RE: Downvote Wars Do not Make Hive More Attractive
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Self censorship is extremely powerful, and is the result of many things.
IF there is real censorship from a position of authority self-censorship will result.
But also there is self censorship that arises out of fear of repercussions from the status-quo or mainstream culture. This relates to the whales situation you mention.
If someone is beloved, the common people are reticent to dissent or accuse them, but if someone is notorious or hated they'll be fearful to stand up against that person and co-signing their ideas works the same.
But things are never so simple. It's hard to establish a system where there is freedom, order, and happiness at scale with individuals and collectives alike.
It is like Musk with Twitter though. I believe in free-speech. I think a free society means dealing with unpleasant things expressed from free speech too. We deal with unpleasant things like those to avoid more horrible actions like violence or extreme activism that are likely to arise when people are suppressed or oppressed.
Thanks for your insightful comment. I agree. I think that the Blockchain has done a lot of remarkable things and theoretically, some of the issues, including downvote wars should self-regulate, but I think that they do a lot of harm to the marketability of the platform and the freedom of expression among users and communities.
So you're against the downvote wars as actions of the people involved rather than being against the downvote option altogether right?
On Youtube within the past year we saw the removal of showing the downvotes. The reason given was that it could emotionally/mentally anguish the creators if there was a targeted campaign against them from another creator with a sizable following. This is sort of like the whales situation here I'd say.
But in reality, Youtube seemed to do this because of cultural/political dissent. The current US presidents official White House channel was the first one to "test" this function before it was rolled out to public, and prior to that the videos had terrible ratios.
Additionally, you'd see similar ratios on movies pushing certain social/political agendas. One of their most powerful weapons via social-media is making people feel like they are in a minority on opinion, and seeing those downvotes made people realize their numbers.
I think it's always better to be able to see what's going on, but I see your point too about driving people away as votes on here are handled very differently than Youtube.
That's a good point. Downvoting can have different uses or justifications and also different effects. Given the nature of Hive, imagine if people were downvoted based on political, religious, racial, or any other agendas? How would anyone increase their rep or HP? What would be the point of a Blockchain whose crypto assets can't grow? What would be the point of promoting it as a real decentralized platform where free speech is truly respected? Rewards continue being the main motivation for people to post here instead of on Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. Unless the downvote option is used fairly, I do not see the point.
They way they are using it now is like punishing the children for the sins of people who are not even their relatives.
Yeah I'd love to see this platform continue to grow.
I started off on Steemit, and moved over after the hard-fork/war with Justin.
The crypto-rewards based model is a decent idea, and it's also being used on Minds(sort of), and LBRY/Odysee.
There's also 3Speak and Dtube which were born on Steemit/Hive, but now are using their own tokens for some reason.
On Minds its come to the point where if you're not spending their tokens to promote your posts you get little engagement.
Some creators have been making decent earnings on these platforms, but as the crypto markets fluctuate the value of those earnings does too.
I have to admit I'm still a little lost on the exact structure of Hive's system when it comes to witnesses and the proposals. I need to take the time to read into it at depth.
I think there should be a prominent guide to that built into the sign-up process though for new users.
Bur it's another example of how hard it is to structure a social system even online.
We're still using the core concepts of carrot vs. stick lol.