Fix HIVE with One Weird Trick that Abusive Flaggers Hate!
There's been lots of talk over the years about ethics, more specifically, as they pertain to the blockchain/social media combo that is Steem and HIVE. Now that we're a brand new entity, or a community-oriented chain, it would seem to me that we should take some white hat action to evolve. More specifically, let's create something that separates us from the Steem blockchain!
Many of you remember the "problem" of self-voting and buying votes. Because the reward pool is a shared resource, outright paying for votes was highly discouraged by some members of the community, and so a culture of flagging was introduced to deallocate rewards from posts before they paid out. This ultimately caused a lot of chaos, stupid flag wars, and annoying virtue signaling, about what is "overvalued."
Nevertheless, that's what they did, and because of the panopticon that is trending, the "issue" was easily policed. Almost overnight, the bot business was replaced with a tax on content creators to incentivize curation. I won't say that it solved the problem, per se, but it did break it differently, and that means it might be a little less broken depending on your perspective on the matter.
However, this was only half of the fix, and now it's time to add the yin back to the yang. Abusive flags on the blockchain are a very real phenomenon, equally or more "problematic" than buying votes, or self-voting shit posts with an extraordinarily massive stake. But how can we get the community to regulate this kind of caustic behavior?
The answer to the above question is simple. All we have to do is put flags on an equal footing as the trending page. A trending flags option will afford white hat whales and people on HIVE the ability to police the abusive flaggers with their free downvotes or heal posts with generous upvotes. Let's patch up this retention problem caused by abusive flags and let the community sort out the bad actors.
We can do this on a case by case basis, look at the various posts, and see if it deserved to get flagged. If not, give your fellow HIVE person an upvote. Maybe, if you're a whale, you'd also have the option to give the offending flagger a taste of their own medicine. Perhaps the flagged posts can be shown with a red negative balance, and people can choose whether or not they want to put it back in the black.
An idea whose time has come IMHO.
Thanks, valued-customer. I find it hard to tolerate what's happening here, but I think some folks are too timid to speak out in favor of addressing the problem meaningfully. I'm heartened to see yourself do so! Courage, check, testes, check, one-two, one-two, oops, there's only two of us (figuratively speaking.) Ahh well. I guess it was worth a shot.
Just putting the idea out there might spark the will of right-minded and influential people that'll ultimately end up winning the change we need on the chain. Some folks who've broken through to the other side like to pretend that anyone can make anything happen here, but the true-true says: you got to be one of the ones or else you're just pissing in the wind.
In my mind, the idea in this post is not only unifying but who could be against it save for psychos who experience schadenfreude when someone reacts normally to an abusive flag. These people exist, I've seen it with my own two eyes. Right up there with the epicaricacy are those individuals who will look at a (false) flag or griefing and think that it's a public service because it adds value to their posts.
If we don't fix it, I predict that at some point, we'll get a heavy-hitting YouTube personality who'll get flagged one day, and then they'll proceed to rant to their entire fanbase about the bassackwards culture on HIVE. According to the wise and learned Tracy Morgan: "Bad news travels at the speed of light; (while) good news travels like molasses." The sooner we get it right, the better retention and less potential collateral damage to HIVE's overall reputation.
Because whales extract ~90% of rewards, every flag pays them ~90% of it's value, divided by the number of whales extracting rewards. Strictly financially speaking, they're in favor of every flag not flown on them. However, Steem has motivated them to more consider social values not specifically economic, because they are dependent on those values to an ineffable degree for their financial returns.
Goodwill is difficult to quantify, at best. However, it is enormously undervalued by almost everyone that can't just conjure money out of thin air. Those that can know goodwill is far more valuable than mere money.
Everyone else is playing catch up.
BOOM!
"Because whales extract ~90% of rewards, every flag pays them ~90% of it's value, divided by the number of whales extracting rewards. Strictly financially speaking, they're in favor of every flag not flown on them." — valued-customerWhen the thunderous echo of a microphone dropping on a stage reverberates throughout a lush green forest, and there's hardly anyone around, did it even make a sound?
Epic observation, and well said too!
:)
The ste.emcleenr is feeding itself.
All just a game bro, and I never came here for money anyway, just gives me a place to vent.
Great idea this. Seems pretty obvious really on a platform that values transparency so highly...
Trending for "highest flagged posts" is a good thing in my opinion.
@thoughts-in-time
I really like the idea dude.
I see @peakd doing so many awesome ui options...
I lack the programming competencies to say but wouldn't this come down to mere UI changes within dapps that agree with this sentiment?
If reasonable and good change can get made on the blockchain level, it encourages mass adoption to all the UI. So, I think by creating the opposite of what trends so we can see what is getting flagged, this highlights the activity of bad actors on the platform that are dishing out a poor user experience to content creators. Then the onus is on good actors with a similar stake to counter it if they see fit. Yet, they won't see it at all if they are not looking, and the best way to get them to look is to provide that window into the world of what is getting flagged that doesn't qualify as spam.
I think, yes, it can get done UI only, but then fewer people have access to the solution. One other change that'd be nice to see is the ability to soft-moderate the visibility of individual comments or that of an entire user on an individual's posts. This way, if someone is getting trolled by a psychopath or a sociopath, those comments either won't appear at all. Or, they will appear at the very bottom in collapsed form. So if you blacklist a user from the blockchain level on your account, it adds an extra step to show the content when it appears on one of your posts.
I don't know how technically possible or impossible all of this is. All I know is people need to have some semblance of control over their domain, or they will choose not to dwell there. Because when you add a nasty comment on top of targeted downvotes that wipe rewards out, it increases the negativity of the experience 100 fold. So at the very least, those who code, instead of trying to assume that people will conform to the product en masse, they have to shape the product a bit more to fit the people of the marketplace.
I think peakd is doing lots of cool things within the realm of UI only, but if it's a real good idea and it can get done on the chain, then the wider the adoption, the better.
Well stated.
Is that image considered creative commons zero?
Just something I whipped up in paint.net.
Modeled after those advertisements. Feel
free to use it. Not quite sure how it qualifies
with regards to the commons and whatnot.
Excellent work!
Creative Commons Zero is just a way of saying "the creator or this work allows other's to copy and paste it with or without attribution".
Ah right. Feel free, no attribution necessary!
https://flags.hivekit.dev/
here
but I'm more in favor of a recommendation page for hive.. so content older than 7 days won't be lost and never seen again..
You are amazing! Imagine this; You could build a
website w/many different productive tools on it.
You, Sir, inspired some artwork in my latest post.
hahaha I'm not a programmer, that website is not by me - I just found it some day somewhere on hive and saved it.. to have it ready to later share it with you ;) :D
LOL, oops, I wonder whose it is.