It's great to have a platform where anyone can join and post onto. That was the case with social media. At least, that's how it was until the last 4-5 years when the concoction of 'fake-news' was thrown at alt-media to demonize information that doesn't come form the centralized 'authoritative' source of mainstream media.
Slowly but progressively, people have been censored more and more for speaking about things that 'they' (those with interests of various kinds) don't want the masses to be exposed to. Mainstream media was always in good control of the information they allowed the public to consume. And social media posed a threat to the established narratives that people consumed to shape their view of the world.
It's all about controlling the narrative. If you control information, you control perception of what is possibly happening in the world. Not that everything is said outside of the mainstream media is true, just because it's not what the mainstream is talking about. Just like the mainstream does say true thing. They sprinkle in some falsity with the truth to make it more easily consumed. That's how you swallow bullshit and think it tastes good.
As social media started to crack, we also coincidentally saw the emergence of blockchain social media. The first I know of was Steem, the predecessor to Hive. This empowered people to earn rewards for content. A new era of financial freedom was emerging.
But it wasn't all rosy. There are problems with blockchain tech. Not getting into PoW chains, the Steem chain was a proof of stake (PoS) (one of the first, and later become delegated proof of stake (DPoS) as we could delegate stake to others.
Delegation
Delegating has positives and negatives. You can allow people to use your staking power without giving it them, and remove it when you want. But it promoted the use of bidbots. The majority of top rewarded posts were paid for to get those votes. It was a pay-to-play system now. It wasn't an honest representation of what was actually valued by people voting for it.
The bot owners got a portion of rewards by charging for a service that was detrimental to the platform. and they kept all the curation rewards. They made themselves quite wealthy off the greed of people who wanted to pay to get to the top, rather than earn their way there.
Detrimental? No, it was great, some may say. Right, that's why as soon as 'free downvotes' came into effect, bidbots got wiped out. If they were actually good for the platform, they would still be here. Case closed. Get over your denial.
Anyone who ran a bidbot still sees no issue with what they were doing. It was a 'business model', or maybe they made a 'less evil' bidbot. Because level 5 evil is better than level 6 evil, so its fine, yay, I get to be less evil and get curation rewards as an income driven by the greed of vote buyers, and get popular along the way! Many of the former bidbot owners are still top witnesses and highly popular in this blockchain.
Delegation was also a way for people who were too lazy to vote on content themselves -- either manually or autovoting authors they knew produced the content they valued on each post. Instead of doing that, you delegate to bidbots, and you get a portion of the payments sent for buying votes. You were just upvoting anything that was being paid for.
This still exists now, as delegation for 'curation' groups or bots. You can delegate and get an ROI, return on investment, just like with bidbots. Your investment is your stake being delegated. It's quite popular. They pick content to vote and you get rewarded for the vote you allow them to make on your behalf. Same as bidbots, but without the pay-to-play of users paying to get voted on. There is favoritism and probably backroom deals of sorts or pseudo-nepotism based on who you network and make connections with, etc.
Now that this little history-of-sorts has been delved into, the issue of being able to earn for content comes back into play more clearly. The delegation curation groups do find new content and help to distribute rewards. But you, the user who makes content, have to earn your way to gain support from elsewhere. At least, that is how it's supposed to be allowed to work out.
Downvoting
What the delegation also brings as an opposite to ultra-powered voting accounts, is delegations for ultra-powered downvoting. These delegated accounts can wipe out rewards on posts. One of these delegation curation accounts even lets delegators submit posts to be downvoted. Everyone who delegates stake will get their power applied to downvoting posts, even if they wouldn't downvote it themselves. They use people's stake to downvote some targeted content significantly.
This is what has been happening to me for months now. I post for a bit, leave for a few months, come back, and still this 'curangel' account is there to downvote me over 50%-75% on average. A few times it was about 90% of rewards removed, and once or twice it was 100% due to another whale joining in the downvoting.
I have been here since August 2016 and have earned the support of various people. Some manually vote, and some autovote. Regardless, these people have chosen to reward me with their stake that allocated inflation to my content. But some people don't think I'm allowed to keep the rewards that others have allocated to me.
These content-reward police have been here since at least 2017, and I've been a prime target since since. Apart from haejin getting downvoted for up to 10 lame 'technical-analysis' charts per day for months or years, I would say I've been the most downvoted on the platform in terms of rewards or USD value or rewards in the past 5 years. I'm certainly the most downvoted for duration of time from 2017 to now, constantly, with less breaks of not being downvoted than actually being downvoted by large-stake accounts.
I'm not the only one who is being targeted. There are people who put out valuable information that can help increase awareness of issues in the world, issues that are negative to the advancement of freedom for all, etc. They are posting content that helps inform people on things that actually matter (unlike most of the things posted here). But because they post on these topics or don't post in a way that the content-reward police approve of, they get downvoted for it.
The content that informs people about relevant issues going on in the world and exposing the corruption or immorality going on, is the most valuable (non-monetary) information anyone can put out and anyone else can receive. This is value that anyone who comes across it can benefit from. But some people can't even recognize that value, or don't care about it. They have their own bullshit motivations to not want that value to be rewarded monetarily on hive. I don't care where it comes from -- your wordpress site that you copy to hive, a video on YouTube, BitChute, DTube, 3pseak, odysee, etc. that is embedded or not.
The information content itself matters, and if others value it and want to reward it (like I do), then that content should be allowed to keep the rewards given without the reward police deciding the content can't keep the rewards it has, for whatever lame reason.
The content-reward police either don't like the poster, what they post, or have some issue with the content itself, like where it comes from, the formatting or some other lame reason they decide justifies their power-trip to remove rewards from content that others value and choose to reward. No abuse going on from the poster or content. But these 'authorities' decided something, so that's how it's gonna be. Conform or else be punished. Control.
Why is this an issue? The premise of greater financial freedom for being able to earn from the content you put out. Blockchain was promising in that respect, and many have benefited, many who have not been targeted with downvotes for their content and have been allowed to keep the rewards that others have allocated tot hem.
Not just being able to earn some rewards, but to keep the rewards that have been granted through the action of voting on your content because others value it and want to reward you. They also get curation rewards, so they need to vote. But they could just not care about your content and delegate to a curation group and get more ROI.
Earning your way
A fundamental important part of the new social media blockchain where you can be rewarded for your content, rather than not being rewarded for it on the mainstream social medias like Facebook, is the ability to earn your way to those rewards. Bidbots hampered this greatly, as people bought their way to attention and rewards while enriching the exploiters who took advantage of the greedy motivation by enriching themselves along the way for their 'service'.
And curation groups also hamper this to some degree. The stake owner isn't voting on content they value, they just want some ROI. So they delegate to an account and get paid returns for it. They don't actually vote, they don't find content they value to reward. Instead, a small handful or people have millions of stake at their fingertips and they get to decide what gets rewarded by the votes they cast. That's not ideal, but people want to get ROI without doing the work of even clicking on content to reward. So that's they way it is now.
The greater problem with this power attained through having million of stake delegated to you, is when you get to decide who can and can't get to keep the rewards on their posts. I don't like you, your content, what you post about, how you post it, how you structure your post, how you format it, etc. Whatever reason they want, the content-reward police deem themselves the authorities to determine who is allowed to keep their rewards by not downvoting it, and who is not allowed to keep their reward by downvoting it.
Someone values content or a user who constantly delivers content they value, and votes for them each time. They want to reward that user for their content. But others who have the power to change that are. They are saying no, I don't like something about you or the content, so I'm not going to let you keep your rewards. I'm going to allow the person voting to give you the rewards they wanted to give you, nor make the curation rewards from that voting. Those who want to reward you for your content and being denied that ability and the ability to earn the curation from that vote.
In many cases, those who do the content-reward policing are themselves benefitting from being allowed to keep the rewards their supporters allocate to them, while thinking their are justified in removing rewards to others that their supporters were providing. What a lowly mindset it is to be a content-reward control-freak while benefitting from the mechanism you won't allow others to benefit from for whatever bullshit reason you have to deny honest content creators the rewards from their supporters. I can keep mine, but you're not allowed to keep yours because I say so.
That's not to say there is no place for downvotes. As originally intended, the downvote, formerly called a flag, was a flag for a violation of some kind. This was to fight abuse of some kind, like spam being rewarded, or comment-farming, or trash like technical analysis charts being upvoted by posters buddies and ending up with 4 posts in the top 10 of trending, meaning 4 of the top 10 most rewarded posts. There are also cases of large-stake accounts who self-vote their content more than they vote other people's content, or users who belong to curation groups who use the millions in stake to upvote their content more than others. That's also not playing too fair and can be deserving of some downvoting.
But if you're posting about some information (or any content or media like pictures some people value that I might not value at all) that isn't crap, and people value what you post about, even if they are autovotes to get in before others vote and try to maximize your curation rewards, then you should be able to keep the rewards that voters want to give you. Don't you think? I don't go downvoting content that I don't value, that I don't think deserves the rewards it gets. Why do some inner-group of hive-'elites' (for lack of a better term, who have networked with wealthy or influential users) think they can be the content-reward police and authority to decide and take away your rewards that others want to give you, and also get the voters curation rewards cut.
This reduction in curation rewards may also incentivize voters to go vote elsewhere since their curations rewards will be cut, sometimes in half or more. All because a few people view themselves as the authorities, control-freaks who want to control what amount of rewards some content and users can receive, who can't let users get rewarded by voters who choose to vote and reward them.
Alternative platforms and tokens
A solution to this comes in the form of new platforms built on the blockchain and the new tokens they create to reward people on those platforms. LeoFinance is an example of this (and 3speak with their token to come as well). So far I have not seen the content-reward police step in to say they get to decide who can or can't keep rewards for non-scammy content or self-voting behavior being put out. There is an issue at the moment with one curator who has been abusing the stake of the curation account to self vote themselves a lot. Will this be dealt with, or ignored?
Alternative platforms than the native hive platforms and token can bring even greater financial freedom to people. The LEO token did gain traction fast, and has been at the $1 mark for months while HIVE was at bottoms of $0.20. That's remarkable for an offshoot of the main chain. And anyone can do this, potentially.
What's really unique about LeoFinance is the development of products and services that anyone can get into and benefit from. LeoFinance as a posting platform was/is where you could/can earn LEO for posting and being rewarded for it. And the asshole downvoters on hive can't touch the LEO you are getting rewarded. It's great!
The creator of LeoFinance, @khaleelkazi has shown the potential of these offshoot platform and tokens. But he's doing even more (with help of course), to create value that anyone can benefit from and increase your chance of greater financial freedom. The latest development is CubDeFi.
I won't get into CubDeFi, as I have posted about it a lot recently. If you don't know about it, you can go learn from some of my posts and others as well. You can earn in one place, like LeoFinance posts, and then take that and bring it into CubDeFi to earn there as well or instead. I really value the value Khal is bringing and see the benefit this can bring to millions.
Developers like Khal have created value that anyone can benefit from, and we each can create value in the content we bring forth that can benefit ourselves and others as well. These are truly remarkable times to be involved in blockchain, and certainly LeoFiance and CubDeFi. It's thanks to pioneers like Satoshi, Dan Larimer, Vitalik Buterin and Khal who created the infrastructure or sceond-layer services the rest of us can benefit from. I look forward to more great things being built in the future.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
As someone who is no stranger to being downvoted heavily for months on end, the rewards aren't yours until they are in the wallet after 7 days. Up until payout, they are up for negotiation.
As for accounts that are earning 100s from automated link drops from other sites where they haven't bothered to reply to any of the very few comments they get for half a year - they should be downvoted. It isn't suppressing some kind of truth, all the content is still there to read for the very few who seem to actually click on a link out to another site to view and then come back to comment - it is ridiculous.
For the accounts that get some automated large votes and then spam to milk them - they should get downvoted too.
I say "should" but it is up to the stake to downvote or upvote - it is also up to the stake to delegate to accounts that upvote or downvote - delegation can be removed in literally 3 seconds.
Again, the information may have value, but it doesn't necessarily have HIVE value. content that is spammed all over the internet on the very platforms that they are complaining about, doesn't have Hive value.
Many Hive users value Hive content, because this is where their stake is, their money, their future. Many Hive staked people value Hive people for the same reasons. If the same content can be found elsewhere without it linking back to Hive or bringing in Hive users willing to be part of the community, it doesn't have Hive value. If the accounts are dumping non-valuable Hive-content onto Hive for reward and often on top, then dumping that reward on the market, but don't even care enough to comment on Hive or support Hive in anyway - they aren't Hive people.*
And for a little context in value - I haven't had a day off from Hive in almost 4 years and I am pretty well rewarded, I also put out decent quality posts daily and spend a massive amount of time on the platform for all kinds of things, including supporting others in various ways - you have still earned more than me on your main account - you might have other accounts, I don't know.
You are not a victim mate.
Right, so if a large account downvoted all your posts to 75% of what they were at in rewards, you want me and others to believe you would be totally fine with that, because " it is up to the stake to downvote or upvote"? ;)
I think I would here something more about "I haven't had a day off from Hive in almost 4 years..." and what you've done on steem/hive at that point, no? Or would you just be silent and not talk about it? You can get flagged as much as anyone wants to, to remove as much rewards as they or a collection of accounts wants to, and you are not a target of anything. If you were to talk about it, I could just end my comment with "You are not a victim mate." ;) Gotcha.
Oh yeah. As you mentioned in the post, you don’t much like hive. Your actions shows it. No worries to complain about how we govern this chain, but okay to take the rewards eh? You don’t like DV, why don’t you buy some stake.
You rant, and I will make sure I do what I can to take care of ya? Cheers!
Oooooh, someone is powering down, that means they don't liek Hive. Amazing powers of deduction you have there. Why don't you go tell that to others, like yabapmatt who is powering down to get into CubDeFi with a higher APR (publicly stated in discord, at least for Leo, maybe Hive too)? Ooops. Keep your fake-ass cheers for yourself, and your bullshit "go buy millions of hive to self-vote to counter the downvotes" argument, gimme a break.
Muted! Goodbye ;)
I will do whatever I want. You do whatever you can. Alright pumpkin?
Oh I am sorry... you mentioned CUB de-fi has higher APR? Thank you for that valuable information. I decided to follow your advice and get into the game....
Happened for months to me too, and Hive definitely wasn't at the level it is now - so the rewards I was getting on posts after the DVs were just above zero daily. As said, you aren't the only one that has experienced this.
I defended their right to use their stake as they saw fit - I kept posting as if it wasn't happening - I stayed active regardless. If what you`consider what you say to actually be valuable, the rewards shouldn't matter that much. Or is it that you will only speak if someone pays you to speak?
Really what you think? Come on now... Did I stop when I was getting flagged even harder in years gone by? Not necessarily. But at times I do stop posting, then come back. Did it many times with price low or high, at various degrees of flagging. And I haven't talked about flags in years since 2017 I think it was when there was the no-whales voting thing. So yeah after 4 years of near-constant flags, I dared to speak about it again :O
The speaking about it isn't an issue, speak all you want, but I think it does matter how you speak about it - but that is just me. At the end of the day, stake acts as stake does in all directions. Sometimes it will benefit you personally, sometimes it won't.
So what I found interesting, after acting independently and discovering some spam which you at least twice in this post pointed out is a good reason to downvote; I downvoted that spam. One out of two accounts has since changed their ways, and I applaud them. They are no longer making a mockery of this place and taking advantage of automated upvotes; showing signs of integrity once again. Now they're publishing actual content and at the same time setting a good example for others, instead of ruining their reputation while looking foolish and shady at the same time. Let's hope it lasts.
The other just keeps posting the same junk spam template over and over and over and over and over and over. Collecting automated upvotes for no reason other than spam. And according to you, that's not good, at least, based on what you say here.
That behavior pisses a lot of people off here. So, one saw the error in their ways and as of this writing has gone back to earning instead of being a lazy spammer (which is something nearly everyone here hates), and the other is just confused or something and can post a video in four places but can't seem to figure out how to post it the fifth place(here).
Anyway, cool story bro. Especially about the part where you think those downvotes on the spam are meant to repress some kind of truth or whatever that the world can't live without. How is downvoting spam links that lead to information on the outside of Hive in several different locations supposed to silence that content that doesn't even exist here? Did you forget to think about that part when you started rambling out this post?
And there are some things you said I agree with. Voting blind, in general, is never a good idea. Look at what happened to some of those folks who voted for witnesses by proxy, and because someone was in charge of their decisions, innocent bystanders lost out once the account shifted over to Hive. Personally, I don't even use auto voting services with my stake. Every vote I ever handed out was manually and after I actually enjoyed the content.
When I joined the platform I had NO IDEA that the rewards pool was shared between all people. Because I didn't know that, I rented SP and upvoted everything I did a lot. Almost nothing is explained anywhere. To outsiders it looks like you just come in, rent out delegation, write 10 comments and upvote yourself constantly and earn easy money.
Hive and Steem's problem have always been nothing is explained, there should be an introduction course you HAVE to take, answer questions, before getting a free account. If theres things were just explained easily up front a lot of the bad spam stuff wouldn't happen.
Where are you seeing folks upvoting comments like that?
As for needing an explanation, sure, for some it would be nice to have guidance but when it comes to decentralized media, it's not about what it does for you, it's about what you do with it. People have grown accustomed to having their devices do the thinking for them. So yeah a platform like this can be tough.
A little bit of common sense though will go a long way.
Back in the beginning days of Steem it was like that a lot.
Now that it's 50/50 rewards people just follow an active curation trail, don't post or comment ever, and earn money for doing nothing. Proof Of Brain has less incentive to function. It might cut down on spammers and self upvotes, but now you gotta downvote other people's posts in order to downvote people who are milking rewards pool by buying HP and following curation trails.
I've been around since the early days of Steem. I remember seeing the ugly and deciding to go my own way, which was just basically creating some content and hoping people would enjoy it.
I don't follow a trail. I've posted maybe four times this year. Been actively commenting when I can.
I don't blame the systems when there are problems. I blame the people. Who's controlling who? What you're seeing when you see what looks like a bunch of greedy sacks of shit with no integrity, well, that's humans. No amount of fiddling with knobs and twisting dials will change, people.
Just be what you want to see.
Would you apply the same logic to the systems of government, and say that US government for the last 50 years of endless wars/infinite printing money, etc is actually the people's fault?
Human psychology clearly shows people operate in systems on autopilot, and this is typically the super majority of people. If you are saying you want people to be me aware of what is going on and act accordingly(I want that too), that isn't going to happen in the next few hundred years, maybe even the next 500 years. Pretty much the entirety of human history is dismantling systems, fixing systems incrementally or making them worse, imposing terrible systems, creating new terrible systems. Where there are humans gathering to form systems that oppress there is no room for systems that don't, and almost all systems currently in place are very oppressive.
Humans largely follow psychopaths and sociopaths, those psychopaths and sociopaths create systems that people live in. Is it the people's fault they are born to follow, does one blame the 10,000 worker ants for following the Queen's orders? Or is it 100s of thousands of years of nature that the workers ant are following (human nature too)you are trying to fight? I am fighting that too by the way and totally agree. I want people to know facts, spot disinformation, see through lies, etc. Is it going to happen in our current environment? No. That's why I have been doing something about it via @informationwar for 3.5 years. That isn't enough and I plan on doing even more soon.
50/50 rewards hinders manual curators like me. I don't want 50% of the rewards for upvoting, I want to give 75% to the author. Curating/upvoting shouldn't reward 50%. It's a garbage change done by people who are misguided and think it will somehow improve things. It won't. It will cause more people to buy into it, power it up, follow a curation trail, never post, never comment, and constantly get profit for doing nothing than locking up HP. It should be changed back to 75/25, maybe even 80/20.
Well, I'm Canadian, so when I look at the government over there, I see positions of power held by people, so yeah, if there's a problem caused by people, I do tend to lean more towards the people being the problem. The president over there is just a man in a suit.
Those psychopaths are people, too. Sure, they deserve a good kick in the ass but unfortunately there are none near enough to me to prove that point.
I admire 50/50. The whole giving back to the consumer part is probably the most important aspect of platform to me. It's all a numbers game anyway though. If we had hundreds of thousands more dedicated consumers, like Youtube has for instance, where the consumers actually outnumber creators by a huge margin, a creator could easily make bank on even a 10 percent cut. Think about it. If there are thousands upon thousands of upvotes, and the plan is to give consumers a cut, they'd need a higher percentage in order to see any of that, since there would be more sharing in the percentage.
I'm only recently back (last week). On Steem/Steemit you'd see some very powerful accounts (top 20 type power) that were known for arbitrarily downvoting things. Then you'd find somewhere that they made a simple comment in a post and up voted that comment $8. The comment votes would fly under the radar.
I voted on comments, but never my own. Why? I liked to encourage the engagement and discussion with people.
The truth of the matter is that if there is a way to exploit or game a system people will do it. This is also why all Utopian Ideas ultimately lead to failure.
We can try to discourage it, but I don't think we can stop it.
I'd say we've come a long way since then. I don't deny the dirty. To be fair to this community, I think it's not perfect but it's a lot better than those days.
Even with free downvotes, though at first they were used heavily, in order to solve a problem that was driving most of us mad, I'd say now, for the most part, the downvotes work more like a deterrent; a security camera of sorts. People know, eventually, their exploits will come back to bite them in the butt.
I don't expect to ever live in a perfect world. Without the chaos, there's no concept of calm.
P.S. Been awhile! Good to see you around again. Welcome back and all that.
Hey, I was away here and there as well for months these past years. I saw you start to post, keep it up ;)
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I came across this yesterday:
Bee Wiki
It's pretty barebones now by the looks, but could be a useful resource
I feel like you did
Been posting since the middle of 2020
Perhaps objectively my posts are uninteresting
I'll let others be the judge of that though
I do like to spend a fair bit of time on them
Don't know what I'm doing
Don't fully understand how it all works on a technical level
I just keep doing what I think is right and keep my eyes open for enlightening information that other folks happen to share
I figure that's the nature of decentralisation; there is no central person or group that can be appealed to as an authority, or who has the responsibility to explain how it all works
Out of curiosity, how is it that you didn't know this but did know where and how to rent stake?
I suggested about 3.5 years ago to have a simple checkbox system on sign up that has people go through some basic social rules - like spam sucks ass - link dropping sucks ass - link dropping and not commenting for 5 months sucks ass.
When I joined it was by finding some random stuff talking about earning money on bitcointalk.org. I didn't read the whitepaper or read any details at all. I joined steemit.com and started posting. Within a month or so I think I started renting out SP because I saw advertisements for it on other people's posts/comments on posts advertising it.
I would say that probably the super majority of users on Steem and Hive currently still don't know the rewards pool is shared, OR THAT THERE IS A REWARDS POOL. I didn't even know there was a Rewards Pool, let alone it was shared. I have been in crypto since 2013 and my background is Computer Science and Information Systems, but it doesn't help if I don't read EVERYTHING about Steem/Hive lol.
Why I asked is because I believe that the gateway people come in from and their early interaction often dictates their behavior on chain. Some learn better ways, some digress depending on the company they keep.
I reckon most people (at least those actually interested) know a fair bit about the reward structure, as based on their behavior, they target it the best they can to maximize. For me, I know enough about it that I realized that the best way to earn is to be part of the community, not a path of maximization and a lack of interaction.
There are lots of ways to approach Hive, some are more valuable than others.
I agree with you.
I also think any system based on DPOS without human integrity and maturity, will end up like....errrr..hive?
Integrity cannot be programmed in.
Integrity is required. (as unfortunate as that may seem to those who think technology is the answer to everything. It isn't.)
Yeah, the flags are supposed to help maintain some integrity, but I think the whitepaper based that on whales wanting to keep bad behavior in check. What is that bad behavior, autovoting? So if autovoting is bad, why not flag all autovotes? Oh no, its just some people who get autovoted that 'deserve' to be flagged, or some accounts that are autovoting, right ;)
The whitepaper also mentions keeping crabs in the bucket, with crabs preventing others from escaping the bucket... seemed a bit dark, although comical, but something was fishy about that analogy, seemed to promote some bad ideas. I forget what it was in reference to exactly at this point. I'm thinking of like regression to the mean, a la communistic/socialistic fake equality of some sort. Anyways, something to look into.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
The whitepaper also mentions keeping crabs in the bucket, with crabs preventing others from escaping the bucket... seemed a bit dark, although comical, but something was fishy about that analogy,
Yeah, I found that 'disturbing', to say the least. (and thought it 'communistic' in tone)
Integrity takes a back seat in positive feedback loops as it requires thought , not sheep mentality.
Sometimes I still feel like I swallow bullshit, but it does not tastes good. It never tasted good.
The only way to the "dealing with it" part properly is probably only the removal of the self-upvote function. Everyone could and would only upvote others. This blockchain would thrive. People would have to make communities, and support each other, instead of being selfish and greedy, and focusing only on their own posts. Because currently this is what the majority of the users are doing.
And this also explains the lack of real, human comments on the Hive blockchain. Nowadays the average number of comments per post is around 1-2, and most of those comments are bot comments.
"the removal of the self-upvote function. Everyone could and would only upvote others. This blockchain would thrive."
What if people created a second account? One to post/comment, and one to upvote?
There should be only one account per person with KYC ("Know Your Customer") verification to avoid any kind of misuse and abuse around the rewards.
I know, this is a very idealistic view, because many people already have multiple accounts, so the self upvote percentage could be already higher than it is visible on hivetasks.com.
That completely defeats the entire purpose of this blockchain, which is to be decentralized and not have a centralized entity controlling who gets to post. I created my account anonymously because if people doxxed me in real life they could try and get me fired because they don't like my views. If I wan't some KYC bullshit I could go onto facebook/twitter.
When I created my Steem account on 2017.05.17, the Steemit website asked me for my SMS number (and as far as I remember, it sent me a verification code), so I (and many other people) was not anonymus at the time of the account registration.
But I understand your point.
I think that this one (the abuse around the rewards) will remain one of the disadvantages of decentralisation.
Or at least I currently do not see any proper solution for it.
That is incorrect, you are anonymous at the time of account creation. They used a 3rd party service that just checked to see if a phone number was active. Steem or Hive do not have anyone's phone number linked to your account in anyway or have a way of idenfying you from that phone number. Now if you are browsing steemit.com or hive.blog without using a VPN your IP is idenfitied though.
I did not knew that they used a third party service for that.
Thank you for the correction and for detailed description about it. It is good to know that they do not have my mobile phone number.
Nowadays I am not using VPN (I used it in the past), so my IP address is indeed identified.
I have a lot to learn about HIVE and everything that's built upon it
I honestly don't understand how a person could vote on their own stuff
The notion makes me ill...
Taking away the option for an account to vote for itself won't solve everything, as @hempy points out
It won't "perfect" people into purely virtuous beings
But it would be a start
Yup, It's been talked about. As well as JYC you suggest. One person, one account. But it doesn't really fly with a lot of stuff, like not being targeted for your views, or your bank account, and goes against decentralized power...
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I have been gone until last week for a couple of years. It is disconcerting that this still happens. Though you do still seem to be doing quite well on your posts. Maybe that is because it hasn't been down voted yet.
Yup, welcome back, it sucks. Yes, the post was higher in rewards because the inevitable flag had not hit. And yes even with that, my posts do well, but the point was more about getting to keep the rewards allocated by voters when you don't do anything wrong to get voted on. People aren't being allowed to allocate rewards based on their stake and earn curation, which is why I mention it happening to other people I vote for.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I kind of don't like delegation almost wish it was removed to be honest. I feel like it's abused more than good. By having each person control their own stake and vote with it it creates a better decentralized platform in my opinion. It keeps people engaged instead of being lazy and earing passive rewards simply for pushing out stake to another large account. That large account in many cases has one person controlling it and its 100% up to that person if something gets voted on or not. With that being said one person only has so much time in the day so often times they don't go through and properly curate content. Instead the votes just shoved on a few popular accounts.
There are however some very good curation accounts that do a lot of good and have welcomed a lot of new faces to the platform. Imagine being a new user and posting good high quality content but not getting a single $1 worth in votes after a month. That's going to be very unmotivating and lead that person to leave the platform for a while if not for good and honestly just have a bad rep in their view about the platform. However if occasional they get valued upvotes even if it's a few bucks worth it's extremely motivating and rewarding.
A closer eye should be watched over curation accounts and held accountable for abusing the curation such as upvoting. It creates a very unfair and unwelcoming environment and I'd like to see action on it asap instead of just shrugging and moving on. I'd love to see more Staked HIVE in smaller accounts giving them some vote value if they are doing things right. It's a HUGE task but if each one of us starts doing their part it becomes much easier, higher quality content and overall a more engaged and rewarding platform.
I called bs on delegation when they proposed it.
It did exactly what I said it would, centralize who could get stake.
If each account had to vote their own stake, I think this would be a better game.
What game hasn't bots ruined?
Maybe Counter-Strike. You can play it without internet access.
By having each person control their own stake and vote with it it creates a better decentralized platform in my opinion. It keeps people engaged instead of being lazy and earing passive rewards simply for pushing out stake to another large account.
This is a good point - and means more accountability.
50/50 rewards certainly isn't helping that.
75/25 encouraged me to buy stake, write a few posts a day, upvote my few posts, use remaining upvotes on others, continually restake my earnings, buy more stake, repeat.
50/50 rewards encourages buying stake, following any active curation trail that uses 20% of daily voting power, never writing any posts, profit for nothing but keeping HP staked.
EDIT: Would like to add the following.
75/25 typically would see more value from whales being drained over time out to who they upvote. In a few extremely rare cases some users on Steem upvoted themselves 10x a day for almost no effort, that didn't consume much of the overall rewards pool though. For example, a whale with 1 million SP and lets say they have 1% of the total Steem at the time. Over the course of a few years since they are giving out 3x more than they are taking in(75/25) they might only be .5% of the total Steem now(not counting inflation). In the long run the whales are less and less stake.
50/50 this is not the case, whales are able to maintain being whales. 50/50 is a total embarrassment.
I agree, at some point its blown out of proportions and allows individuals to have too much power.
interesting article, where does the money you get in the blockchain actually come from when there's no advertising involved?
Hive is minted every 3 seconds, which is when a new block is created. Each year that inflation gets cut by 9.5% or something, I forget. Those new tokens get paid to the witnesses and to a reward pool that's shared to all people who get upvoted based on the stake-weight of the person voting.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I will only downvote you if you start going by the name kernel.
Otherwise keep it up <3
I'm thinking of using 'krenal', is that ok?
hmmm... lemme ponder that.
I should change my name, then people could easily get how it's spelt :P
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
We cannot judge anything as 100% no or 100% yes
Everything you mentioned above has its disadvantages and advantages
But if we want to look at the bigger side, for me the delegation is the worst of them, it makes people more Lazy as bitcoinflood said.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
There are positives and negatives to it indeed.
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Only thing ive done with delagating is giving it to my friend to start and everyone who i plan to bring to hive I'll give them that to get started besides that I've never used it
Sounds like a good use :)
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Wow, that was a lot to take in! It certainly was an in depth review of the kind of stuff that newcomers need to understand about Hive if this is their first time here. I definitely agree that there are a lot of great things on the horizon. Especially from the Leo team!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Go Leo! :)
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Semangat
Overall I share your views.
I think you misunderstand DPOS. It has nothing to do with delegating stakes. In my understanding DPOS is delegating governance to witnesses via stake based voting. Delegating HP doesn't delegate power to vote in governance, it just delegates away power in rewards distribution influence. When you delegate HP you still retain power to use your stakes in governance voting. However, we can delegate that power away to via proxy feature.
Rewards distribution, in my opinion, has always been a battle between short term gains view and long term gains view. Unfortunately, in this experiment majority chose short term gains. Hence, we ended up with bid-bots competition.
EIP changed that and also brought free downvotes that made possible for bid-bots to disappear. But as you state it also gave few a power to take a role of rewards policing. If it was up to me I would like to see how things would work without possibility of delegating stakes for rewards distribution purposes. However, it is very unlikely to happen.
To counter the issues your cover regarding downvotes it would take another force of hive power to mitigate issues when rewards policing goes against the benefits to the platform. That is also unlikely. Most Hive power that is even passively interested to participate seems to be delegated away. That leaves the last option of convincing stakeholders of wrongdoings when they happen, which is a difficult task on its own.
Lastly, I 100% agree about your thoughts on Leofinance and what a great work they have been doing for Hive and its community. However, even that is either being ignored or unnoticed by many stakeholders.
Nice read. It has cleared my mind to be active on LeoFinance. At what exchanges we can trade Leo token?
Good contents 🤗🤗🤗
I agree with you thank for sharing your thinking
My best wishes and regards to you.
I am new here , keep me in prayers.
thanks
Good Luck.
Awesome post bro! It's interesting how the same misguided dynamic of forced wealth redistribution has made its way into the ranks of Hive.
Sigh. I made a mistake. I should have just ignored your spam links and Hive should have just let you walk out of here with hundreds of dollars for nothing. While other people struggle, your bro here hooked you up with the easy road. Sorry for stepping on it.
Interesting that you'd use the word 'spam links' for content you don't like.
I share content to videos that I create daily around human/animal rights, crypto, society, culture, and my music. A couple of recent videos I created and shared links to had been taken down via youtube however I changed the links to other sites that hosted the content upon discovering this. It would have been admirable if you'd taken the time to inquire about this or advised me on what you'd disliked rather than making a post condemning my content but I guess it's easier to throw stones.
Interesting how, I wasn't able to actually form an opinion about the content, since the content didn't exist, unless I clicked a frickin spam link. I even asked you that day how much you'd spend on the links I offered you, and you did not respond. That was a joke.
Instead you doubled down and did the same post again with a video thumbnail, and link to a video outside. Because of those two instances of blatant disregard for autovotes pouring in, that you know in advance would come, I could only conclude you were being a lazy link spammer. You could have talked to ME that day, but instead you ignored me.
Anyone here can scroll through your blog right now and see how you've been ripping Hive off with autovotes and spam links. Many posts might look like a video on the outside but as soon as you click, one is often met with only the thumbnail.
And I did not write a post about you. Where the hell did you get that information? A couple lines about the deeds that are happening all over this chain and no mention of you, out of 2000 words, is not a post about you.
Don't pin this shit on me, man. It was your mistake. Now can we move past this? I didn't take those spam links and the abuse of autovotes personally. I'd rather see you on track and doing well, organically, with a shit ton of comments under those videos(why aren't there any comments under your videos). You need to work on attracting people, not robots. Don't mess around with shortcuts. It looks like you're just being used for curation rewards at this point.
I did not dislike the content. The content was nonexistent. A link is not content. The content exists elsewhere. I didn't click the link. How the hell do I know it's not a phishing site or some bunk like that? Face the reality. You screwed up. Fix it. Know better. Done. It's looks like you muted me, which was idiotic, because now I can't even help if you're still in a jam...and that just means I'm talking myself.
Perfect.
I wrote that in another comment here. I was talking about you.
ahem... erm... and when I grow up, I wanna be like you! LoLOuch! I've been here since August 2016 also. Your account was created just 1 day before mine...
¿¡aarff?!... 
I decided not to reward you with my personal stake:
That last part was related to LeoFinance, and the parts before that were related to that last part. Talking about LeoFinance as it relates to other content in the post and how different parts the blockchain operate and have operated has nothing to do with the LeoFinance community, OK content-reward officer.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hmmmm such aa great post
Then why not write something meaningful?
Maybe your opinion about the written things in the post.
Or about the opinion of other people.
You can easily engage in discussions.
Believe me, it is worth it in the long run.