My two recent posts on cancel culture and downvoting on the Hive blockchain started to go 'viral' - or as viral as posts tend to go on Hive. That was until they themselves were also downvoted to zero and removed from trending and thus wide circulation. This is an important subject on any social media platform but especially one sold as being uncensored. Some of the issues here could affect anyone posting to Hive so they are relevant to most of us. Thankfully, the downvoting didn't totally stop the engagement on my previous posts, so here's a summary of your comments on the topic.
In summary, I have been posting fairly regularly on COVID19 science and news stories for a few weeks and often reaching the main trending page. Then my posts were consistently zeroed for over a week and the only explanation given was that I 'don't understand science' by pharesim at curangel. The gist of their unsubstantiated claim is that my posts endanger people somehow, yet no evidence was provided to prove this claim. In fact, all involved have done everything possible to avoid commenting and to prove anything at all. This is not how science works and it's not how social spaces nurture harmony and growth either.
While they claim that my posts somehow pose a threat to people and that they are essentially superhero curators saving the world from dangerous misinformation, the reality is that there is far more evidence that their downvoting is harming Hive than there is that my posts are harming anyone at all.
Claim #1: My Posts Are Junk That No-one Wants To Read
The two posts I have made previously on the topic of my recent post zeroing and downvoting have both totalled a number of comments that is higher than the current top 8 posts that are trending on Hive COMBINED. Some of the comments are from the original post's author (me) and some are spam, but this is true for all posts on Hive.
So it is clear that the argument that my posts should be downvoted because they get upvoted but don't generate engagement is not substantiated by the facts. If my posts are justified as being downvote-able due to low levels of commenting then so too are the top 8 posts on the Hive trending list currently, which includes a 2 day old post for Hivefest by @roelandp, which would usually be the most commented posts on Hive for months.
Here are some quotes from your comments under my posts:
I'm here and read and benefit from your posts. I don't have you on an autovoter.
I autovote your posts. I also read a lot of them with interest and have been doing so for a while. I'll continue to do so.
I greatly appreciate the way you reference everything well, the amount of information you share, and how much you have supported the Steem/Hive community for so long!
I read your posts regularly and upvote them manually... You've always been fair and openminded and I personally feel you bring value to Hive and the community as a whole.
To be honest: I do have you on (one) auto-vote (a day) but I also actively read your posts, especially the ones who are covid related. Appreciate them very much.
I do not auto vote, and all my votes (and reblogs) of your posts are manually performed by me, because I support your work! This can be easily seen in that I do not vote all your posts :) But I am active, as can also be seen by regular content I put out...
So it is clear that a substantial number of the upvoters on my posts are not only manual but very appreciative of reading what I share. I also regularly get messages and follows from Doctors and researchers around the world who aren't on Hive, who value the straight talk I provide regarding the obfuscation of data that is routinely happening by captured mainstream media sources and government regulatory bodies.
In truth, not a single shred of evidence has been provided during this process (and also while I was posting about COVID19 regularly) that disproves pretty much anything I've written. The information I share has the potential to SAVE LIVES. I am more than ready to debate this with anyone, the data I have shared backs up what I am saying and it is a view shared by a long list of Doctors, Pathologists and even the inventor of mRNA vaccine technology, Dr. Robert Malone - who I speak with to a limited extent and who now posts on Hive (3speak) too.
Claim #2: Excessive Autovoting
Another of the justifications given for large downvotes of my posts (and of some others) has been that we receive 'too many' autovotes that convey substantial rewards. This is a bit of an odd claim for a few reasons, not least that no-one really knows whether every vote is manual or not.
It is also fair to say that autovoting simply allows people to go about their daily lives, having trusted their stake's curation power to people who create the content that they like. I myself donate monthly to James Corbett, for example, because I like his content and also to a couple of others on Patreon. Autovoting is both a smart way to support creators regularly and also to ensure that your potential curation rewards are not wasted due to you not being able to spend several hours a day curating manually.
Hive Block Chain, whether people want to see it or not, is an investment tool for many many people. No one wants to baby sit their investment for 8 hours a day. So they use tools to do that auto up votes are one of them.
@BaShadow - Comment under my recent post
Many others with substantial stake commented too, explaining that they either manually curate all their upvotes or if they do autovote they also read most/all of the posts too.
The truth of the matter is that HIVE mostly does work based on voting trails. Legit stakeholders follow or stake these accounts based on their personal preferences or the type of content they'd like to see rewarded. Stakeholders that contribute to or follow voting trails are content with the curation that occurs. If they weren't, they'd pull up stakes and find other places to invest their delegations.
Not everyone wants to engage in full-time curation, but good HIVE-folk desire to contribute to the growth of the social dApp, the dApp that started it all and made this place initially an enjoyable place to create and share.
Inverted and negative curation is abstract to the real-world marketplace. It's on a par with Antifa window breaking. You're not hurting the big businesses and corporations, you are damaging the little guy, and you're doing it for what exactly? This kind of behavior is the most entitled behavior on the blockchain that I've ever seen.
Clearly some people take particular issue with the excessive downvoting, particularly in the context of claiming that the downvotes are issued due to excessive autovoting!
In summary, I think that using autovoting as an excuse to downvote is a shockingly dishonest approach that takes Hive users to be fools and insults investors who simply don't have the time to sit manually curating all day long. Whether this is being done to try to posture and power grab more tokens for the manual curation organisations or whether it is for other reasons that has nothing to do with Hive - I am not clear. What is clearly true, though, is that it is hypocritical to say that you are looking out for investors by downvoting the results of other investor's upvotes! There has to be some kind of middle ground involved here.
On the one hand, as I said to Acidyo, I agree that it is possible for unattended autovoting to do harm to Hive - as has possibly occurred with the large witness votes that have held the top 20 witness spots mostly stagnant for so long (the witness votes don't expire, so old users from Steem who may never have ever even logged in to Hive are still holding witness ranks in a stuck order). Auto curating is also not totally optimal, but it is a lot better than a culture where stake is centralised and then used to nullify the actions of hundreds of people based on the opinion of one person that isn't even explained fully!
Auto curation is akin to subscribing to content on Patreon or similar services, it has been part of Steem/Hive since early on and is not likely to be going away any time soon. Arbitrarily using it as an excuse to downvote is not going to win anyone any support or friends and is either a militant and ill thought out position or is malicious in intent.
Claim #3: Posts exposing the mainstream COVID19 narrative are 'dangerous'
As many people pointed out, this is likely the main reason for the downvoting - despite claims to the contrary. Virology and this COVID19 situation are complicated and so people hold wildly different perspectives of what is going on. I have studied all of the aspects to what is transpiring now for nearly 2 decades in close detail - including vaccines, pharmaceutical companies, the associated political control connected to them and numerous other related topics. I have watched many thousands of hours of video testimony from whistleblowers, documentaries, commentaries and also probably read hundreds of scientific studies.
I know for sure that it is not possible to understand the situation without having done something like this and few people have - so I am not surprised that I am caught in the crossfire of conversation on an international tragedy.
The complexity and detail of this topic means that I really can't explain my position on this in this post. The complexity is why I have been posting so many posts over the past few weeks - there is a lot to learn and new information emerges constantly.
I put together a summary post that contains a long list of links for my articles on this topic here.
For reference, here's a brand new statement from a US state Surgeon General, literally stating that you have been lied to about the safety and efficacy of the COVID19 shots:
So WHO exactly is killing people here? Is it the pharma cronies and government stooges that are so well known to be easily bought off and controlled? Is it specifically, Pfizer, who have received one of the world's largest fines previously for scientific fraud and misleading people over safety of their products? Is it me, who is mostly just amplifying whistleblowers and quoting official government data to highlight what appears to be lies coming from the corporate controlled science and media industries? Or is it the downvoters and their ilk in silicon valley, seeking to stifle the free flow of the information that the community wants to see flow?
These are questions that each person will answer in their own way.
Before answering, I'd like you to check out the following documentary (that was zeroed by Curangel), which demonstrates that the same 3 investment groups have controlling shares over ALL the biggest corporations in ALL the world's industries! You really think they don't work together in their own interests? They start wars too.
You can also listen to the following Doctors/Scientists - including Dr. Robert Malone - who has been posting to 3Speak and that even crashed 3Speak temporarily due to attracting so many viewers!
Whether you feel able to identify who is more responsible for doing harm here or not - I'd like to point out now that a mature response is one that acknowledges that everyone has their own ability to think, process information and time available to access evidence. It serves no-one to start hostile aggression towards others and respect for others is key - it also shows self respect too. Part of respecting others and self is to take our own words seriously enough to take the time to interact with others when we get involved with changing their lives somehow on the basis of what they think or say. So far, the Curangel approach has been sneering, arrogant and avoidant, rather than engaging, mature and wise. It would be great if we could uplift the conversation here rather than continue a downward spiral into nothingness.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Read My User Guide for Hive Here
Vote For Me As A Hive Witness!
Click the big black button below:
View My Witness Application Here
View Some of My Witness Related Posts
Note: Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Hive Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Hive blockchain or DApps such as PeakD and 3Speak... You can really help Hive by making your witness votes count!
Get paid to mine your imagination for the benefit of the entire NFT world:
NFTSymposium.io.
I have downvoted the posts here because they amount to baseless claims with circular references that are void of any relevant scientific content. I have not seen anything that implies these anti-vaccine online influencers understand even the most basic information about how the mRNA vaccines work. You claim to be involved for 2 decades with something that only recently manifested within the last couple of years. Governments are corrupt and capitalists do terrible things to make money, but that is not sufficient reason to influence people into potentially harming themselves or others based on impulsive pareidolia and ignorance.
You are welcome to click through to the numerous linked articles that are the actual subject here, as others have pointed out - sources are typically cited. I'm not sure what you are referring to with the claim of circular references - you are welcome to to explain.
One of the 'influencers' is literally the inventor of the technology that the mRNA vaccines are based on - Dr. Robert Malone, he is speaking in the video I linked in this very post which it seems you haven't watched.
Why let those pesky facts get in the way of "skepitcology's" religious beliefs?
Skepticology doesn't care what the inventor of the MRNA Vaccine has to say, clearly the INVENTOR OF THE VACCINE TECHNOLOGY doesn't know anything.
Religion is a hell of a drug.
I just wrote quite a long reply here to try to cover the key points - but not all of them were covered! There has been a significant debate over his role in the development of the technology and he was even removed from the Wikipedia page on mRNA vaccines after having been on there for years. It's true that he is not the lone inventor of what is in the shots today, but at the same time he was part of the process early on and clearly has a lot to say about it that is coming from a lifetime's experience.
Score credit Social ✊😎🥓👍
Big chanves commin.
I want to be very clear about my point that the vaccines are safe and effective at preventing severe disease from COVID-19. I have no doubt that corporations rule the world, governments are corrupt, and they will kill you for profit. The anti-vaccine campaigners blur these lines and ask us to assume that the vaccines are poison because of political corruption.
I have looked into the claim that Dr. Robert Malone is the inventor of some technolgy. He was one of many scientists experimenting with injecting DNA and RNA into muscle cells in the '80s, but was not involved with subsequent decades-long research that led to lipids being used safely without excessive inflammation. He did not invent any technology, and there are hundreds of scientists that contributed more to these vaccines than he did. I had to pause here because this part seems to rely on argument from authority, which is inconsistent with a philosophy that we should question claims from authority figures. Do you believe him because he is an authority figure or because his views confirm your bias?
As to the claims being made by this self-proclaimed authority figure, he actually recommends using the vaccine for those with the highest risk factors from COVID-19 disease. In the video you posted he says, "I believe that the vaccines need to be used intelligently." His complaints are trivial such as taking issue with the expeditited approval process or the government’s system for tracking adverse reactions, or saying we don't have enough data to administer shots to children. He does not subscribe to the conspiracy theories, and therefore his reputation should not be used to bolster those ideas.
No serious person can claim at the moment that "the vaccines are safe" when there is no data to support it. There are no long term trials.
A statement that would be more correct would be to say that in most cases (people who have received the shot) the adverse effects are slim to date. And then there are also the thousands of people who have actually died from it (mostly due to their age, but that is something that cannot be dismissed)
This claim did not pan out well.
I'm not a fan of zeroing out post due to disagreement in what is said. You've always provided quality content in terms of your knowledge and presentation and willingness to be open-minded. I'm not here to debate what was said, but I am here to reverse some of the damage that was done. We need a way to have a free counter to downvote abuse as we do to upvote abuse.
Not saying what happened to you was "abuse." I'm very adamant about letting people vote the way they choose. I just think a few parameter tweaks would help in the same way the last few EIP tweaks have changed the culture here.
Yes, please!
A well written post, and cover of the issues. I think there will always be issues such as you and others are experiencing. Over the course of the last two months the down voting because of subject matter has rapidly increased. Hive Block Chain is losing the status of a place that is inclusive to all points of view to one that is becoming decisive and limiting of viewpoint.
I don't know what the solution is other than for more people to take a proactive stance for keeping Hive Block Chain on the inclusive side of content and not using votes to try and control a particular narrative.
I think it's fair to say that the majority of the problem is coming from less than a handful of people and the community can definitely unite to stand up against them. That said, it might take some of the main stakeholders - aka top 20 witnesses, to get involved and it seems that they are too into silence in order to prevent loss of votes.
We may see a little change witness wise come next year, I am pretty sure the witness vote decay was part of HF 25, and that may cause some change in the top or at least some change in attitude if they wish to stay in the top 20.
Yes, the vote decay is in HF25 but they added a delay of 1 year to it.
I hope people will watch the up coming HF's and pay attention to them. I try to follow and add my two cents in on the HF post and the post building up to the hard forks, but there simply is not enough feedback on the post or the proposed actions, and @howo and @blocktrades do try to keep people informed of the dev chats, and the work being done.
Overrewarded.
MASSIVELY OVERREWARDED RANT
upvoted the comment above because lot of the comments are devoid of facts and just have become an eco-chamber
You realise that the upvotes are in response to your overuse of downvoting and not much else right? Riight?
You are welcome to establish some facts yourself, so far you seem to be the one who presents none to most people here.
Facts don’t require any establishment. They are facts. Earth is spherical. That’s a fact. Your comment establishes who you are. It is neither about the science or the non-science, it's just about the money. You just want the money.
It is a fact that this post is an over rewarded rant. That’s it. That’s all that I said. There is nothing more to add.
I am done with you. Rest is up to the community. This is my last word on you.
Your logic is hilariously dishonest and evasive. I have simply asked you to prove your claims regarding the science of COVID19 here or at least provide some evidence to confirm your claims about me. In response you have tried to avoid the challenge and simply thrown more unsubstantiated claims as if they are proven facts. The weight of the evidence here shows you are wrong and the majority of people here concur that you are wrong on this.
Good luck!
You do yourself a disservice by contradicting yourself immediately. The Earth historically was always seen as the center of the universe and not seen as a sphere at all, many cultures thought it was flat and that you could "sail out too far and fall off the edge of the earth". The fact that the earth is sphereical WAS ESTABSLISHED through deduction, reasoning, and science. It is an established fact that the earth is sphereical.
You may not like the facts that are presented here because it goes against your personal beliefs, but that's irrelevant. Facts are facts, and this article does provide facts. Handwaving away facts doesn't make them untrue.
It is already estabilished that earth IS round. Do we need to talk about it to 'establish' it again?
That post above is over-rewarded compared to the average rewarded post on hive. This is a fact.
This is not a question about my likes or dislikes. I am simply talking about a post being over-rewarded rant. And even on that YOU do not have to agree. You can do whatever you want, and think whatever you like.
Good luck!
The earth is flat?
What constitutes a rant?
What constitutes a "fact"?
And do you believe in facts because of authority or personal investigation?
I don't disagree, along with some ridiculous blurt promotions. As if we haven't tried no downvotes in the past.
Though you voted the comment a bit unnecessarily much, will just burn the rewards if it stays there.
I know, just wanted to keep it at the top, for a little bit. My finger are not as nimble as they used to be and I do most of this on my phone. So apologies there.
Hey, this is an excellent article! It gets right to the heart of the matter, is logical, and to be quite frank, should go without saying, but thank you for saying it nonetheless!
HIVE!D
Quite Frank!
Thanks!
On one hand, I find it hard to feel a lot of sympathy for posts still generating over $100 in rewards post-downvote, but on the other, I have seen widespread downvote bickering and witch hunts while the recent crypto spike seems to leave a lot of copy/pasted spam unaddressed.
I think downvoting has some value and is probably necessary to prevent major exploits of the system. Proof of stake was always going to be contentious when shared pots of money are being distributed and ultimately could lead to a complete mirror of the centralisation we see outside of the 'decentralised' sphere. The community valuing and ultimately agreeing to share money to people based on their content is still a relatively new thing for the web and there will no doubt be many twists and turns along the way. The key is always going to be to ensure that the actions of key actors are visible to the whole community so that they can know who to support with upvotes/downvotes and witness votes to ensure their vision stands the best chance of coming to life on Hive. This is part of why my suggestion for a list that shows the most downvoted posts on Hive is such a promising one.
I am also weighing whether I should create a community people can join to share and upvote content they believe has been abusively downvoted. My hesitation is due to the work it would probably take to vet posts and moderate conversations. I anticipate a lot of angry self-righteous spammers at first, too.
@freezepeach already does this, I'm sure they would appreciate any help you can provide. Currently they lack stake.
I offered to delegate some HP, but I think they have other plans. Besides, there would be little harm in multiple downvote mitigation efforts. I just need to figure out whether I can muster the effort personally.
This is the case where I understand the "disagreement on rewards" reason for downvoting. At least on some level. Although not on the level of downvoting the given post to 0. There should be some kind of balance. There is definitely a problem with the reward distribution and with the visibility. Some authors getting more than $100, while most people do not even get few dollars.
A brilliant reaction to provocation, @ura-soul. I’m not sure I’d be quite so diplomatic under the same circumstances. Like many of us who’ve been here for so long the flag wars are just another day at the office but lately the focus seems to have been concentrated on anyone voicing opinions against hive and/or the Corona pseudo pandemic. Without powerful opposition I can’t see a way around the problem but then again you never know as those wanting a place to speak freely make up a decent portion of this platform. To my mind those involved in silencing people are doing so possibly for one of the following reasons; they have been informed by investors that if they want this platform to succeed they need to control certain subject matters; or they have come to that conclusion without advice and have taken it upon themselves to turn hive into a more mainstream friendly platform. Or maybe they just have lots of stake/power and just so happen to be those types of people who vehemently believe what they hear from the MSM. Whatever the reason it’s sad to see things turn out this way because I came here to escape these types of controlled platforms. I enjoy debate and I’d even enjoy an open debate on this issue, but that’s not what they want, they want control, end of. As for solutions, well, the idea of another blockchain sounds great but it would be better if we could just sort this out in-house. This is supposed to be a platform without owners after all. Or at least that what I thought after going through the whole Justin Sun debacle…that all seems quite ironic now
This is a fascinating conversation. Unfortunately, I expect to see my work writing a comment to soon be vetoed with a "not enough power" message from my ecency app!
Allowing negative comments against the hosting platform is my first litmus test of a free platform. Sorry to tangent, but the new social platform just announced, "Truth Social", just failed that with their first terms of service, if I can believe their political opponents' reading of them.
I don't want to see another "Free" social platform have to start from scratch. I'd rather see improvements in Hive.
There's improvements being made to allow Rresource Credit delegations which will render HP delegation abuse and that required trust obsolete and accounts will be more than happy to delegate away their RC to newcomers wanting to use the network more for basically free. If you need a HP delegation for the time being due to RC limits, let me know.
I remember when I first joined STEEM that there was delegated power. I didn't know what that meant I thought I could promote mine or other's posts with it beyond a simple vote. All I know is everything just worked. I felt like I was using the free and open twitter. When I switched to HIVE my delegation was gone and I hear they increased commenting costs, which explained that message coming up so unexpected only when I try to submit my comment. I've abandoned at least three comments this way. For someone who'd like to recommend this platform, it is hard when I have to say that it's great if you have money or connections. And remember to click that plus button in your wallet before you run out of power! :(
I'm torn at your delegation offer because on one hand it'd make things easier, but I don't want to give the wrong recommendation to friends because of a privilege they might not receive. Or maybe I'm the outlier because I joined early and lost my delegation without earning enough to keep the post costs.
Well, what'd you know. 15 minutes of work and it stopped me from posting. Time to go click that plus and hope for the best... That didn't work....let's try the next day, ok now 2 days later...
As I said solutions to this are being worked on. It's not a huge issue in my eyes, even reddit limits how much new accounts can post until they get a certain amount of karma and for them it barely costs anything to store data while they also archive it every 6 months.
There are many projects that offer free delegations such as gift.giver and others who do it manually to people they notice are "legit", i.e. not bots or attempts at abusing the HP for free curation rewards.
In the near future people will be able to delegate RC directly instead of HP and many will be more inclined to just throw it out at random as there's no abuse factor, aside from just spamming the chain for no reason other than to fill it up. No monetary incentive the way that exists now tho so a lot of abuse will go away while genuine users will have an easier time finding delegations to use Hive as much as they'd want.
Sounds like the early hardforks.
No auto-vote here. However, my vote value doesn't count like the whales' votes do. I'm just someone who engages in content that I enjoy and support authors who I like.
I read posts and engage with them myself. Whales use voting trails and bots. Maybe it's time to revisit the argument for removing bots and voting trails? Then we can truly build a community on Hive, of the many - instead of pushing the perspective of the few who have the biggest stake.
Silencing the majority for the opinions of the minority is what gets the World into trouble - and how censorship runs free.
There isn't a way to prevent people voting using bots as long as the blockchain is an open protocol that apps can freely use and connect with. I think solutions have to take a different form.
Not all.
OMG did you actually go ahead and changed your avatar to a cartoon as jested? Time to start shilling scammy NFTs I guess 😂
When in Rome 🤡
I love your content and didn't even know yet about auto-upvoting lol😅
Great videos and my Kat's paw is manually upvoting this post😸
I apologize for germans like pharesim
everyone has to wake up some time
maybe corona brought us that time?
things are moving
My impression of the Tim Gielen video was it appeared to me at least to be some automated/automation version of him speaking. So basically it looked like a dubbed version not just from foreign language to English but like he was dubbed in too. Then in the end after saying all he had to say he went off on some version, that if the the great reset was to happen, that's what the outcome would look like, didn't make much sense to me. At least that was my impression after I skipped watched through it.
I don't know anything much about the creator, but the key point is the ownership of the corporations really.
@tipu curate
This is an Excellent job. . Keep it up. I love your jobs. "That is good thinking and good Product"
In 2018, I decided to pull most of my content off the platform. There is no common interpretation of any principles on here, so abuses of power will be repeated. Reading about this in your post is not surprising at all. Glad to find your content anyway. Let those of a like mind, stand together and figure out ways to counter the abuses we encounter. Thank you for your post.
Found you recently, just changed some of my votes so I vote you now and also dropped you a follow! 🙏😎
!PIZZA
!LOL
lolztoken.com
Boo boo clusters.
Credit: reddit
@ura-soul, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of @trippymane
Use the !LOL or !LOLZ command to share a joke and an $LOLZ. (2/2)
PIZZA Holders sent $PIZZA tips in this post's comments:
@trippymane(1/5) tipped @ura-soul (x1)
Please vote for pizza.witness!
We've always had these whale wars, flag wars, downvote-happy whales, and at least some communities of folks on Steem/Hive that are very much anti-free speech, and only care about their own stake investments. For a long time, they didn't seem to go so hog wild with their flagging of content...
But now those folks are all bought into the Cult of COVID, and one of the primary tenets of the cult is it's similarity to The Inquisition. For those drinking Bill Gates' kool-aid, the most important thing to do is to attack and attempt to silence all "blasphemers."
They're generally completely unwilling to discuss or defend their beliefs/statements, because to do so would be to allow blasphemy into their own minds, and then they'd risk being canceled or called a "conspiracy theorist" as well.
I think we're getting ever closer to a need for something like Hive, but launched fresh, and truly dedicated to Freedom & Truth - with the proof of Stake end of things turned WAY down, and some basic shared goals/ideas/principles. Been chatting with folks about creating something for quite a while now, but the dev side has yet to appear at all.
It would be nice if the Hive community would come together to take action to either reform Hive or generate a layer 2 token that can overcome these issues, but as others have pointed out, if a layer 2 token explodes then that makes the layer 1 Hive owners wealthier too, which could even result in them then shifting to dominate the layer 2 project. It's a complicated challenge. An ideal solution would be an entirely other blockchain that's specifically oriented to research and truth seeking (aka science). Unfortunately, any DPOS system that promotes truth seeking can be dominated by 'the science industry' if it gets noticed enough - so there's a real hole in the marketplace for an algorithm that overcomes this somehow.
this is hilarious
The following videos illustrate the background to the situation. Justin Sun demonstrates the implementation in the real world of what I am pointing to.
I find This Post, and the the Week'$ worth of META produced HIGHLY productive#
HIVE!Regards
How about content creators like @dbroze put in some effort to bring some value to Hive aside from just cross-posting content and expecting autovotes to continue feeding them rewards? It really isn't a lot of effort to edit your links not to show Steemit but Hive instead so they could at least bring in some traffic to their literally dead posts on Hive. You'd really think it's not too much to ask when they're receiving way more rewards on Hive than most of their other socials combined. If that's not the least thing they can do, aside from learning how Hive works, why it would be better for their followers to be here and be rewarded for their attention and consumption in the form of votes filtering out the comment section then I really don't see a point in them receiving "free" rewards forever and will do my best to protect the reward pool from that.
It doesn't matter how big they are outside of Hive, at some point if they don't adapt to bring some value back we should all adjust the rewards they receive else we're just pissing value in the wind.
I agree that there is a LOT more that content creators could do to promote Hive, especially those that earn their coin in absentia, as it were. This is true for many types of CCs accross the Covid/allElse spectrum and it certainly also includes those that challenge the accepted Covid narrative (Dbroze, Corbettreport, Dollarvigilante etc).
But there are those - like Urasoul, Jasonliberty, who are very present and yet are being heavily downvoted - it seems to me, for holding the basic position of being eloquent and relatively influential/wellknown folk on Hive who challenge the Covid narrative.
There are various reasons given for the d/vs, but, when boiled down (and down and down) to its basic elements, the main one (even if it be the elephant in some room) has to be this position of challenging the Covid narrative!
Again I totally commend you for your seemingly tireless engagement and reasoned discussions.... might you consider contrasting this with the approach of someone like Azircon (who does engage to an extent it must be said) in this very post: where powerFlexing is expressed like a jackboot coming down. I have observed this particular pattern before on various other posts and it is not an approach that seems reasonable, rather one that acts and speaks with awareness of the possession/support of vastly superior forces and thus an assurance of 'victory'.
Whatever your own position on the Covid narrative, I am speaking to you (and exposing myself to Azircon) only coz I know you actually give a fuck about the platform. However, I do not think you can build inclusively by excluding selectively and it also seems that the energy with which a work is undertaken is the energy that resides within it. If this means anything to you, then you will know it is significant.
From my position as someone who sees huge cracks in the Covid narrative and, frankly, wonders why they are not glaringly obvious, it seems that Hive is becoming a version of FB, YT and the rest of the Twittering gang, at least in this regard. It feels like the space in which to express oneself - and report on what one sees as going on (which affects us ALL) is being squeezed.
This squeezing IS going on on the Hive b/c. From what I have seen and read, your individual version of squeezing is free from bullying, free from baiting those with less 'power'. But there is some shit-ugly squeezing going on, at least as experienced by those upon whom the jackboot falls!
.......and, ya know, what if there is a point to that shit about the cracks in the narrative!? - that's potentially a biggie to consider, and therefore, I guess, usually left alone huh?
The extremes look poles apart, yet there is much overlap. We are in this together!
I humbly present you with the above ideas to consider from a perspective on some issues that may well be opposite to your own in terms of opinion, but perhaps somewhat aligned in terms of right action.
You don't need to respond to these mutterings btw :)!
While I don't agree with the ways some challenge the covid narrative or the effects of it that's not the only reason I downvote posts. I removed a downvote from urasoul when I noticed it was downvoted close to 0 on content.
It seems you're assuming I only target covid posts with downvotes, which isn't true. Other than the reason in the initial comment you replied to I also look out for other overrewarded posts of any genre mainly due to autovotes/blind votes like rancho/haejin or other weird ones where certain autovotes keep landing on literally dead silent accounts that only post for the extraction of value alone but not use Hive in any other way.
You saying the covid narrative is being squeezed is easy to counter as it's been a MAJORITY of trending over the past year and a half with so many of these inactive influencers constantly trending with close to 0 interactions or fucks given by neither regular users or those who agree and would maybe like to see them more often. They have the choice to follow and continue to do so but them taking the rewards they've been taking for so long continously is not something I agree with. Doesn't matter if they post about covid, 5g towers or the second coming of christ if it were to happen tomorrow. Eventually it's too much relatively compared to what all other genres/communities are earning from the reward pool and how they use Hive in comparison. Not to mention how bad it makes Hive look to have dead posts with 1-3 views on 3speak on trending constantly due to the same autovotes from the same supporters.
It's weird to me that this is the only time my downvotes are questioned this much from other people, because other times it's mostly the author alone who has something against it (obviously due to rewards). Why aren't you asking me why I've been downvoting certain travel posts or food posts I've initially even voted up myself only to see being overrewarded by the days end on trending.
There might be some purely downvoting these posts for the covid reasons but that doesn't mean everyone is, even so it's their stake or delegated trusted stake and they can do what they want with, if you don't like it then counter them or find more support to (as we're seeing happening to urasoul with newsflash). Will that mean his posts will yet again start to get overrewarded if some of the main downvoters quit? Maybe. Will that mean I'd then start to downvote them again because I don't think they deserve the rewards they're getting depending on each specific post I happen to curate (up or down)? Most likely.
I take your point about being challenged on Covid d/vs but not on food/travel ones. However, in my opinion as one who feels strongly that Humanity is currently being subjected to major psyops which are detrimental to everyone's wellbeing, the issue is of much more importance than food or travel. I mean, the 'covid issue' is itself extremely polarising so it's not surprising IMO that you should rcv a great(er) number of comments questioning your 'squeezing'.
Regarding Covid narrative posts trending on Hive, a few thoughts to offer my perspective:
I also take your point that your d/voting is more balanced and spread out than just on covid posts. I did not actually think it was otherwise with You.
Ok Acidyo, I drop it here: I feel you've listened to what I've expressed and that's good enough for me. I too feel I have understood your position better and should it come to pass (as it well may) that I get a d/v from you I won't sob into my sox :D
I don't disagree with your comment about dbroze.
I am a little puzzled on something though, so Hive went from about 15 cents to aroun $1.38 USD recently, without and huge downvote campaigns being waged on anyone.
So what is it exactly that you think you are doing when you go around downvoting posts you think are 1. Overrewarded or 2. Disagree with?
Do you think you are somehow creating value by doing those two things?
Downvoting spam/plaigiarism/theft/gore and stuff like that, you will get no complaint from me against those things. Just because "downvoted due to disagreement on rewards" was a thing that Steem/Hive put in their "whitepaper/blue paper" doesn't make it a valid thing to do.
In all honesty, there's essentially no point in downvoting overrewarded posts, Hive is decentralized enough. The more downvotes target people for "over rewarded" and for "disagreement on rewards" and for "i don't like your content" the more value you are subtracting from the platform. There really isn't almost anyone on here who even comes close to using sock puppet accounts to upvote themselves and make tons of money from garbage content anymore, is there? Is there even 1 person doing that right now?
The totality of what you think you are doing, and what you actually are achieving is two different things. You think by downvoting urasoul and other posts like it that you are going to somehow get the price of Hive up and that people are going to rally behind your efforts to do so, and you can see the evidence that only 2 people agree with you and the vast majority do not.
So why continue to do this? You are only going to make people pool together more HP against you, to stop supporting your project(lose delegations). It isn't a good look from a PR standpoint what's going on here.
You're making it really easy for urasoul, me, and others like us to get more support I hope you realize.
Mostly 1.
I've been downvoting posts even before the Hive price uptrend, mostly focusing on those that bring close to 0 value to Hive, barely try, etc. You can check my own and ocdb's downvote history somehow probably. Another one has been ranchorelaxo casting 10 daily votes at a whim within a minute on whatever is trending, often landing on the same people constantly who themselves get there by a lot of autovotes and in my opinion the content doesn't deserve the rewards.
I often ignore those who get it the first time, no matter the content, cause that's part of the lottery in pob and other times they may not make as much, but if the votes are constant, auto/blind and on top of that the content is mediocre, farmy (being posted daily just for the autovotes), author never makes an effort to forfeit part of the rewards depending on the content/effort that went into each specific post they make but still end up with the same rewards, then yes I have something against that and will attempt to protect the reward pool from it so everyone else receives those rewards instead.
There's tons of reasons why autovotes aren't good, have a bad effect on both the authors who become farmy/lazy/push themselves to post for those guaranteed votes and others who aren't on those lists and rely on manual votes or smaller ones with more effort/activity and often times better content. One way to disincentivize them is to reduce their returns a little, bear in mind I say a little cause I'm not a fan of zero'ing post rewards on content and when I say content I don't mean posts like this one we're commenting in right now that has a bunch of quotes and revolve around previous downvotes.
Good autovotes are those who spend time to adjust the vote strength, remove and add new authors to it frequently and do a little more effort to make sure it's fair compared to everyone else. There's some that do it well, many that don't because they either don't care or just enjoy earning passively too much. The linear curve has made it easier for autovoters to not care, especially those who were interested in maximizing returns, so one of the few ways to combat that and attempt to get them to do better is by downvotes. It's not always about the author alone.
Why not? Say price of Hive goes to $10, do you expect people to make $1k-$5k per post? Let maximizers and lazy autovoters just keep at it when there's a lot more users that have joined and are earning close to nothing? Or would you attempt to make it a little bit more fair, pressure the autovoters to distribute their votes a bit more and give the authors fairer rewards than the unrealistic sustainability we witnessed back in 2018 with $10+ sbd prices or the still ongoing problem you can quickly notice on the corrupted chain where it's the same 10 people trending constantly, making thousands per garbage posts while the rest are being sold or abused.
Downvoting for disagreement of rewards is perfectly valid. You complaining about it doesn't change that fact that it helps distribution, something I've worked on the past 5 years. If we had had downvote mana during the Haejin times we would've had a much better distribution today with way more dolphins and orca's that decided to continue staying staked and ride this journey. I don't want to see something like that again and this whole stigma of downvotes as if all downvotes are bad, it's ridiculous in my opinion.
Haejin and Rancho are totally different than most DV scenarios that are happening lately. They were doing 10 posts a day of nonsense TA which is all bunk analysis. TA is tarot card reading.
Also, almost every post made on LeoFinance is also trash and I dont think I've ever seen their stuff downvoted, their community has a lot of haejin minded people posting number go up nonsense.
A few bad actors always upvoting themselves and selling it eventually they dilute themselves and the problem solves itself without downvoting, though its slower.
Steem covered this fallacy of "everyone earns" in their white paper, stating that most people will join here hoping to earn and it's not possible and that they are hopelessly wasting their time on something that wont happen.
Same thing happens on any platform.
All the people flocking to onlyfans wont earn almost anything ever, or new streamers signing up to twitch almost none will make more than 100 bucks ever. Systems always reward the first and the most skilled who are in early, extremely rare for a new comer to be able to earn. It's just not how this system is setup nor others.
Increasing inflation by a higher amount would change that, hives inflation needs to be 10xed or 20xed. The bandaid is dving when what we need is higher inflation to fix everything
How do they dilute themselves without downvotes?
Your onlyfans/twitch comparisons aren't good. We have thousands of accounts being able to reward anyone they want with votes, tips, subscriptions (recurring payments), etc. On those other platforms they all just flock to where the majority is, the big influencers earn most of the rewards, there's no incentive to go look for smaller ones. You're literally making my point more valid that those who earn too much should receive some downvotes so everyone else makes more, thanks.
If an account sells any of their earnings they have less overall power in terms of the % owned.
If you have 1mil hp, earn 100k hp in a year, sell 50k in the year, you have less % of the overall hp now. The only way to not lose % is to keep powered up.
Over time everyone who sells gets diluted slowly.
In year 5 you might have .5% of total hp and selling some now in year 6 you have .485% of total hp. In year 10 you might have .42%
The inflation is too slow to correct for the initial distribution, so the inflation being higher could fix that problem, while also keeping the price low so that people dont make too much on over voted posts
I'm not so much of a fan of the branding but then 'hive' isn't great either. I'll check it out when I get a chance, thanks.
Funny, blurt was used as an example of a runaway milking platform, and that's the first I'd heard of it. You can keep the hive self-tending to curb milking abuses and just get a better feed with a front-end that filters out people whose downvote/upvote you don't respect. Shouldn't be too hard to code, directing every link to peak.d or ecency. I'd imagine it would be helpful to add this feature to those projects, if they value the user experience.
Nah, let's keep throwing dust votes on all posts to mimimize the risk of downvotes on what ctime would actually like to upvote to maximize returns instead. Who wants to build something when you can just bitch about stuff while constantly only thinking about your own ass?
The downvoting of accounts exposing the coronahoax has exposed Hive as yet another deep state controlled NWO mind control platform. It is a real shame to admit it after five years and Steemit on Hive, but sooner or later everyone who is trying to expose the globalist agendas is going to have to emigrate to a new platform - maybe that can be a new layer based on the Hive blockchain, but I'm starting to think that at it's core, this blockchain is just too corrupt to build on.
Any proof of stake system can be dominated by anyone with enough stake - so a truly resilient platform has to either not use proof of stake or be specifically designed in other ways to combat the problems hive/steem have exposed. Dan Larimer seems to think he has achieved that but I doubt it (I never used Voice).
Social interaction is all about nuance and unfortunately, many people don't understand that or value it. Facebook is extremely manipulative and unpleasant, but part of it's growth has been due to heavy focus on understanding psychological nuances.