Hive has a feature that was created with good intentions. However, in my opinion, its lost whatever utility it once had. This is the downvote feature.
Downvoting is a controversial topic on Hive. Some people favor it and some don't. It's obvious that those in favor are winning, because we all can do it.
Frankly, it's a stupid feature. I say this because it's misused more often than not. How many times have you seen a downvote, combined with intelligent, constructive feedback? Probably never. Without this feedback, it serves no purpose other than a self-indulgent outlet for power tripping users.
To make matters worse, HiveVote allows you to put someone on a downvote trail. Isn't it lovely to see your post arbitrarily downvoted by a bot?
I assume everyone would like Hive to grow. We want the price of Hive to moon so we can all get rich and retire with beach front property somewhere. Instead, we give the babies machine gun's so they can shoot the ship full of holes.
Because there's no accountability for regressive behavior, I am going to give a 100% upvote to downvoted posts whenever possible. I will also occasionally boost them with ecency points.
How about the fairly downvoted posts, are you going to upvote those too? You could start with this one, I zeroed earlier that rips info from the internet and expects a reward.
https://peakd.com/@samir253617/uk-confirms-extra-military-support
👍👍👍
I probably will, even though plagerism is a good use-case for it. I'm against downvoting because its a broken mechanism. I understand we don't want to turn into a free-for-all. But downvoting is being abused too much. I don't know what a good replacement for it would look like. But something that rewards good behavior instead of punishing bad behavior makes more sense on a censorship free platform.
Certainly downvoting can be abused. Hive is imperfect and always will be. Nothing is perfect but I honestly don't think the rewards system works better without downvoting. I would like to see the downvote mechanism changed somehow so that a comment is necessary though. I also don't understand the rationale of upvoting plagiarized content...for any reason. Might as well argue the upvote system is broken and get rid of that too.
I also don't agree with conflating downvotes with censorship. The blockchain remains censorship free with or without downvotes and those that implement front ends can censor however they want.
I'm certainly willing to entertain better, specific ideas but until there are some, I think we are better with the downvote then without it. There are other blockchains (and even tokenized communities here) that got rid of downvotes. I don't see them working better.
At the very least a conversation is needed. I spend most of my time looking for content to curate, and there's a lot of abuse. I say this from an outsiders perspective, because I'm obviously not part of the community's behind it. Every self-appointed regulator has his reasons.
But without correction, I think conflating the downvote system with censorship is warranted. Because it doesn't solve anything. But it can discourage good people from contributing. Not everyone's Hivewatchers. I admit, that they do it correctly.
However, if good accounts keep getting caught in the crossfire of one personal beef after another, I think the system needs to be canned.
Mmm, I think that glosses over a nuanced idea of what censorship actually is.
By definition: suppression of speech, public communication, or other information.
Key nuance: subjectivity of "suppression."
If you pick up a few random downvotes that knock a penny off your post, is that really suppression? I don't think so.
If you get zero'd out by someone (for any reason), that's arguably not even suppression:
*As @darth-azrael pointed out, some frontends can employ "suppression." Though this is what I'd consider very light suppression—a flag on the content or the requirement of an extra click to see it. That, plus your content wont get extra attention through whatever 'trending' algos are in place.
Hardly politicized censorship, which often employs violence and other nefarious means to truly suppress communication of dissidents. And that's why I disagree with conflating the ideas. The mainstream understanding of "censorship" is juiced up to infer some kind of extreme, organized, nefarious movement. When people start tossing around the word "censorship" to describe a downvote mechanism that maybe lightly-to-moderately suppresses their content on handful of frontends... it leads to overblown, emotionally charged arguments that only sow anger and division. I've seen it here on Hive (not necessarily in this post's threads... yet) and it's ugly and depressing.
I will probably create a follow up post that more accurately describes my position. This one is a tad bit emotionally charged, lol. Thanks for the feedback.
You're welcome! I'd be interested in seeing that post for sure. 🙂
Could you give us some examples of what you consider unfair downvoting please? While you're at it, possibly some alternatives to downvoting?
This I agree is wrong, but then again, I disagree with auto upvotes and trails too.
It's funnier when you give a trail description.
100% agree with you. If something does more harm than good.. why would u even keep it goin? Even if the downvote system was 20% effective, that is still 80% of the time that it only hurts hive/hivers.
I was getting downvoted for a style of posting that I thought was very cool and important to me, but apparently was a downvoted format. Instead of explaining it to me I only recieved a few nasty/condescending comments and I had to read up on it and figure out for myself what was happening. :(
I never downvote, but would get rid of the whole downvote system in a heartbeat.
It's gotten to the point that AT LEAST 50% of posts have at least one down vote. Some, have five or more. And some of these posts are from reputable accounts that contribute to the Blockchain. It's stupid.
There's an argument for it. But, the negative will always outweigh the positive. So, IMO, we should do away with it.
It must be the case that you have thought about this topic, so what kind of posts would warrant a downvote in your opinion?
My case is simply, if you're going to downvote someone give them the courtesy of an explanation. But that doesn't happen because it's mostly bots and sociopathic accounts doing it. The irony is, that the accounts that deserve the most downvotes are the ones doing it.
I think this is the only thing I agree with you on xD
Inform to person because the dvs.
Problem is that sometimes they have been warrent a couple of months back and at the stage, wea re just tired of their bullshit x)
HiveDownvoteRewards: https://discord.gg/tVjRSwTG9v
Hivewatchers: https://discord.gg/QqyrCCf
FreezePeach: https://discord.gg/TXPkMRXYuG
Maybe, if you followed along in the communities, you could figure out why we downvote.
It is unlikely that there would be a platform for you to share your opinion on absent downvotes.
The bots would sh*tpost and dump.
Who buys that?
There is much going on that you are not fully aware of, or you would likely hold other opinions.
You're right. I haven't followed a long. So, what you're telling me is if I do, Ill find out why at least 50% of every post, in every community feed is downvoted regardless of quality, engagement, or authors reputation? I cant wait to see this.
Simply go to Hivewatcher discord and ask them. You'll also be able to get a full copy of their blacklists to peruse :-)
While I generally support the downvote mechanism, Hivewatchers is one of the best arguments against it. I support the general idea..identify and downvote content that could be considered abusive. However, they are way overzealous and end up blacklisting accounts without warning and for questionable reasons. Except perhaps in extreme cases I don't think "blacklisting" is reasonable (and there are plenty of extreme cases). Also, don't make people go to a third party platform they probably don't use and try to figure out why it is happening or what to do about it.
I speak from experience. What was my sin? I decided to repost some content from 4-5 years ago because 1) It had originally been posted on Steem before the fork; 2) It had some missing image links and other formatting problems; 3) It was probable that anybody seeing the new posts didn't see the original and nobody was likely to see updates to the originals. My intent wasn't abuse but it was seen that way and I was blacklisted without warning. If you try to REASONABLY argue your point you'll just be called names and insulted. I've seen other cases where reasons for blacklisting were dubious at best. An individual downvote because of disagreement with rewards is one thing and very subjective. But an organization that blacklists supposedly because of abuse should be far more objective. Plus the whole "apology post" thing is idiotic.
Although the concept of downvote as a mirror of an upvote makes sense, its actual use is just a tool for the disturbed people who actually use it. You can tell that they enjoy using their power. Your reasons for reposting were completely valid (it was your own content!!!). The apology post is another reason to believe there is a serious psychological problem and power issue, they want you to submit, they probably enjoy those posts too.
It is a massive power trip for them.
I witnessed what was done to @darth-azrael, it was disgusting. They used some arbitrary "rule" against "self-plagiarism" to come after him. I would understand if someone posts literally the same post day after day, but a post from years ago? How do they even figure that out? What kind of boring lives do they have to dig that deep into someone's account?
If the post is your own property, there is no plagiarism. By definition, you cannot plagiarize yourself
HW is an outdated initiative anyhow.
I'm inclined to agree with you but again, everyone simply complains but no one comes up with any form of alternative! The other problem is that barely anyone wants to take on any form of individual responsibility to combat abuse.
I'd love to see a proper discussion as opposed to doing nothing but complain.
Lets continue to write against downvoting, lets ask people not to apologize. At some point, there will be a solid initiative from someone who knows more
I'd recommend the @hive-dr room.
They are both more and less reasonable than hw.
Yay! 🤗
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This is not true. Good downvotes are being used to fight spam, scam and plagiarism. Even I received some downvotes in the past, because I did the latter unknowingly. It was reasonable with intelligent, constructive feedback, and I learned from it.
Good downvotes are used to keep the platform clean. I also understand that there are bad downvotes. Downvote abuse. Downvote wars.
This is like a knife. You can use it to make a sandwich (put butter to the bread), or you can also use it to stab someone.
Yes, you are correct. There are good downvotes used to fight spam. What kind of set me off, and was the reason for this post is the vast number of downvotes from @xwhatever accounts. People shouldn't be getting downvoted because they got curated by someone, that some one else has a beef with. Or, used an app that someone else doesn't like. This especially shouldn't happen to new accounts. I saw an introductory post downvoted the other day. Please explain to me if I'm missing something? I'm sure the people behind these downvotes have there reasons and think they're helping. But if you look at it from an entrepreneur's lense there's really no good reason to do something that might make new users feel unwelcome.
I also received unreasonable downvotes from those x accounts, for example from @xecency. These are troll accounts. If you check on Hiveblocks, then you can see that all they do is downvoting. @xecency currently has 4.66% downvote power. I have not checked this in details, but probably this account is downvoting everything what @ecency is upvoting. Fortunately/luckily it does not have much Hive Power to downvote. It does not even own any Hive Power. It has a delegation of 395.718 Hive Power. 350.555 Hive Power from @steemium, and 45.163 Hive Power from @promobot.
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The Hivebuzz proposal already got important support from the community. However, it lost its funding a few days ago and only needs a few more HP to get funded again.
May we ask you to support it so our team can continue its work this year?
You can do it on Peakd, ecency,
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Your support would be really helpful and you could make a difference.
Thank you!
My comment downvote, how to fix?
Thanks
The best post ever. I wish this example would be followed by other powerful people in HIVE. Downvoting should be allowed only for illegal posts. People do not understand the psychological consequences of this. Sociopaths abuse the feature and probably like it. Good honest people end up leaving the blockchain.
And why are you getting downvoted then or targeted by Spaminator?
I have no idea, judge for yourself