Downvote Wars Do not Make Hive More Attractive
This is what Hive looks like every time whales go on downvote rampage.
Hive has been promoted under the premise of decentralization, free speech, and monetization (among other things). These things are what make us different from other social media platforms. I guess even the concept of social media does not even apply to us. We are Web 3.0. We are beyond Facebook and Twitter (even with Musk running it).
But how can a downvote war make this platform more attractive? How can hivers produce content when instead of cheering, they have to worry about getting an upvote from a big account which happens to be at war with other big accounts.
The average hiver is powerless and subject to the power struggle that control forces unknown to us. There is no difference between being censored on Facebook or Twitter and being downvoted here for reasons that are not supposed to be personal. There is nothing wrong with your content, but still they are going to downvote it just to make a statement.
I do not see much freedom encouragement in that mentality.
Just when I was in the middle of a promotion campaign I start receiving downvotes and I wonder how do I explain to a new user that far from getting rewards for their content creation, they may get punished for no reason.
The downvote bottom may have a use, but to use it as a who-can-pee-farther game is just unacceptable in my view.
Well, there are only 37 whale accounts. The vast majority of other accounts will only rarely interact with them. Downvotes happen, sometimes seemingly randomly. Sometimes again and again (I’ve had it happen to me more than once). But usually it passes, wars sputter and die, and smaller accounts that stick around as opposed to rage-quitting tend to recover from the fallout.
Yes, whale wars can be annoying, but they’re sporadic. And downvotes are a fact of life here, for better or worse, that’s not going to change. Brutal truth: those who don’t like that fact can go to Blurt and post there.
I couldn't disagree with this more. Nothing is censored here, the blockchain is immutable. The content might not appear on a particular front end, but it remains on the blockchain. And "not supposed to be personal" appears nowhere in the Hive blockchain's code. People can and do apply stake-based votes as they see fit. Sure, there may be social pressures one way or another. But how people are "supposed" to vote here is not carved in stone, or explicit in the software.
Hi, @preparedwombat
Thanks for your input.
I understand the freedom people have here to use their up vote/down vote power as they see fit. But there is something called self-censorship resulting from the anticipation of negative consequences. There is a lot of stuff that is not in this Blockchain simply because people prefer to avoid posting on certain topics or saying certain things lest they be flagged, downvoted or blacklisted.
I think that the downvote option has that power and it has been misused.
Time will tell, I guess. I know these wars do not last forever, but like the wars in the real world, they come back quite often, as if no lesson was ever learned. In between there is the collateral damage and the "adjustments" people try to make to hope they won't find themselves in a crossfire. That fear itself bears the seed of censorship.
There is Abuse, and that extends to canceling out rewards. That you can't see how that is driving people away and never towards, is your shortcoming, just the same as all who similarly can't recognize something so integral to a moral standard as abuse and seek instead to disregard and or defend it, and all the while society and community are meaningless in abject absence of any code of conduct. You can preach about there's no censorship on here as if that is some kind of Selling Point that's gonna convince anyone to come to a place that considers spam and abuse, as freedom of expression.
noun
the expression of formal disapproval.
"angry delegates offered a resolution of censure against the offenders"
synonyms: condemnation, criticism, attack, abuse, revilement, disapproval, reprimand, rebuke, admonishment, admonition, reproof, reproval, upbraiding, castigation, berating, denunciation, reproach, scolding, chiding, reprehension, obloquy, vituperation, excoriation, objurgatiopdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877050921024467/pdf?md5=edc91a84b8934538d93de7f4ff6a84e5&pid=1-s2.0-S1877050921024467-main.pdf
Since Abusive Downvoting isn't mitigated, and can't be mitigated since "code is law" and Code Allows for Abusive Downvoting with impunity/no consequences, as absolute freedom same as Spam and other Abuse, and Code has purported that Might makes Right, albeit it was done so to mitigate Sybil Attacks, as the larger the stake the more share of the distribution, yet with no mechanism to mitigate Abuse and especially to mitigate Abusive Downvotes, much like Spam and Harassment, the whole "censorship proof" is no different than claiming than you're free to express yourself just as everybody is free to abuse and harass, AND in turn, spam, abuse and abusive Downvoting all function as payola by the abusers, because freedom.
Talk about insulting and degrading, the abusers are literally the gatekeepers and despite the effort of curtailing self aggregating behavior which is clearly recognized as abusive, like self voting, no similar Code Changes have been made to mitigate Downvoting, Spam and Harassment. Many have left, the problem has always been that with absolute freedom comes absolute abuse, this has expressed itself in numerous ways, even an influx of scammers, but Bastion of Freedom, Social Reach Network, it hasn't even registered anywhere Meaningful.
https://dreamlight.com/12-social-media-platforms-that-honor-freedom-of-speech-and-user-privacy/
https://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/here-are-the-alternate-free-speech-apps-that-are-taking-parlers-place-7145058htm
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/255809/20210111/best-parler-alternatives-mewe-vs-gab-rumble-free-speech-apps.htm
Good luck with finding Hive or Steem anywhere:
https://www.google.com/search?q=best%20free%20speech%20platforms
Maybe on the 17th page..
I expect nothing to change without fundamental changes.
A few times when I published a topic, some unknown accounts didn't like my ideas and put forward a downvote for me. Is it normal?
There are some people who vote for themselves, I find it a bit ridiculous what do you think?
That's because there's no distinction between Downvoting because you condemn something and Downvoting because you consider the rewards excessive, both are legitimate reasons for Downvoting, yet one is intrinsically different than the other.
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.