My name is Pieter. I have been on and off on this platform since July 2017. I started out with my first page: Pieterb3. Lost the password to that and went on to create my current @p1eter, my companies @dse, my band @dewallen and my latest for music @theplunge.
Being a traveling musician, production designer and diver, my life is all but stable. I am on and off here as I find time. This coupled with not being a TECH guru sometimes leaves me out of the loop. So here is my problem.
Coming back I started with an open mic competition as I saw @luzcypher's one had ended, giving @steembasicincome shares as a reward as I fully believe in the project and I believe it helps the little guys on here stay just above water with all you whales swimming around. I soon started to receive all these downvotes from @mmmmkkkk311 @ctime @mariuszkarwski and @abuse-signal. After looking into this I saw it was due to me supporting/using @steembasicincome. Now here is what I'm really confused about?
Witnesses .... are you enabling bullying on HIVE? I've read as much as I can about blacklists and no where does anyone include anything about using services like this... that leads me to believe that it's okay to use them. I firmly also believe that no page should be allowed to run a blacklist if the criteria for said blacklist is not the first thing displayed as to publicly showcase why anyone is on it.
I have read what Justin Sun did with Steemit and that HIVE is the new safe haven, but it seems that it is only if you agree with what the big boys say? So witnesses, gaurdians of HIVE answer me this:
Is it against your rules to use @steembasicincome?
If not, why have you let this down vote bullying continue and why have these accounts not been added to a blacklist?
I am really not here for the money so please down-vote this post to hide it or even flag my account and prove what I say, I am looking forward to your response especially if that is constructive action in defense of your community and not your personal opinion/greed.
Edit: if you have read this and agree, please share to spread the awareness!
Top 20 Witnesses:
01 @gtg
02 @themarkymark
03 @good-karma
04 @blocktrades
05 @roelandp
06 @ausbitbank
07 @anyx
08 @steempress
09 @someguy123
10 @drakos
11 @therealwolf
12 @steempeak
13 @cervantes
14 @abitwitness
15 @yabapmatt
16 @ocd-witness
17 @followbtcnews
18 @netuoso
19 @arcange
20 @pharesim
This song represents how I currently see you. I hope you plan to change that. If one voice doesn't matter, does any?
I guess technically yes, I enable bullying.
In the sense that I run software that gathers collections of transactions into blocks, some of which may be downvotes or comments. I don't currently, nor do I plan to censor any transactions on HIVE.
The first rule is that there are no rules. This is a decentralized network made up of individual stakeholders, each with their own personalities, likes and dislikes.
I don't have a "rule" against steembasicincome, but personally see steembasicincome as a ponzi scheme and have flagged it's accounts many times in the past (mostly when I saw automated reports at the top of PALnet trending).
I don't specifically seek out users of the service for negative curation, but I am biased against SBI after seeing years of low effort reward farming by users.
a) I don't recognise downvotes as bullying.
b) I don't run a blacklist service personally, and I'd never consider blacklisting someone because of their voting habits anyway.
You say down votes aren't bullying... The dictionary seems to differ. Any way...
So can you please explain to me why my posts/content is being down voted? Is it spam? Is it farming? Last I checked all my content is original... and written by me and produced by me. So if my content is being down voted because of a service I use, yes I would call that bullying. Why not add an upvote/downvote to peoples profiles. That work independent from your HIVE POWER and let's see how things would work then? Then we can vote the people and not their content, and we will all be equal. Like voting for witnesses. Not having our HIVE balance be the determining factor but rather the community?
I'd love to see where in the dictionary it says downvotes are bullying.
Nope, I'm not personally downvoting your posts.
If the service you use only exists to upvote content regardless of quality in exchange for money I'd say it's a little more complicated then just "bullying". They may see what they're doing as a positive service for the community, countering a bad actor (SBI) and not related to your post's specifically at all. I'm guessing, I don't know the people that are downvoting you.
SBI uses the blacklist API by @themarkymark so at least there is some sort of quality screening as apposed the 4 guilty parties in question.
Bully Definition:
"Bullying is the use of force, coercion, or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual."
Force/Threat = DOWN VOTE with big HP.
Coercion = Trying to make me not use a service I want.
Dominating/Intimidating = I can't do anything about it as I don't have boat loads full of money nor witness support to help me.
Does that clarify it for you?
The question: "can you please tell me why my posts are being down voted" was rhetorical, as the entire conversation tells you why. I get down voted due to my choices not my content. AKA down voting content with massive HP that is not spam nor plagiarism is CLEARLY ABUSE??? I am starting to think you do not want to see the truth? It could not be more clear that this is blatant abuse of power AKA bullying.
Downvotes are tiny upvotes for everyone else on the platform.
You use upvotes to use the influence you gain by your stake, downvotes are the same exact thing in the opposite direction. Not saying all downvotes are good but in general they allow stake holders to use their influence given to them by their stake to decide where rewards should go.
If they think something is underrewarded then upvote it, overrewarded downvote. Downvotes are not violence by nature, granted many do use them maliciously but they are mostly to balance rewards based on how much influence your stake awards you. Without them, we become whaleshares.
Very well @themarkymark, please tell me why their profile descriptions expressly say that they down vote people that use SBI, so there is no balancing nor even viewing of content they down vote. Why do you seem so eager to protect CLEARLY malicious activity? Not one of my posts have gotten a massive payout so please take 2 seconds of your day and actually look at the facts. Also I know you know these profiles as I followed previous comment trails and I have seen you interact. This is as clearly abuse as it gets.
Why don't you add a blacklist to your API for malicious down voting? You can't decide a post is over rewarded if you didn't even read it.
Please cite one of my posts that are down voted by them which is over rewarded?
Like I said, not all downvotes are malicious nor are all good.
I have no control how people use their downvotes or their upvotes, I can only use my influence to balance as I see fit.
Thanks for taking the time to respond by the way. @ausbitbank
Witnesses have no control over this.
Unlike Steem, we aren't censoring anything - there are no real "blacklists" or "whitelists" at the voting level.
There are no rules, for or against bid bots - it's simply one person @ctime choosing to downvote posts that have upvotes from bid bots, as they think that bid bots are wrong.
We have no way of blacklisting or banning @ctime (and to even be able to do so would be enforcing censorship - we're supposed to be neutral).
There's a few ways you can deal with this:
1.1. Promote your posts in a more natural way, e.g. via the @minnowsupport community
Use more powerful bid bots so that @ctime's downvote is weaker than the upvotes
Power up a lot of HIVE so your vote is more powerful than @ctime's downvote
Or just go on a flagging war and flag all of @ctime's posts
It's your choice - this platform is all about freedom to use your stake as you like. Some have chosen to use their stake to flag things they disagree with, and there's nothing any of the witnesses can really do about it.
So your solution is:
1.1.2 instantly have more money some how
1.1.3 downvote @ctime's content, oh wait he doesn't produce anything...
I don't have any problem with freedom, but allowing this kind of behaviour will cause HIVE to just turn into a CURATOR and WHALE circle jerk and its very easy to see, just look at big account rewards vs normal accounts and where they get their votes?
Just as an example, I have nothing against you, just the first article I saw: @theycallmedan has an account value of 231 179.636 as of right now using the @esteemapp wallet balance. He made 71.48 USD currently on his latest post.
I'm not here for the money, I have a job, well after Corona again. So don't look at this as me bitching about the money. I'm willing to put all my posts on decline payout going forward, though @ctime is already taking care of that for me. But i bring musicians and artists to this platform to help them spread the news about their art and in turn make some money. So whilst all the big accounts are throwing each other with money these new guys have to post 20 articles to even make a dollar. So yes, @steembasicincome helps accounts like theirs and selfish bullies like @ctime will be the end to bringing and encouraging new users
In saying that, I know i'm wasting my breath as you will just shrug it off. So rather I'll ask this. How many community votes would it take for you to implement a downvote/upvote feature on a persons page. Have everyone start at 50% , if you get to 0% your voting ability stops and you can only post to redeem yourself and build up your rep. If it gets to 100% you are a verified good practice user.
If you think that person is abusive, spamming, plagiarising ,downvote them if you think they are posting good content or a nice person upvote them. Votes are 1:1 with no influence of HP like when voting for a witness. What would it take to bring that in? I'll personally send the poll around.
I agree with you that the downvotes by this guy are discouraging and I can't tell you how many times I have thought about leaving
Steem/Hive because of them. But I believe in SBI and will continue to reward them to the people who enter my contests because I like helping others get ahead and I think SBI is a marvelous way to help smaller accounts grow. If I get too discouraged I will power down and leave, but I have nothing against downvotes when they are being properly used. I don't believe that downvoting because you have a different opinion is an appropriate use of downvoting, The downvotes this guy throws around seem silly and immature to me, and in my opinion he keeps Hive from being a positive experience for a lot of people.
Exactly what we think, even though I know a lot of us have this mentality as I have read the numerous complaints in replies from people to them, it's good to hear it and see it being aired here. Thanks for sharing!
People are free to do what they want here are that is part of the attraction. Some of them do seem to have something against SBI. I think we have worse things to worry about and voting down people who mean well is not good for the platform.
Not good at all, especially for attracting new users!
If the witnesses start meddling in who can do what then where does it stop? There are some crap things here you just have to live with unless you invest in a lot of Hive or can persuade a big player to back you. These discussions have gone on before and so you are unlikely to get far with complaining to certain people.
To be honest a few SBI make very little difference to anyone. I liked the idea originally, but it is a tiny percentage of my earnings. Better to get real engagement from people. Maybe just offer a few Hive as prizes instead. Winners can buy SBI with that if they want.
Concentrate on the positive stuff.
Just saw your reply to my comment to MK and so I had to come checkout your post. I didn't know you ran @dse. That account and it's curation initiative really got me going back when I first started blogging on Steem. So THANK YOU for that! Also I didn't know about your open mic competition, I used to participate in Luzcyphers and I was sad when it abruptly ended. If you continue it in the future I'd definitely try to enter! I'm following you now. And now, to the point at hand... it IS bullying! And I have been trying to counteract it myself (as have a few others), but I am really glad you are calling out the witnesses on this.
Hey @derekrichardson, Yeah back in the day I threw a lot in with @dse, glad we could be of service. I am back and the open mic will continue as well as more projects! We are busy with a cool one called 1 minute co-labs if you want to check it out. Yeah Luzcyphers one used to be the bomb, I hope to build something to fill that massive void within the music community again. Seems like there ain't much left.
@ctime proving my point with the 100% down vote with 294 599HP , @ausbitbank and @themarkymark do you need more proof ? So was that down vote to balance my over rewarded post of not even half a dollar? or was that a clear abuse of power AKA bullying?
😘
Just read a bunch of comments. If you believe in something man, you've just got to have a bit of resilience. This is an open platform, not a nanny state. There are no rulers or governors though it might seem that way when a whale acts irresponsibly but that is why there are other whales to keep things well referenced. Generally this system works.
However, we must also ask, why we have come to this platform - for me its for an unconditional outlet to express any material, to have a community as an audience and to not be censored. All those boxes are checked at the moment. If ever it changes then we use our legs and go somewhere else. We say fuck you with our lack of attendance.
It's good you kicked up a fuss but it's important not to stick your heels in when you have opinions that aren't shared by everyone. The ability for a platform like this to survive is the adaptability of the community as a whole and not just one member. That means we have to baby walk with the rest if we normally choose to walk far ahead on the path. When we throw a tantrum, we just make it worse for ourselves.
The best solution. Put your money where your mouth is. Buy some Hive and start participating in more than just your own ventures.
There is great potential for something like Hive to create so much value that it can supply small amounts of crypto via a basic income scheme to people in poorer countries.
Hive hasn't got there yet. It needs to grow and get a few million active users that aren't abusing in anyway at least. Possibly a couple of hundred million in order to generate enough surplus to support an initiative like that and still continue generating wealth.
Anything from the past associated with Steem is highly looked down upon. We just have to adapt.
You've got some great initiatives and some great energy to go along with it. Just stick with it and learn quick. Don't be afraid to say sorry when you were wrong either. It's a community here, this means we all have to get along. I've done the 'fuck you' thing to a couple of people early on and that just gave me a bad rep in the community.
Anyways, good luck man, I'm going to upload an entry to your week 4.