Classic bait n Switch! 🎄 + Reddit v Hive Engagement Thoughts

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(Edited)

If I didn't say it, somebody else would have!

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I came across the post while it was in the "Rising" section of my Reddit app ("Reddit is Fun") and the "bait n switch" phrase was one one of the first thing that came to mind.

It was already at least a few hours old and, to my surprise, nobody left the comment so I knew what I had to do.

Interestingly, some user accused my comment of being a repost on a repost which got me thinking. I mean, if you were a true karma whore, replicating top level comments on Reddit reposts would be a somewhat trivial thing to automate.

If you bother to check my history, I am NOT a karma whore as I will often knowingly sacrifice my fake internet points on the altar of conviction... To make a point or otherwise advocate for what I recognize as truth.

But I sure as shit won't miss an opportunity for a good quip!

I kind of liken it to obtaining karmic armor to then engage the hivemind hordes and face certain downvotes for daring to oppose platform consensus ideology. Well that sounds familiar 🤔

Here's the thing. Yes, at the end of the day it's fake internet points and those aren't going to pay the bills besides from the true karma whores selling clout accounts (which sadly is a thing) BUT there can be functional reasons you would not want to throw all your karma away to be a contrarian depending on the subreddit.

For example, some subreddits have a minimum karma for posting and / or commenting so obviously it would not behoove you to just willy nilly get your account blasted. Gotta know when to pick your battles if you want to maintain your freedom of expression on legacy social media.

Some may ask, why do I spend so much time on Reddit?

Truth be told, there is a much greater diversity of content on Reddit vs Hive and also it seems much more comment engagement. It's interesting considering they do not have a financial incentive to comment like we do but (take it w a grain - just my experience) I seem to garner more meaningful engagement over there anyways. 300+ upvotes on a simple but perhaps well timed quip? I highly doubt I would see that here.

Why is this?

I do partially blame the implementation of the convergent curve as it makes rewarding comments generally a less efficient use of one's voting power. Believe the rationale was it improved the communities ability to self-moderate and reduce spam which perhaps it did but I would argue it came with price of engagement. Maybe we could change that using a new op. Something like a symbolic vote which wouldn't require any VP use but still can be tabulated in the UI (for second layer incentives, maybe?)

On the flip side or positive for Hive, you generally don't have to worry about your message being stifled for ideological reasons here. That benefit cannot be understated. Especially for people like me ::cough:: ::cough:: conservatives!

Also,to be fair, the disparity of engagement on Hive vs Reddit may really be more attributed to the age of the respective platforms. Obviously, Hive is the new kid on the block so may just need more time for users to migrate that would be able to assist us in populating myriad content that would, not only be on par but exceed that of Reddit. Could be a matter of time but we could always expedite if we do things right.

What are we missing???

My Reddit is subscribed to 93 different subreddits and I have created at least one corresponding sub Hive community that is ShitpostCrusaders.

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It is a thriving community in Reddit and they do post some good memes. While back we ran a contest that @theycallmedan and @acidyo (who IIRC is running a community incubator initiative which relates) helped sponsor (via distributed post rewards). Maybe more stuff like this would be good to get people in the door. 👞🚪

(Note, I have not really had time / energy to nurture the SFR / HDR community much less the SPC. Full time job / Full time dad - yall know how it is!)

https://hive.blog/hive-179373/@anthonyadavisii/jojo-s-bizarre-adventure-shitpost-contest-showcase-steem-blockchain

Sidenote: I did run into an issue with character limit for "PoliticalCompassMemes" which was unfortunate and makes me curious as to why a 20 character limit was chosen. No matter as we can go with PCM or something I guess.

Point I am trying to make is... if we want to onboard people from Reddit, we need to work to replicate their communities and vibes... Without the bullshit, of course.

I mean we can continue doing what we do on hive but think there is potential in replicating Reddit communities if we want to onboard their users. Especially niche subs that the admins may ban in the future. I'm looking at you PCM 😉

Have you done any work to that end? Share it in the comments. Would love to hear it (P.S. I reward comments anyways!)



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23 comments
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(Edited)

I never really understood reddit and maybe have made like 5 comments in my 6 years there... I would maybe have made about 8 if I understood it, since I tend to only comment in bursts get lazy and then stop. I saw a few weeks ago I could make my own subreddit... Yup then reddit clicked for me lol I never could figure out who the fuck put these people in charge of these "subreddit" things but now I know and it and communities all make sense.

Also as for normal engagement, I think engagement begets engagement so for a quick quip that gets conversation going and many subreddits have quiet times with more active users than on hive so it is a given that you will have more happening. The subreddit is also more focused, so you are not spreading all those users over different interests.

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Tbh Reddit wastes A LOT of my time but guess the perk is it keeps my current on memes and shit.

Can be fun or frustrating at times. Take, for instance, was dealing with the racist self-loathing white neolibs on /r/subredditdrama after the /r/the_donald purge. Made mention how a front page sub BPT had the country club BS where only verified POCs and "white allies" could post.

It really got me when one of them was calling white people mayos while hypocriticaly decrying racism. The convo sequed intona discussion of black oppression where I made the cardinal sin of suggesting there may be a link between fatherlessness / decline of the nuclear family and criminality.

That's when some shitlib mod decided to permaban me for a "shit take". I went back and forth w those idiots a bit but left convinced that those kind of mods get a hard on for power and censorship and selective enforcement of rules.

That being said, it's all the more important we secure the good topics before the power trippers do. PCM would be a great one to grow before it's banned.

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I got drained just reading about the drama, can't imagine how exhausting they would be in action. Goodluck with that man, I think I prefer my shadows.

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I think the Discord cliques play a role in disabling engagement here.

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This is true. Discord is the tit of communication that Hive people should eventually be weened.

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(Edited)

As for emulating communities that exist outside by placing a doubleganger here... Honestly, depending on the group, it's much easier to convince their 'leaders' to come here, set up shop, and monetize the community they probably spent years developing from scratch. Then they bring the content and consumers with them. Unfortunately it's not as easy as it needs to be to simply drag and drop an entire community, guts and all, into Hive.

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Unfortunately it's not as easy as it needs to be to simply drag and drop an entire community, guts and all, into Hive.

The way you put that gave me an idea. We could replicate existing content on a sub to a Hive community using API tools.

This kind of ties in to another idea I was thinking through out loud on a recent drive. Basic premise is a chrome extension that one could use to target any URL and using Hive and Siacoin create a sort of carbon copy of the contents on chain.

The tricky part is designing it to convert any given web page's to its markdown compatible counterpart. Reddit should be easy tho as it is markdown based but other sites are set up w frames and scripts and other shit which could complicate.

I like the idea of using Hive as a web archival tool and content discussion facilitator. (ex YT videos w comments turned off. I know Gab has something for this already. "dissenter")

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What I have in mind is kicking their doors down and pulling out hostages. Then they can monetize their community by paying a ransom. But I'm just being funny.

You see, more often than not, people come here expecting money for creating content. The problem is, the platform lacks consumers. Even worse, the platform lacks paying consumers. What's so hard about attracting 1000 folks to stake enough tokens in order to have a vote worth a penny each? Nothing. These consumer types donate all the time online now. Here they can 'donate' in much the same way, except this time they get a 'return on donation' plus if they rage quit, chances are they'll leave with more money than they started with.

You see all that money going into livestreams along with the other methods like tipping and Patreon? Of course you do. Now imagine all that money pumping into Hive or second layer tokens, daily. That's how you support a community.

One single content creator with a large outside following and a brain can easily pull millions of tokens off the market. Ten of them can pull millions more.

It's all in the marketing. How do we market this platform? Everyone says, "Sign up, create content, get paid." As if money grows on trees. Not enough consumers here with voting power, so that's who needs to be coming. Consumer buying power is what takes this platform into the mainstream, with ease.

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You see all that money going into livestreams along with the other methods like tipping and Patreon? Of course you do. Now imagine all that money pumping into Hive or second layer tokens, daily. That's how you support a community.

100% THIS.

The delegation system alone beats the pants off of pa.treon (centralized censorship).

If even half the money that's currently being poured into pa.treon went into HIVE delegations, HIVE value (proportional to market-cap) would skyrocket.

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I'm not really a fan of centralizing all that stake into a few hands. Prefer to see hundreds of thousands of people acting thousands of different ways, as they do.

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We could replicate existing content on a sub to a Hive community using API tools.

How would you keep it from getting obliterated with downvotes from the vigilantes?

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Decline rewards should be enough if the purpose is simply to replicate content and facilitate discussion.

Sure someone could have a problem with that but in the end I think the consensus would be more reasonable. I could be wrong

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Yeah, some websites make their primary mission simply AGGREGATING (like fark.com for example, or 9gag.com).

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(Edited)

Why not map hive tokens to emojis (on discord via discord bots) before Discord smartens up and goes crypto?

I mean, you could probably fund the thing by having the bot scrape the most emoji'd thing in the discord room and repost it here...

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I agree, I've on many occasions spoken out about each and every new curation or tribe starting out and actively in comments trying to get people onto their discords. I mean, how many discord servers are you going to join? How many empty discord servers do we need? What is the purpose of it? I'm glad ours is pretty dead in the sense that I hope they're spending their time directly on chain instead and engaging even though we have a lot of users there in total.

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(Edited)

These days with notifications and easy access to respond, I don't see the need. This isn't the old days of Steemit anymore where one had to constantly refresh. People are also more polite when it comes to off topic messages under posts. I know I won't give anyone shit if they start rambling about their day to me under my posts. My first week on Steemit I was accosted after, "Saying the wrong thing at the wrong time," to put it lightly.

The early days and the shitty methods of communication along with snotty attitudes created demand for Discord. I was here to see engagement slide as Discord picked up. It started to remind me of those folks who join you for drinks but text each other from across the table rather than talking. Got quiet pretty quick. Long before the HF that altered rewards.

And no, I'm not saying people using Discord are assholes. It filled a need that's slowly becoming obsolete so hopefully people can put it down for good, eventually. I think that would help things here at least a little bit.

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I kinda don't care about the Reddit side of Hive.

I simply play games.

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Interesting thread about the Discord.

Did you know @exodegame has been testing for the last 3 days - anyone with cards can take part, but only a grand total of 10 have, and why...?

It's nearly 100% a Discord activity!

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I never heard of it but I'm going to check it out. Is it a splinterlands thing?

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Hi - not at all, it's another game on the chain, although apparently the reason for not publicising widely was that there are too many bugs to push it out there yet!

Which is fair enough I guess.

It is getting there though!

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