wherever we are today, and despite the drone of propaganda bots and enemedia talking heads, I am confident that the majority of humanity strongly disapproves of ongoing censorship, propaganda, and coercive war crimes and genocide ongoing, which consensus is concealed from us by censorship. Just as a few oligarchs on Hive can outflag hundreds of ordinary upvotes, a few oligarchs that can fund enemedia lies while censoring our voices on social media can appear to control the narrative, and expect thereby to convince good people they are alone in their rational opinions.
It is important that we speak to one another directly and ascertain our mutual considerations and points of contention with ongoing political degradation, so that we can mutually act to rectify that damage that has been done, and prevent worse harm that is certain to follow if we allow it.
The oldest trick in the propaganda book is to make people believe there's a broad consensus for things there is actually a broad consensus against, and I am confident almost no one is eager to be enslaved to the WEF through CBDCs, social credit algorithms, and the vaxpass. Recent revelations of the massive numbers of dead from the jabs and from the CEO of Pfizer that after the present boosters for OG covid, he intends to force three more on us for Omicron, are absolutely stopping previously compliant folks in their tracks, and forcing them to reckon with the blatant lies that have been put forward to conceal jab damage as 'climate change syndrome' and surreal claims that it's normal for little children to have heart attacks and strokes, and in the light of the 75 years the FDA is demanding that the Pfizer data on jab safety remain secret.
No one trusts secret soyence that has an opinion worthy of consideration. The people of the world are being forced by unending jabs, utterly oppressive government, and lurid images of athletes and children being killed en masse, to forcibly dismantle the extant governments of the West, because they're going to kill us all if we don't.
It is, of course, necessary to first destroy an edifice before you can replace it, as the NWO requires to be implemented, and while we should be cautious that we are being trapped by the NWO to do their dirty work in rebelling against our corrupt governments, we should also not shy from doing the needful in that regard, because it is obvious that if we don't we'll all be killed by an unending stream of jabs.
The Prime Minister of New Zealand has stated she will never stop forcing jabs on people as long as there are people unjabbed, and expects the jab program to never, ever end. Since each jab causes a certain percentage of deaths, and does cumulative harm to those that yet survive, an unending stream of jabs is eventually 100% fatal to 100% of the subjects. She has literally promised to kill everyone in her power. It doesn't matter that hanging such psychopaths for treason and genocidal war crimes is a trap. Not prosecuting and executing such fiends is literal suicide, and worse yet.
We just need to prevent the NWO from wresting our freedom from us thereafter, though they collapse the global monetary system to starve us into submission. They're going to try to force us to cull livestock because it is a vector for covid, and a lot of wildlife is as well. If they can destroy our livestock, we can be forced to eat whatever bugs they can dish up out of their labs, or starve.
We need to prepare for that battle, because it is the fight for our lives.
Oh, I'm ready and am at a place where their rules have little effect on me. That being said, there will be a time where I may have to die to fight for freedom.
But... I'm fine with those willingly following the narrative. They are in the way of my freedom, so am fine with them causing damage to themselves. For this reason, I don't feel the need to spread the word. Those who know already know. Those who don't aren't listening anyway.
I refuse to allow 'them' to affect my mental health. When the time comes I'm stepping up, til then the lemmings are better off just complying.
People I love are dying. I am inconsolable, and I seek to do what can be done to keep others from grieving as I do today. We are strengthened when we suffer the loss of our people by the wretched misery we endure, because knowing others we love are at risk too will drive us as little else could to act to prevent their harm, for those yet left to us are all the more essential and needed in our lives.
I understand needing to protect our health, particularly our hearts and minds.
That's why, as you state, when it's time we will step up and act. But it's time now to ensure the common mass culls of livestock due to disease that have been undertaken in the past are not allowed to utterly deprive us of our sustenance. Supplies in many places are already short.
Let's make sure we aren't facing famine, because actual plague almost always follows famine, and people weakened by hunger are less able to survive every challenge, and particularly pathogens. Even if we only take a couple pet rabbits, or a couple hens, we may secure a lifeline by that action.
I guess I'm fortunate to not be that position and food won't be an issue for me, through a multipronged approach. I'm consoled by the fact that it is mostly an individual choice at this point, minus a few examples and it was their decision. That also makes it ethical enough in my eyes.
I started writing a long reply to you here, but it turned into it's own post!
It occurs to me that there is a clear dynamic on hive between decentralisation/centralisation and the effectiveness of POB and thus Hive's own success as a token. Here are some more of my thoughts on this:
https://peakd.com/hive-150329/@ura-soul/the-dynamics-of-dpos-and-pob-pitch-money-against-freedom-in-a-constant-brawl-for-decentralisation-over-centralisation-but-we-
100% upvote, DPOS is power for sale.
Nailed it.
Justin Sun came in and paid for power, boom he took control and has the power.
Someone could do the same to Hive.
It is ongoing on Hive, as it was on Steem. @ned no longer is part of that oligarchy, and Sun Yuchen may not be, but an oligarchy wields power on Hive, just as it did on Steem.
Stake Holder Economics have Pros and Cons. Alpha is who can ally himself in smart ways, that's how it's done between Chimps in the jungle and also on DPoS Blockchains by humans.
Don’t expect anything else, srsl don’t.
You might be surprised to know that Hive tokens are a form of speech. Speech censored could include our tokens, if we're not quite robust about protecting our speech.
I consider my tokens the least important form of speech, perhaps because I pay far more attention to my words than I do my tokens.
But here, or elsewhere, I'll not be ruled by force. Pandering to power is not sovereignty, and I will expect better, because if we don't do better than that Hive will never have the ability to distribute the means of production it was meant to, and something else that can will replace it, because the market will act to secure independent means of wealth whenever possible, and the technology to make it possible exists.
If Hive has tricked us into thinking we could get it here, and we can't, Hive is doomed to failure, and something else is going to eat the market it could have had.
That's not wrong, but #HIVE is also one of the best ecosystems to start this 'new' rather layer2 system.
Whenever you think this is the ONE - you've basically already lost the plot. It's amazing to me how people can watch "The Matrix" and don't see the ultimate lesson behind it. Every system will eat itself from inside, it's just a matter of time. We need to embrace change and invest in what will disrupt us eventually.
That's why I'm here. I want Hive to succeed, and that's why I advocate for the underlying value that creates value in our tokens. That value is our speech. Speech isn't only blogs, and plenty of other means of speaking have arisen on Hive, but it is the original mechanism, and remains particularly well suited to nuance and delivering robust and substantive information.
There's nothing wrong with adding value, but change can eliminate value too. That would be tragic IMHO.
Tragic indeed
So yes I think you are right, but your fast with your conclusion may be too fast.
I agree and I do when I notice them. Usually by only a portion because I don't think I should be the only one making these adjustments. Sometimes others do too, just not that often.
It is the nature of the system that downvotes aren't incentivized in any way, so for the most part nobody is going to put a lot of time into it. If we happen to see stuff, we might downvote it, otherwise not.
Except that they shift those rewards that are being removed right up to the top-earning posts, correct?
Or is that just an untrue thing that lots of people on here say? I haven't seen a technical breakdown of that, and can't read the code myself - but I've seen many folks explain it this way, and never seen anyone correcting them.
No, they don't. They reduce the eventual payout of the one post which results in more remaining in the pool. That larger pool then results in marginally higher payouts of other posts.
Ah. Thank you for clarifying that.
To dive deeper then...
If we say (just for me to understand) that the top 100 posts have a 80% of the rewards that have been voted out at that time, those 100 posts would also get 80% of the rewards removed from the down-voted post?
Feel free to shoot me a link or tell me to go find it if this is already laid out very clearly somewhere.
It doesn't change the distribution of other rewards, it mostly just increases all of them by a certain percentage. So if the top 100 got 80% before, the top 100 would get 80% after. Both top 100 and outside the top 100 would increase by X% (X% is very small for any single downvote of course, let's say 0.01% hypothetically).
You could have just said yes.
The correct answer is more subtle. If you're downvoting a post in the top 100 (almost always what I downvote since I don't spend a lot of time looking for downvote candidates), you are actually reducing the share of reward going to the top 100.
What is the argument against burning flagged rewards thereby benefiting all stakeholders equally rather than the current distribution giving them to the highest value posts in proportion to the rshares voted to them?
If there are 3 posts with 100, 50, and 10 htu respectively and 1000htu flagged to split among them doesn't the 100htu post get double what the 50htu and 10x what the 10htu post get?
If true, better to burn the rewards, imo.
I don't think it's that bad but burning and shifting away from one payout are two different things and voters ought to be able to do both. If voters think more should be burned overall (that is, that the overall collection of posts is not deserving of payouts, as opposed to particular ones), they can vote for burn.funder posts the way we can vote for hbd.funder (burnpost used to do this). In your example, if you think the 100 is getting too much, either before or after the 1000 is downvoted, then go ahead and downvote that one too!
That said, I don't think burning is terrible.
That's true, and less emotionally triggering, voting burn.funder would serve the same ends.
I propose the change to the curation math should be made in pursuit of a more horizontal distribution of the rewards, the top posts are getting enough, imo.
My reading of arcange's posts says that the largest accounts are maintaining their share of the inflation as a percentage of the whole, thereby not reducing the centralization caused by early adoption and brownnosing of the ninjaminers by milquetoast authors.
I think burning flagged rewards presents a better proposal for the newbs, too.
Rather than allow characterizing the flaggots as enriching themselves, it ends any thoughts in that line and increases the scarcity of all coins, equally.
Maybe it gets folks to flag more stuff by demonstrating the benefits to all, rather than the few at the top.
The crab bucket is failing the trending page, and the distribution, imo.
At some point the rubicon is crossed, future inflation won't be enough to unseat the oligarchy created by the designed control features that favor the top earners, has that point been reached, already?
Like I said, I don't hate it but I prefer the way it works now. When we downvote overpaid stuff in the top 100 (which is nearly if not 100% of what I downvote, and I suspect a large portion of total downotes), it is increasing the rewards all the way down the line, even comments.
@smooth, you’ve recently downvoted a post of mine for a total of $80. I am full-time on Hive and spend so much time curating and commenting that I often find little time to post.
As Hive is my life, I’d appreciate it if you at least take the time to comment and provide a reason why when downvoting, otherwise it feels like a personal attack, and more so I’d just lazy.
If you care about Hive so much, take some time to engage with the posts you upvote and downvote, otherwise you see like an out of touch elite too good to interact with this beneath you.
I am downvoting this comment because you have downvoted my content without reason or even taking time to engage. Take some time and please understand that people in poverty live a different life than you.
Why does it matter if a post is one of the top 100, or in position 101?
That's an arbitrary number, but if you're concerned with rewards being distributed more broadly, I'm pretty sure downvotes are helpful not harmful in practice. The higher payouts get downvoted more. The rewards flow to the other payouts, including the smaller ones.
I wondered if I had missed something regarding the top 100 posts.
While generally what you are saying regarding posts and payouts is true, the devil's in the details, as always, and there are good reasons and bad ones to vote rewards to and from posts and authors.
I reckon any reasons stemming from differences of opinion, rather than substantial effort and contribution to societal improvement, and that generally and not only regarding Hive itself, are the bad ones. We only support free speech if we support the speech of folks we disagree with, as even the most repressive censor supports the speech of folks they agree with.
I am confident you grasp that fact, and I have always recommended that our votes promote free speech long before financial matters are considered at all. Without the former the latter has no value whatsoever. It is apparent on Hive that our money is a form of speech.
This is becoming more and more apparent by the day, and the value of free speech rises ever higher as censorship reduces it's availability in the market. Hive could profit more from that market than almost any other platform that exists, but we will vote that profit onto the platform, or repel it with censorship.
We will likely have to agree to disagree on the relationship between inflation rewards and free speech.
I think free speech can thrive independent of inflation rewards, and these rewards can (and in my view, should) be allocated in a manner largely independently of free speech.
The fact that you can post on the platform at all, and that communities and apps can be built to cultivate visibility and utility on the platform independent of inflation rewards, including with different methods for monetization or no monetization, is sufficient for free speech to thrive.
Of course, it is up to stakeholders to decide. If people want to buy in and financially reward 'free speech content' for it's own sake without exercising further discretion on content and value, that is as legitimate as any other vote. If you don't agree with my views, then vote differently.
They did. That's why this platform exists at all. The blogging aspect wasn't tacked on. It was the mechanism that generated value underlying the token. Speech is the basis for Hive's very existence, and your comment indicates your disregard for that fundamental aspect of Hive.
We do disagree on that.
Yes that's fine. People can vote to direct rewards a certain way, and others can vote a different way. The votes are added up and so it goes.
Speech, and even free speech, as compared to REWARDING specific content with stake inflation rewards are not the same thing. There are other ways to monetize content, including all the ways that exist on every other site on the internet. Those are available on Hive too, with fewer obstacles in terms of demonetization and censorship.
Stake inflation rewarding is not and should not be indiscriminate. It is a consensus process. Where stakeholders agree, rewards are paid, where stakeholders disagree, rewards are not paid, or are paid in less amounts. If we disagree on that, so be it. Hive on.
The Reward Pool is a somewhat static piece which gets distributed across all votes of a period of time. You can't expand or reduce it by voting habits.
Correct, by the voting habits (specifically of whales) do decide where those rewards get allocated.
For example, if they downvote a $300 post to $0 - that $300 is added back into the rewards pool, where it will mostly be awarded to the top posts at the time.
All Rewards are mostly distributed to the top post at any given time, independent from downvoting habits.
I disagree with most voting habits on-chain too, but that's a totally different story for a small fish like me. I don't even get how you ended up as a target.
Very true - and the folks downvoting have admitted many times that they agree trending is mostly over-rewarded crap.
They just claim they don't have the voting power to do anything about it - while simultaneously zero-ing out posts that were near the top of trending.
Yep, very risky for a small fish (or anyone really) to call out this activity - because it will get you downvoted (often to negative reputation), and has guaranteed no further rewards for many a user.
Because I dared to speak out against their targeting of others, because I do have a high rep and many supporters (less risk), and I honestly don't care if they try to cancel me as well.
Well, they could be honest and just outright state that the downvotes are 'mostly peaceful' subjective disagreements. That would indeed cut some corners.
I wonder where Blocktrades is on this topic at the moment.
Sounds fair and it's nice to see I'm not the only one bothered by this.
This kind of behavior earns my respect and won't likely scare many people off chain. That's wielding power responsibly. If it weren't for one or two people getting off on their ability to singlehandedly destroy a post (often for arbitrary reasons), I don't think downvotes would be a big problem. As it is though, one or two bullies have the potential to scare a lot of users away, and more users means more projects will want to build on Hive and more investment with it.
We have downvotes as a check on abusive upvotes, wouldn't it make sense to have some kind of check on abusive downvotes?
Also, It sounds like you don't like having rewards for content on the first layer. Is that a popular opinion among the devs and other large stakeholders you talk to? If so then why wasn't it removed earlier to avoid confusion?
They're not equivalent. Upvotes earn rewards and generate payouts, downvotes don't. The sort of abuses are different and while downvote abuse may be annoying to an individual, it isn't systemic. The 25% limit on downvotes (essentially 2.5 full power downvotes per day) means that there are always many payouts escaping downvotes (or at least not being downvoted very much), no matter how much havoc someone wants to cause.
It is somewhat mixed but very few actually think it is working well, or has ever worked well going on six years.
In part because it is a significant task and there have been other priorities, including building out software infrastructure that would make second layer solutions more powerful and accessible. There isn't much support for removing it without better support for alternatives.
I’ll reply to 2 comments here.
There is your answer to the question “no one complains about upvotes so why do they complain about downvotes?”. A large payout on a post only effects everyone else’s payout by a tiny bit and so we’d rather let it slide, it’s not worth antagonizing people, which is what it does (especially when we risk antagonizing people who could destroy our potential to earn stake).
Meanwhile, one dude deciding that my friend’s posts deserve to have 80-100% of his upvotes countered because he’s from Africa and doesn’t need that much to live…that feels a lot different, like an attack on his ability to build a stake in the network because he isn’t one of the cool kids, or because stakeholders don’t want to let anyone besides their friends have any say here. It feels in contrast to the idea of decentralization.
If the little guys should worry about the little guys, why would the big guys be ok with one big guy going around bullying a bunch of little guys like that? I know it’s not a wide scale problem (yet) but it sends a message to all of us when it goes left unchecked. It also causes us to mistrust downvotes as a useful mechanism (which I can see that it is only because I’ve been here 5 years). If I were a larger stakeholder (I believe I’m around #250, still peanuts), I’d treat anyone bullying smaller users as a threat to my investment, as it scares people away from the chain.
Aside from spam and absolute garbage, if I were to downvote anything, it’d be on posts that earn $1000 when the rest of trending is at $300. Most of those people add a lot of value but are already receiving a large part of the reward pool from their witnesses, from proposals, from second layer tokens and from strategic curation. It also consolidates power and hinders wide distribution of the token. You can see why I don’t do that though, I imagine, judging from your other comment.
Why is that?
For 90% of the people here the rewards for content make this place exciting. I imagine it has the potential to attract much more development in the coming months too. I’m not just here for my own ability to earn, I’m here to see how incentivized content creation allows people to do what they are excited and passionate about. I understand the emphasis on free speech and governance models, but the monetized social aspect is so powerful and we do it better than anything else out there now. The improvement of trending and the reward pool distribution in general is astounding. I see the rewards as a way to gather excitement and resources to make it easier to build whatever else you guys want to build.
I wish the old stakeholders could see how life changing this place has been for so many of us and how much of that has to the rewards, then lean into that. The incentivization keeps us constantly working to improve ourselves and find ways to benefit our communities. It may seem boring or cheesey to people who don’t engage in it, like we are all just farming without much care for anything else but most of us love this place, we just want to know that it’s as fair as it can be.
I’ve learned how markets work thanks to hive. I’ve gained access to people in very different life situations to understand them and build communities with them. The incentives made it possible. I will likely travel to Nigeria and Venezuela only thanks to the friendships I’ve made at Hive.
Sure it could work on a second layer too, but there would have to be a project that can handle that better than we have up until now. I’m glad you say there would have to be better support for alternatives.
But why do you think it hasn’t worked well? Don’t you think it’s come a long way and could continue to improve with new faces and a few tweaks?
I appreciate your response. I’ve invested countless hours into Hive so it’s good to know the largest stakeholders can bother discussing things with the rest of us. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me here.
Yes I understand that people who aren't significant stakeholders and are only on the receiving end of rewards wouldn't care about excessive rewards, as long as they still get some. However those of us on the paying end of rewards do care, and no amount of complaining about downvotes from the people being downvoted is going to make us stop caring.
No, I don't think a few tweaks is going to do the trick. We've tried that at least 3-5 times with little overall benefit. It needs a more substantial revamp, but meanwhile it benefits from the limited restraint of rampant overrewarding that comes from downvotes.
Trust me, if I could become one of the largest stakeholders I would so I’m not looking to do anything that scares away good investment. Interested in understanding big investors mindset more so I can support proposals that make everyone happy.
I may have only invested a few thousand USD but I did it right at the fork during a high risk time when I was barely able to afford rent.
It sounds like you see the inflation being distributed far and wide as not ideal, and I’m having a hard time understanding that.
What is it that you or other large stakeholders want hive to do or to be? Do you not see much value in the social aspect and in spreading the reward pool to a wider variety of users so that we can call ourselves truly decentralized? Isn't being truly decentralized something we want people to invest in?
I’m trying to get into your head and reach as close to consensus as possible so we can all do the most to increase the value of your investment and my investment too. My investment may seem small to you but it matters to me, so I’m not looking to squander it.
What do you feel is the biggest value proposition of Hive?
This is not true at all. In fact when I downvote it is usually the highest rewards content and the highest reward earners. By reducing these concentrated rewards, the effect is to distribute reward more widely, not less.
In my view the greatest value is broad participation as well as app building, the reliability and efficiency of the blockchain, reasonable distribution of the token and decent exchange support/liquidity. I'm not seeing that much of the value is the original/core social app at all. It's there, it works, it has helped build a community of users (albeit fairly small), but it's cost-benefit payoff isn't great compared to second layer apps such as games, defi, alternate community models, potential future user growth from all of the above, etc.
Well, it seems like we agree on everything except for the cost-benefit of the community/social aspect. I see the community as what could attract much more development as well as a powerful tool for creating network effects. How much of the Splinterlands team are/were bloggers/curators that met through the social aspect. Do you see where I’m getting at?
The community provides a passionate workforce for development and also helps hive apps stand out when they are done properly.
So here’s this community that’s been constantly hit over the head with some serious bullshit, then large stakeholders think we aren’t valuable? Man, I get where you are coming from but think of what this community has been through …issues with the founders, the Sun drama and fork, a long bear market…not to mention a few years where scams made trending more than real content. This created a shitty situation for Social to really shine and attract new any investment.
Most investors (large and small) blame the majority of users leaving on the bear market, just dismissing them as weak hands, but I personally know upwards of 30 people who were working on projects and onboarding that left because the reward algorithms and whale drama (bernie, haejin, bidbots etc.) was indicative of a twisted pyramid scheme. I seriously doubt any of them would feel that way today.
Please give some credit to the content creators and the people who are just enjoying themselves and trying to build a stake. We keep this place lively and attractive. It will take some time under decent curation but we are going to be attracting a shit ton of projects that want to build on and invest in Hive.
I think I am starting to see where you are coming from, and I hope you can do the same for me. Also I appreciate your responsible behavior as a large stakeholder. You also make this place worth investing in. Just hope you won’t empower (or look the other way for) any who have less integrity and reason than yourself.
Look at the numbers. We're spending about $15 million per year on content rewards with a user base of about 15000, that hasn't grown significantly in years. That's $1000 per year per user. I can't see where that cost benefit comes from, it is wildly out of line with the customer value of any social platform or internet platform or even most profit-generating businesses (possibly all). Yes, there is also some value in terms of distributing stake and increasing network effect potentially, but it isn't infinite and even that doesn't work if the user base and stakeholder base doesn't grow or barely grows.
In no way is any of this the "fault" of content creators or users. They're mostly sincere and doing their best to create good contend and engagement. We just don't have a platform and business model that has the pieces put together to work in a sustainable way.
Well said, those numbers look ugly. I can understand now where you are coming from. What if it were x10-20 the users though? Would you still feel that way?
Also did you calculate that using the current price of hive? Or accounting for the fluctuation of price?
What if we decide that hive is overvalued based on speculation? I’m not saying it doesn’t have valuable development, but I feel $1.50 (or even $0.80) is a little unwarranted considering a 15k user base (though it feels more warranted when I see how well splinterlands is doing).
Once again, I gotta insist that the user base has been severely hindered in its ability to create a network and attract projects due to all that’s happened. I wouldn’t look at it as the result of 5 years but the results of one year since we got a fresh start. I’d also consider how splinterlands, 3speak and Leo are mostly homegrown. Their teams are made of content creators and people who started as content creators.
I wonder if Splinterlands would have ever happened without the social monetization.
The social is where we can find our niches and form communities that can eventually transform into projects that draw more investment. It’s taking a long time to grow into that but it will start to show soon!
I hope in another year you will see the content creators as an important asset that generates more value than they extract. I’ll do my best to encourage behavior that can drive home that point.
It was the current price, more or less (was a rough estimate, not a precise calculation). But even at lower prices, these numbers are still terrible.
If we had 10-15x the users, it still wouldn't be great, but it would be better. More important would be whether that 10-15x was achieved via a sustainable growth trend pointing toward even more users, and that would probably be fine even with the current numbers. But that's not the case, growth has never been achieved, and that is the bigger problem. High cost without achieving growth.
Basically no growth in that year apart from what is easily attributable to price rise (and will go away if the price goes down). Even that is pretty small (went from about 10k to about 15k).
BTW, that 15k "active accounts" includes bots (spam bots, vote bots, etc.) and also accounts that just vote or maybe occasionally comment, but don't post content and don't earn anything. (It doesn't include users of non-social apps or those who just trade on exchanges and transfer funds.) So the actual cost per human posting user is even significantly higher.
Well some do, I already agree on that point. But unfortunatley many don't, and many engage in opportunistic behavior that makes matters worse, such as posting complaints and other "content" that isn't ever going to attract anyone, and then getting upset when it gets downvoted after being autovoted or stupidly voted (large "curation" accounts that are really voting close to random to earn curation rewards).
If I see creators who producing content that attracts a growing audience at cost that is reasonable for the scale of what is going on (not hundreds of dollars for posting a few photos day after day, etc.), I'll rarely if ever downvote that, and when I do downvote excessive rewards, it helps give some oxygen to the rest by reducing, even if only a little, the rampant drain that continues to make it hard for the actual creatives and community builders to get anywhere.
lol I imagine a precise calculation would take some time, I don't expect you to do that just for this thread.
It's really hard to reach that critical mass where things start growing on their own, content creators know that better than anyone. It doesn't help that a huge chunk of the community was scared away from the Proof of Brain model right after it began to take off with steemit. I've been keeping a close eye on penguinpablo's posts, specifically active users (with bots and all that in mind) and I'm also very disappointed.
I hate to say it (because I love the energy), but I feel that a lot of the effort at twitter has been completely wasted, if not counterproductive. People have put a ton of effort into that with little bother to understand the Twitter algorithms. I suspect that the only time it's been useful is when we target specific people and reply to other tweets. The #hive tag may not have done much but put Hive users in a bubble at twitter where no one else sees our tweets.
I do think the momentum will start to build now that people are talking about social blockchains and that the best second layer apps have a positive feedback loop with the larger Hive community. I really want to prove you wrong with regards to this just being a matter of time and circumstance and perhaps 3speak and another project or two may help me make that point in coming months.
Your position is totally reasonable though and I appreciate you answering all my questions, just voted for your witness. I hope we have people running the chain who are willing to engage like this when they have time and who at least TRY to appreciate the little guy's angle. I also hope we can look for more ways to align the interests of investors and content creators, and that I can personally find more ways as a content creator that ease the mind of any decent large investors.
Nothing to prove wrong really. I'm all in favor of second layer apps and IMO they have a far better chance to find the magic formula for growth than continuing to beat the dead horse of the inherently stagnant and inefficient layer one app.
I think we are in the wrong business, making posts about food recipes, travel posts, and photo challenge posts seems to be the way to go. If we were truly about getting rewards all of us would be doing what gets upvoted on trending instead of writing political posts.
That's a very fair point. 😁
Ahem,... eerm..... I think you forgot to include "makeup posts" in that sentence!
Yeah! definitely we serious wizards are indeed in the wrong business to be seriously rewarded.