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.
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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. 🙂