Well my friends. It looks like I picked up a downvoter.
The best response to unwarranted downvotes is to stop posting on the platform. Smart users take the additional step and sell their HIVE. Sadly, I am not smart.
If I was smart; I would have liquidated my account back when it was worth $11,000.
Apparently, the downvote trend is led by whales who believe that they need to protect the precious reward pool from small accounts.
The stated reason for the recent downvotes is that I am an evil reward harvester who is abusing the rewards pool. gasp.
Lets measure the scope of my HIVE spam. HIVE stats says that in these last 8 years I've dropped 4302 post (Hivebuzz says 594 posts and 3702 comments).
I've harvested 1,173.97 HP for my evil posts.
I confess openly that I posted on HIVE for the reward.
Lest see: 1137/3702 = 0.307. With HIVE trading at a dime we see that 0.307 HP is almost three pennies a post.
gasp!
I've kept all of my ill gotten author rewards as HIVE POWER.
I mention this to ask the question: Is the poor performance of HIVE the result of small accounts who harvest petty rewards, or is the poor performance of HIVE caused by whales who are harvesting huge rewards?
There are whales who are harvesting much more than me.
Harvesting Curation Rewards
In addition to harvesting author rewards, I've been upvoting posts to harvest curation rewards.
gasp
I came to the conclusion a few years ago that the best way to play Steemit/HIVE was for curators to buy a big chunk of HIVE and to power a portion of their curation rewards.
So, I bought a big chunk of HIVE. This is how I got my account value up to $11,000.
After i achieved my HIVE investment goal, I started powering down a portion of my curation reward.
Okay, I've been putting my rewards into #hive-engine where the rewards disappear into ill fated HE projects.
My Current Project
Speaking of #hive-engine. At the end of the year, I decided to create a hive tribe. I just spent 1100 BEE to create a token and making it stakable. I was preparing to spend the 1000 BEE to create a smart contract.
So, I got downvoted for trying to build a hive engine token.
Not to give up secrets. I wanted to create the tribe to show a group of people who have real money.
Getting the down votes was fortuitous. Because of the downvotes, I decided to abandon the tribe in mid stream. I will kiss that 1100 bee good bye.
I repeat. The proper response to downvotes is to stop dropping posts on HIVE. If you receive down votes; you should leave.
My Activity on SteemIt and Blurt
Apparently one of the reasons for my downvote is that I've been posting on Blurt and SteemIt.
gasp
It is funny. The reason that I've been posting on Blurt is that I truly fear downvotes.
Every time I write a post I ask the question: Is there any chance that this post might trigger down votes?
If there is a chance that the post might trigger a downvote, I don't publish the post.
Here is a case in point. I wrote about 12 posts for the learn to code a year ago.
I started writing some posts about PHP. PHP is not popular and might receive down votes. I dropped that idea.
I learned to write in Rust and Zig. Rust and Zig programmers are mean judgmental people. They attack people who think outside of their boxes.
I decided to stick with C.
I started writing a post about strongly typed v loosely typed programming. I wanted to say that it is best to choose strongly typed languages.
As I was putting the words to paper a troubling thought jumped in my brain. The thought was "Type is an artificial construct."
The reason that c is such a miserable language is it has a convoluted approach to strings. C programmers struggle to make the string type work.
I realized that, if I wrote a controversial line like "Type is an artificial construct" in a HIVE post, I might get down voted. The down voters wouldn't understand the reasoning behind my post ... but they would down vote anyway.
I then looked at the posts I had written for @learn2code . It is possible that whales would down vote me because of the ideas in the posts.
I felt sick.
I Post on Blurt Because of the HIVE Down Votes
After I write a post, I look at it and ask: Is there any reason that ideological enforcer on HIVE might down vote?
If there is a reason, I don't publish the post.
I have a hard drive filled with posts that I wrote for HIVE and never publish. Many of them are quite good.
HIVE is such an ugly and toxic place that I fear writing posts about programming code on the platform.
I don't see how turning HIVE into a toxic wasteland where people fear discussing ideas benefits the platform.
Here is a Real Whale of a Problem
I am being down voted because I harvest rewards from the precious rewards pool. I have harvested 1,173 HP in the last seven and half years with my 4302 posts.
That 1,173 HIVE came from the reward pool ... when it could have gone to whales!
Guess what? the 1173 HP that I harvested is bug squat.
In my opinion. The big issue that is killing HIVE is the stupid interest on HBD.
Last quarter HBD holders converted about a million HBD to HIVE. At a dime, the million HBD would generated ten million HIVE.
10,000,000 is significantly larger than the 1,000 that I harvested from HIVE.
@geekgirl was publishing a monthly update on HBD interest. Her last report was in November. She started receiving downvotes for her reports. @geekgirl did the right thing. She stopped producing her reports.
I have to repeat this. If a whale downvotes your posts, you should stop post. Smart users vacate the platform.
The last report showed that at 15% interest, we were paying over $100,000 in interest a month on HBD holdings. With HIVE trading at a dime, $100,000 converts to over a million HIVE a month.
HBD holders converted a million HBD to HIVE last quarter. This is the thing that pushed the price of HIVE under a dime. We paying a hundred thousand HBD in interest a month. That is a million HIVE. the debt pushes down the price of HIVE.
Anyone foolish enough to say that on HIVE is inviting down votes.
The censorship on HIVE is sickening.
Conclusion
The down voting community puts forward that claim that small accounts abuse the pool by harvesting from the precious rewards pool.
The precious rewards pool is for the exclusive use of whales.
I say that idea is bunk.
HIVE was killed by the decision to pay 20% interest on HBD.
The HBD holders converted a million HBD to HIVE last quarter. The HBD interest is the thing that pushed HIVE below a dime and not posts small accounts.
Anyway, the correct response to receiving downvotes is to stop publishing on HIVE. Smart people power down and sell their HIVE. I probably won't do that for awhile.
I generated the spammy ai-image of a downvoter on Night Cafe.
I guess this will be the last post I write on HIVE for awhile.
I am giving up on my HIVE project. I will kiss my 1100 BEE goodbye.
Sadly, you will never see what I was planning on doing. It was a project that had the potential to bring thousands of users, with money, to HIVE.
I really don't understand how driving people off the platform benefits the platform. I never saw how 20% interest on HBD could benefit the platform either. I will probably continue blurt and steemit and will experiment with other platforms ... there are a lot of competitors to HIVE out there.
We need a better process for handling downvoting disputes on chain imo.
I think the scorched earth reaction to getting downvoted creates a lot of friction and makes it harder to find a compromise.
I've been a supporter of #hive-watchers. Down votes can be abused in the same was as any other features of a forum.
IMHO, when people down vote, they need to state the reason.
The down-voter should remove the down vote if the stated reason proves true.
Right now, one gets put on a down vote list without knowing why.
In my case, I received a down vote on a post about creating hive-engine token. My assumption is that it was an objection to my buying a hive-engine project. It is blockchain suicide to downvote people for buying stuff with our crypto.
Many tokens were abusive. Many token creators proved to be spammers or scammers.
The down voter later claimed that I was copying and pasting content from my blurt.blog account. I've dropped 54 posts on blurt ... about 1 a month. I can't find any instance of copying and pasting text. I have reused images on different sites. This is when the image was not a primary part of the post.
Communication is the key to making down votes work.
I am not opposed to downvoting people for copying and pasting from different platforms. I never did that. I just kept my blurt account active. (everyone who was on chain before the steemit/hive split received a blurt account).
Down voting without communication is the problem. I've down voted people. I've always said why before the down vote.
!WINE
Also I just need to say. I see these rage posts related to getting downvoted all the time. Most of the goodbye posts are super whiny and boring. Yours is awesome. This is super punk rock 🔥🔥🔥
like this picture is so badass LOL 🤣
I have been looking at your account and trying to figure out why you were downvoted. I think, but this is just a guess, I think it might be because you were powering down.
That is super common. People power down while still posting for rewards and then they get downvoted.
There is a weird thing going on where people believe simply having more users makes the platform better. We added a lot of users that sold most of their stake. That has created a lot of issues but there are 2 big ones:
There is A LOT of HIVE that is just getting centralized on exchanges. This HIVE on exchanges is not part of the ecosystem in any way. This is super bad for the ecosystem that this happened. Like we are very vulnerable to random rich folks coming in and causing us problems. (It also distorts expectations for rewards because the HIVE inflation rate is based on the total HIVE, not what is just in the ecosystem; everyone here is getting paid more than they should be if people actually used HIVE vs letting it sit on exchanges).
The cheaper HIVE gets, the less it makes sense to be a witness. We need really good witnesses and they should be compensated well. I would love there to be altruistic witnesses but it is not common for people to be altruistic. If the HIVE price keeps going down more, who knows what that looks like; it's not good.
This is what happens when folks don't get out and meet everybody.
I've been supporting you for a long time, maybe he will see the error of his ways.
I thank you for your support. You have been doing a great job of supporting people.
You've also been judicious in your use of the down vote. I've hosted forums and know the importance of blocking spam.
I live in Utah. I have never met another HIVE user. I don't have any money for travel; so I can't go to conferences. I might be in a position to travel in a few months.
That was the reason for building a hive tribe.
!ALIVE
I can counter half of his down vote.. there's that :D
That sucks man, I hate that silly stuff. I like what you're doing, and don't think you're an asshole like some of the people from Blurt. Hopefully this stuff will get straightened out!
It really bugs me when people post the same content on multiple sites. Copying and pasting text shows contempt for people who use the sites. It is also bad from an SEO perspective. Google drops the page rank of sites with high amounts of duplicate content.
The jerks on blurt get belligerent when you confront them for copy and paste jobs.
I would support #hive-watchers if they down voted people who dropped duplicate content on HIVE and Blurt.
#hive-watchers needs to learn some tact. They should post the reason for the down vote before dropping the down vote.
Best Practices
One of the most effective approach to reducing bad practices is to work on establishing best practices.
I manually write different posts for hive blurt and steemit. I often put links between the platforms as such linking improves SEO,
I counted. I have about 54 blurt posts in the last 5 years. I do different things with the accounts. I often put lower quality and experimental materials on blurt.
I was playing a game of generating an AI image a day. I put the ai images on steemit, not hive, because I saw the images as low quality content.
Unfortunately, part of best practices is that people should stop using hive if they start receiving down votes.
This is why it is so important that hive-watcher must be important with their downvotes. down votes drive away users.
!WINE
Indeed, but why you don't want to start power down? If you want to leave, leave completely.
I was down voted for spending 1100 BEE (500 HIVE) to create a #hive-engine token.
I wanted to show that it is possible to create a tribal coin that does not lose its value.
My goal was a modest tribe with a very specific focus with built in support to maintain a minimum price for the coin.
Do you have any comprehension of how disgusting and insulting it is for whales to downvote people for spending HIVE on the only platform that accepts HIVE for payment?
I spent 500 HIVE to create a token and was preparing to spending another 500 HIVE to create a smart contract.
You Are Right
You are right that the correct response to a downvote campaign is to sell one's hive.
I just spent so much time and effort on the role of positive curation that I am not quite ready for the full power down.
Everyone who receives unjust down votes from whales should leave. The HIVE community should realize that down vote abuse is as great a danger to HIVE as people who use more than one social media platform.
!WINE
I applaud your conviction and agree with you about the downvote cabal not realizing they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg. They can't help themselves, and they can't stop. They literally can't stop, or their game is up, and their victims will turn on them. All they can do is keep up their downvotes. I almost feel sorry for them, but they brought this on themselves. And now they get to watch the platform die, knowing they're the reason... but they literally can't stop. They are going down with the ship, but you don't have to. I think you will ultimately regret any delays you put in your own way. See you where the downvoters cannot follow : )
EDIT: Yikes, after seeing what you've said about Blurt users, and how you only put your low quality content there, I changed my mind. I think Hive is the place for you! Enjoy.
Sorry about taking so long to reply.
It is interesting how abuse of a policing feature has a worse impact on the platform than the spammers.
To be honest. I've been working on the issue of monetary reform since before the launch of bitcoin. I had been in contact with groups like Cato and other groups interested in monetary reform.
The decision to pay 20% interest on HBD destroyed HIVE as a platform for monetary reform.
If you had contacts with real economists, would you tell them about HIVE.
The argument for crypto currency is that the variable interest rate built on fractional reserve lending artificially concentrates wealth in a ruling class.
The interest on HBD means that I cannot use the platform to argue for reform because the interest on HBD shows that crypto platforms are prone to the same extractive mechanisms as the federal reserve.
I've been absolutely distraught about the interest rates. HIVE is doing the very thing that crypto must avoid.
!WINE