Apparently Abuse Has Evolved Again

There is something reassuring about an organization that has spent ten years investigating abuse, because it means that, after all that experience, we should presumably be able to rely on it to distinguish between actual abuse and someone asking an inconvenient question. Fortunately, @HiveWatchers has provided us with a rather useful case study in what that distinction looks like.

The Hivewatchers – Threat Intelligence & Content Integrity Proposal

The proposal describes @HiveWatchers as an anti-abuse project that began by dealing with plagiarism, copypasta, reward abuse, and similar problems. It has since expanded its investigations to reward farming, AI-generated content, SEO spam, identity theft, cryptocurrency scams, sock puppets, social engineering, phishing, fraudulent fundraising, deceptive publishing, and various other forms of abuse.

That all sounds quite reasonable enough. They also repeatedly describe their work as investigative, evidence-based work intended to protect the ecosystem and its users. They ask the community to trust them with identifying threats, analyzing evidence, and determining what constitutes abuse.

So naturally, when someone asked them to explain the numbers behind their own funding request, the first thing they apparently investigated was her emotional state.

@ladyaryastark asked for something fairly straightforward:

“¿Podrían presentar un presupuesto desglosado de los gastos incurridos en su proyecto que respalden la solicitud del monto solicitado?”

In other words, could they provide a detailed budget showing what exactly the requested funds were supposed to pay for?

The proposal was asking for 80 HBD per day for three years, which comes out to 87,600 HBD over the requested period. One might therefore imagine that asking how this amount was calculated would be considered a reasonable question before handing over nearly ninety thousand HBD.

Instead, HiveWatchers explained that there were twenty hours of work every day, seven days a week. LadyArya then asked the obvious follow-up:

“Por cierto, 20 horas de trabajo diarios de cuántas personas por día?”

How many people are we talking about? Ten people? Twenty? That still didn't produce the detailed expenditure breakdown she had originally requested.

Instead, HiveWatchers responded with an accusation of jealousy on her part:

“Si sientes envidia y crees que puedes poner en marcha un proyecto mejor con Claude y contratar a alguien con esa experiencia (9 años de investigación, de los cuales ya llevaba 6 antes de que aparecieras en Hive en 2023) procedente de un país del tercer mundo, crea tu propio proyecto y presenta tu propuesta.”

Ah.

Envidia.

Apparently requesting an itemized explanation of a funding proposal is now evidence that the person asking is jealous of the people requesting the money. This is particularly interesting because the proposal itself says HiveWatchers wants the community to support it through the proposal system. The community is therefore being asked to make a financial decision about whether HiveWatchers deserves the requested funds.

Apparently the correct way to participate in that process is to vote yes. Asking questions about the proposal may cause an entirely different investigation.

Then things become even more interesting.

After the discussion about the funding, HiveWatchers added:

“Por cierto. Parece que estás promocionando Blurt en lugar de Hive. Aquí se considera que Blurt es una plataforma fraudulenta y hostil hacia Hive. Si no te gustan los proposals de Hive, vete a Blurt.”

There it is.

The competing blockchain enters the conversation. Not because LadyArya had asked HiveWatchers to explain Blurt, not because Blurt was somehow relevant to calculating the cost of twenty hours of work per day, and not because a blockchain's alleged fraud characteristics had anything to do with whether an 80 HBD/day funding request was adequately explained.

HiveWatchers brought it up themselves. FIRST, and they didn't merely say that they disagreed with Blurt. They explained that “Blurt is considered a fraudulent and hostile platform towards Hive” and followed that with the wonderfully welcoming suggestion:

“Si no te gustan los proposals de Hive, vete a Blurt.”

If you don't like Hive proposals, go to Blurt.
WHERE HAVE I HEARD THAT BEFORE?

If you don't like this cuntry, you can get out!

Arrogance at its finest.

This is a fascinating thing to hear from an organization that has supposedly promised not to go political and supposedly concerns itself with abuse. Because now we're no longer talking about plagiarism, reward farming, phishing, identity theft, or somebody stealing another person's content. We're talking about which blockchain somebody chooses to promote.

Apparently there is a preferred answer:

Hive.

That would already be interesting enough on its own, but then we get to the part where the same subject later appears in HiveWatchers' explanation for silencing LadyArya's replies.

When asked about what happened, HiveWatchers stated:

“This account's replies were silenced individually by the Hivewatchers account because it went on an unstable trolling spree. The account has also been actively promoting a fraud chain called Blurt on social media, instead of promoting Hive.”

So let's slow this down. Someone questioned the funding proposal, HiveWatchers called her envious, she continued questioning the proposal, HiveWatchers brought up Blurt, HiveWatchers told her that Blurt was considered fraudulent and hostile toward Hive, HiveWatchers told her that if she didn't like Hive proposals she could go to Blurt, she continued using and promoting Blurt, and later her promotion of Blurt appears in the explanation for why her replies were silenced.

But this is not political. This is merely abuse prevention.

Excellent.

There is another rather convenient little problem with the “fraud chain” characterization. HiveWatchers' own proposal says it investigates cryptocurrency scams, fraudulent fundraising, deceptive accounts, phishing, fraudulent investment schemes, and other forms of actual fraud. So if Blurt is actually fraudulent, what exactly is the fraud they are referring to? Where is the evidence, what specific fraudulent activity are they alleging, and what investigation established it?

Because “we consider it fraudulent and hostile toward Hive” is not exactly an investigation report. It is a characterization. If promoting another blockchain is itself considered abusive because HiveWatchers considers that blockchain fraudulent, then we have somehow arrived at a situation where the anti-abuse organization has expanded its mandate from investigating fraudulent activity to determining which competing blockchain users are permitted to promote.

That seems like quite an evolutionary leap from the original Cheetah bot. But perhaps this is what ten years of adapting to new forms of abuse looks like. Abuse has evolved to the point where it now includes advertising the competition. Fascistnating

I suppose AI really is changing everything.

There is also a rather amusing detail buried inside the proposal itself. HiveWatchers says:

“Most of Hivewatchers' work cannot be automated.”

They explain that many investigations require analyzing small pieces of evidence, understanding context, and applying human judgment. Fine. Then LadyArya suggested that some of this work could potentially be performed with software or AI.

The response was essentially: if you think Claude can do it, build your own project and submit your own proposal.

That is certainly one way to respond to a question about whether your proposed expenditure is justified. But the interesting part isn't whether Claude can replace HiveWatchers. The interesting part is that the question was never whether LadyArya could build a competing threat-intelligence organization.

She asked what the requested money was actually going to pay for. Those are different questions.

If I ask a contractor why a repair costs $10,000, the appropriate response isn't necessarily, “If you think you can do it cheaper, start your own construction company.” I would still like to know what the $10,000 is for. This is where things became sufficiently uncomfortable that “envious” was apparently the most appropriate technical term available.

Another contradiction hiding in plain sight. HiveWatchers says:

“The work has been consistent and evidence-based investigative work.”

Wonderful.

Then provide the evidence supporting the budget.

Explain the expenditure. Show how the 80 HBD/day figure was calculated. Explain how many people are working those twenty hours per day, how much goes to each person, and what portion covers tools, infrastructure, research, development, and whatever else is included.

That would be evidence.

Instead, the response included an appeal to AI-generated salary estimates, an accusation of envy, a suggestion to create a competing project, and a discussion about Blurt.

It is almost as though the uncomfortable question wasn't actually answered.

And then there is the matter of politics. HiveWatchers have previously presented themselves as an organization concerned with abuse rather than politics, and that distinction is rather important because criticizing a funding proposal is political in the ordinary sense of the word. The proposal itself is asking the community to allocate blockchain resources to a particular project, so people are allowed to oppose it, question it, say the requested amount is excessive, argue that the project isn't worth funding, suggest alternative ways of doing the same work, and even promote another blockchain. None of those things magically become abuse simply because the people being criticized don't appreciate them.

Yet when the competing blockchain enters the conversation, HiveWatchers' own wording becomes rather revealing:

“...actively promoting a fraud chain called Blurt on social media, instead of promoting Hive.”

Instead of promoting Hive.

That is an extraordinarily interesting phrase for an organization that supposedly isn't concerned with politics, isn't it? Because, now there appears to be an expectation that users should be promoting Hive rather than competing platforms, and if someone doesn't, apparently that information becomes relevant when explaining why their replies were silenced.

Again, "not political".

Just "anti-abuse".

Of course.

There is also a difference between “this account is blacklisted for abuse” and “this account's replies have been individually silenced.” That distinction matters, and it should be made clearly. In this particular episode, there was initially confusion because a tool surfaced an on-chain mute by HiveWatchers. HiveWatchers correctly pointed out that the account was not on their blacklist and that they don't have the ability to “mute” an account across every frontend.

Fine.

A mute is not a blacklist. Nobody needs to pretend otherwise. We know this already, but that correction doesn't erase the actual public statements explaining why HiveWatchers chose to silence those replies in the first place. They themselves said the replies were silenced because of an alleged “unstable trolling spree” and because the account was promoting Blurt instead of Hive.

So the question isn't whether a mute is technically equivalent to a blacklist.

It isn't.

The question is what conduct HiveWatchers considers sufficient to justify using its own influence to silence somebody's replies in the first place. And their own comments provide a rather interesting answer.

Questioning the funding proposal. Being accused of envy. Promoting a competing blockchain. Not promoting Hive. Apparently these are now neighboring concepts in the abuse department.

Which brings us back to that promise about not going political.

I'm having trouble locating the exact border. Perhaps it is somewhere between, “Please provide an itemized explanation for why you need this much money”, and “If you don't like Hive proposals, go to Blurt.”

Maybe the political part begins after the budget question and before the blockchain loyalty test.

It's difficult to say. But at least we can trust them. After all they promised never to go political.

Move along folks. Nothing political happening here.

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