The HIVE FREEDOM PROXY: Over $1.7M Worth of Hive Witness Votes Available For Serious Free Speech Witnesses.

Announcing a new witness voting proxy fund worth Millions - Nominate Free Speech Witnesses!

It's been a while since I made a Witness Update for Hive. In part that's because I had to go to Australia for 9 months to help a friend survive a very difficult time and in part it's because I have been so busy working on so many different things.

Recently, as you may be aware, I have experienced continual zeroing or near zeroing of all of my posts on Hive by Curangel, OCD, their downvote trail and others. This would have significantly impacted my ability to make time for Hive and for researching key health topics. However, since I value Hive as a free speech platform I have been making as much time as possible available to dedicate to Hive behind the scenes - which I have mainly been dedicating to examining and overcoming the centralisation of stake that has occurred here in terms of the balance of upvotes and downvotes (My last post addresses this issue and I also spoke on the 3Speak Community show on this recently too).

While some people think that the ability for a small number of people to nuke Hive accounts into the ground unchallenged (even successful accounts with lots of followers who are active) is not a problem, the reality is that I have long seen this as one of the biggest threats to Hive. I have had many people come to me behind the scenes over the years to complain about this, but there hasn't been much I could do. Hive is powered by stake primarily, so whoever has the most money calls the shots - and I have not had the most money.

The recent threats made to people on Hive by certain large stakeholders, both in terms of threats to curation rewards of other large stakeholders and even in terms of physical threats of violence made to people on chain, has motivated other large stakeholders to take action. The full details of this action are not public yet, however, I can announce that I have been proxied over $1.7M worth of witness voting power as part of the response.

Hive only exists because of a centralised attack on Steem by Justin Sun who sought to censor the chain. Everyone needs to prioritise preventing behaviour of this kind on Hive and I am saddened that the amount of effort which went into creating Hive is not sufficient motive for some around here to continue to uphold that vision. It may be that the perceptions of some here are simply not allowing them to see the similarity between Justin Sun and some of what is happening on Hive to limit the free flow of information.

Proxy Your Witness Votes For Free Speech

This proxy of voting power has been made in order to tip the balance of the governance of Hive towards free speech and away from downvoters who fail to understand basic human relations or who are, perhaps, even motivated by nefarious intentions. It has already been used to this effect and has created real change to Hive governance.

This post is an invitation to everyone to consider proxying your witness voting power to me in order to continue the mission of ensuring that the top 20 witness positions on Hive are populated only by those who demonstrate the ability to respect the free flow of information, human decency and open mindedness (all of which are shared goals of so many of us who make up the Hive community).

Currently, I am not using all of my 30 witness votes (You can see who I am voting for here). This is because I am not familiar enough with all of the witnesses and their true motives and have not yet found 30 that I fully trust. I do pay close attention to the statements made by people and have done over the 5+ years on Hive/Steem - but the majority of witnesses that I have heard speak seem to undervalue free speech or take no action to protect it, hence - again - why I do not have 30 votes yet cast.

So this post is both an invite to proxy to me and also an invite to inform me of witnesses that I am not currently voting for, who are a good fit for the goals I am stating here. If you are a witness who is strongly for free speech on Hive, then please leave me a comment below that demonstrates that this is the case. Also, if you want to nominate someone else then please do, but I won't be voting for anyone who cannot provide any evidence that they are aligned towards free speech.

Some Examples of Who I Am Voting For And Why

@Ausbitbank - One of the longest active witnesses. I have known him since the beginning on Steem and he is the one who is most responsible for me blogging on Hive today. He consistently upvoted my posts over the years that exposed numerous serious crimes and problems in society, many of which continue til this day. Many in society take 5-10 years to catch up with accepting what I expose. Some take 1 year. Ausbitbank is right there with me, with no delay!

@Steempeak - Creators of @peakd, still the best general use Hive front end, as far as I am concerned. I am not aware of any action they have taken that is anti free speech. PeakD could definitely do with being optimised in order to prioritise posts in ways that aren't so easily manipulated by large stakeholders and it is possible that 3speak will take their crown in the near future. For now, they are adding a lot to Hive and deserve support.

@yabapmatt - Developer and Founder of Splinterlands. Open minded, seemingly fair, creative and supporter of exposing important topics via Hive. I have never seen him say or do anything that is against free speech.

@stoodkev - Developer of Hive Keychain, a fundamental tool for Hive. Again, like Matt, I have never seen him do or say anything that is against the interests of Hive.

@quochoy - Developer at Hive.blog - actively helping Hive. I have never seen him take action that harms Hive or that messes with free speech.

@someguy123 - Owner of Privex, hosting company, and maintainer of Hive deployment packages that keep everything running (among other things). He tirelessly helps Hive and to my knowledge has never said/done things to harm free speech or growth here.

@aggroed - The other founder of Splinterlands and also Palnet and more. He has a shared interest with me on free speech and specifically exposing the important issues of the day that the mainstream and their allies seek to bury at all cost.

@threespeak - @starkerz and @theycallmedan are strongly focused on free speech and putting huge amounts of time into improving Hive, both as a free speech platform and as a successful financial investment.

@drakos - Ex top 20 witness for Hive. Outspoken advocate for free speech.

@timcliff - I have known Tim since the beginning of Steem. While I haven't seen him being so active lately on Hive, he generally is able to make neutral and reliable decisions for Hive governance, without letting politics or agenda get in the way.

@bobinson - Developer at 3Speak (amongst other projects), so aligns with the free speech intent there.

@apshamilton - Lawyer who runs the class action lawsuit against Facebook/Google on behalf of the Hive community. He consistently pushes for free speech on Hive.

@r0nd0n - Another long time Hive/Steem member. He helps run the MSPWaves and Minnowpond organisations (PAL) and hosts regular chat shows for the Hive community. He demonstrates good knowledge of the key factors on Hive, spanning technical through to social and political. r0n is a big supporter of free speech and open debate, as evidenced by him running the @freezepeach counter downvoting service.

@liondani - Another long time Steem/Hive witness. Haven't seen much from him lately, but he has shown support for freedom in the past enough for me to vote him.

@disregardfiat - Free speech advocate and creator of D.lux, which aims to help lower access to Layer 2 communities on Hive.

@ura-soul - Me! I have worked for nearly 2 decades to help heal, balance and evolve Earth. This specifically requires unconditional respect of free will, which means full free speech and doing whatever is needed to ensure no-one is being overpowered. Currently developing a site for Hive that can help overcome the ideological downvoting situation and also looking at launching Layer 2 communities that will provide free speech spaces too.

How To Proxy Your Witness Vote

I am asking you to re-evaluate your current witness votes on Hive to make sure that you are voting for people who you KNOW are aligned towards free speech and that means the wise and non abusive use of downvotes/upvotes.

One way to do that is to proxy your witness votes to me and to let me take care of the research and maintaining the voting list. To proxy your votes to me, just use the button to do so in the 'interactions' menu in PeakD when viewing my profile or go to the witness voting page at Hive.blog - then scroll to the bottom and add my name into the 'set proxy' box and click the button.

1. Make sure you are logged in at Hive.blog and go to the witnesses page.
2. Enter 'ura-soul' into the 'set proxy' box at the bottom of the page.
3. Click 'Set Proxy'. You are done.

From then on, you will automatically use your Hive stake to vote for the witnesses that I vote for. Your Hive Power will not be used for anything as a result, except for voting for witnesses. This action does not give me any ability to upvote or downvote posts on your behalf or anything like that.

Again, if you have any comments on my choice of witnesses or want to make suggestions for others for me to consider then please leave a brief comment below stating your case.

Wishing you well,
Ura Soul

Read My User Guide for Hive Here