I keep saying that Hive is like the wild west and those with the power can use it as they like. That said, the whales have an interest in the platform doing well, so they would be foolish to keep driving people away. Those who feel they were unfairly downvoted can shout about it, but I don't think it's as bad as they make out.
You can't say any reason for downvoting is invalid really as it's up to the individual. I actually think upvote abuse could be more of a problem and those who look out for it will take action to try and get a better share of rewards. If you get a 'rancho' vote then someone may decide that is distorting the distribution. I have seen posts with those votes get a big downvote, but usually it was not taking all of their rewards away.
I've had some retaliation for acting against abuse, but it's part of the deal and others have supported me. Working with the community rather than against it helps. Most of my voting is done manually, but I do receive a lot of automatic votes. I appreciate the support, but I also want real engagement with my posts.
We should be able to point out the issues with Hive, and I have before.
I suppose Steve what you might need to consider is a situation where you are the receiver of this soft censorship.
Imagine that you came to place of free expression where people said we can talk about all the types of guitars we like and we can respect all music.
Then you find that they only like Taylors and they generally favour Modern Pop while consistently downvoting Jazz and blues?
You happen play blues.
You came in here gung ho and every time you make a fuss about it, you are told to stop being so selfish.
It's called gas lighting.
There is real shit going on that is contrary to what Hive is meant to represent.
The reason that many people came on here, invested their time and their money.
Thus the exodus.
I hope you can see my point.
I suppose Steve what you might need to consider is a situation where you are the receiver of this soft censorship.
Imagine that you came to place of free expression where people said we can talk about all the types of guitars we like and we can respect all music.
Then you find that they only like Taylors and they generally favour Modern Pop while consistently downvoting Jazz and blues?
You happen play blues.
You came in here gung ho and every time you make a fuss about it, you are told to stop being so selfish.
It's called gas lighting.
There is real shit going on that is contrary to what Hive is meant to represent.
The reason that many people came on here, invested their time and their money.
Thus the exodus.
I hope you can see my point.
EDIT: add to this scenario that, blues and jazz has been censored all on all other platforms around the world and there are very limited places where you can express it, find like minds and be appreciated.
I'm not sure anyone feels that strongly about music on Hive, but I sort of get your point. I have had all my rewards wiped out before, but others supported me and I got over it. Some people have had one big downvote to cancel out a rancho vote and they cry about it forever, whilst making far more than they lost on later posts.
I can't keep track of all the feuds and rivalries on Hive, but I have seen people persist with fighting and name-calling that is not going to help their case. If you antagonise someone they may opt to remove your rewards. They are only human.
Hive is imperfect, but it's worth defending. I do feel for good people who feel they are unfairly treated, but there is little I can do. Meanwhile I have been supporting loads of people and they seem to appreciate it.
If you are going to post about controversial topics then you are free to do that on Hive, but some may think it's BS and not worthy of rewards. Anyone could create a front end that ignores downvotes and displays everything if you want to avoid 'censorship'.
Is there really an 'exodus' or just a few pissed off people going off to Blurt or Steem? You can do what you like on those.
I really don't have all the answers, but I think we can still discuss these topics to see what others think.
Thanks for the reply. The Wild West analogy is so perfect for crypto.
Upvote abuse Was much more of a problem and downvotes fixed that which is why I’m not against downvotes.
People who self vote tend to get downvoted. We still don't have a culture of discouraging massive downvotes for none-spam and I think the reason for that is most of us don't want to mess with the people who do it.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be free to do what they want. I’m just saying some behavior makes for a shitty ecosystem that’s going to scare people away and leak value. And the same way we made downvotes to put a cap on upvote abuse, we’d definitely benefit from exploring ways to do the same for downvotes. Though it's definitely a tricker one.
I also agree people benefit from working with the community, but a lot of people don't understand the politics of hive and don't believe there are good people with power here. My willingness to work with the community comes from my trust in people like acidyo and Theycallmedan. If I thought that no one cares about making this place more fair and that downvoting people "because they are from poor countries and don't need that much to survive" was widespread behavior...well I'd leave pretty quickly, especially if I just got here.
Speaking of upvote abuse,Has anyone thought about asking these auto-voting services to make their trails decay so they need to be updated every 6 months? I’m pretty sure 100% of ranchor votes follow haejin. And I'm pretty sure ranchor doesn't check hive at all.
There are some big accounts who don't care what anyone thinks of them and maybe they don't care about Hive either. I hope they are a small minority. It is bad that people have to fear retribution for doing what they think is right, but it's another price of freedom.
Anyone can create an auto-vote service, so even if one reduced the power another might not implement that. As far as I know haejin has control of the rancho posting keys, so he can make it do what he wants, but I saw a post from someone claiming to be the owner of the rancho account saying they had lost their keys, so I guess it can never power down. That seems very careless.
It is my hope that Hive can keep on growing with more people getting to orca level and above. That helps to spread the voting power and so the whales would have less influence. For now it is really a tiny community compared to the big sites. These could be considered growing pains I guess.
!BEER
eeeshhhh thats a shitty situation for hive but I guess it serves to challenge us to grow and find our own weak points. I did not know he had the keys, i thought he had been left on autovote by a dude who disappeared years ago.
Well I am trying to encourage some more brainstorming to come up with ways to protect small users against bullying which I see one person doing a lot of and 2 or 3 large stakeholders enabling. It's not about using downvotes on a single post, it's about targeting innocent people and continuously nuking their posts until their supporters give up on supporting them because their upvotes are all cancelled out anyway. I'm not talking about argumentative or even fringe people either (not that I think they deserve it) . I'm talking about hard-core Hivers who have never powered down and get involved in multiple communities and projects.
Sorry, out of BEER, please retry later...