The HIVE FREEDOM PROXY: Over $1.7M Worth of Hive Witness Votes Available For Serious Free Speech Witnesses.
Announcing a new witness voting proxy fund worth Millions - Nominate Free Speech Witnesses!
It's been a while since I made a Witness Update for Hive. In part that's because I had to go to Australia for 9 months to help a friend survive a very difficult time and in part it's because I have been so busy working on so many different things.
Recently, as you may be aware, I have experienced continual zeroing or near zeroing of all of my posts on Hive by Curangel, OCD, their downvote trail and others. This would have significantly impacted my ability to make time for Hive and for researching key health topics. However, since I value Hive as a free speech platform I have been making as much time as possible available to dedicate to Hive behind the scenes - which I have mainly been dedicating to examining and overcoming the centralisation of stake that has occurred here in terms of the balance of upvotes and downvotes (My last post addresses this issue and I also spoke on the 3Speak Community show on this recently too).
While some people think that the ability for a small number of people to nuke Hive accounts into the ground unchallenged (even successful accounts with lots of followers who are active) is not a problem, the reality is that I have long seen this as one of the biggest threats to Hive. I have had many people come to me behind the scenes over the years to complain about this, but there hasn't been much I could do. Hive is powered by stake primarily, so whoever has the most money calls the shots - and I have not had the most money.
The recent threats made to people on Hive by certain large stakeholders, both in terms of threats to curation rewards of other large stakeholders and even in terms of physical threats of violence made to people on chain, has motivated other large stakeholders to take action. The full details of this action are not public yet, however, I can announce that I have been proxied over $1.7M worth of witness voting power as part of the response.
Hive only exists because of a centralised attack on Steem by Justin Sun who sought to censor the chain. Everyone needs to prioritise preventing behaviour of this kind on Hive and I am saddened that the amount of effort which went into creating Hive is not sufficient motive for some around here to continue to uphold that vision. It may be that the perceptions of some here are simply not allowing them to see the similarity between Justin Sun and some of what is happening on Hive to limit the free flow of information.
Proxy Your Witness Votes For Free Speech
This proxy of voting power has been made in order to tip the balance of the governance of Hive towards free speech and away from downvoters who fail to understand basic human relations or who are, perhaps, even motivated by nefarious intentions. It has already been used to this effect and has created real change to Hive governance.
This post is an invitation to everyone to consider proxying your witness voting power to me in order to continue the mission of ensuring that the top 20 witness positions on Hive are populated only by those who demonstrate the ability to respect the free flow of information, human decency and open mindedness (all of which are shared goals of so many of us who make up the Hive community).
Currently, I am not using all of my 30 witness votes (You can see who I am voting for here). This is because I am not familiar enough with all of the witnesses and their true motives and have not yet found 30 that I fully trust. I do pay close attention to the statements made by people and have done over the 5+ years on Hive/Steem - but the majority of witnesses that I have heard speak seem to undervalue free speech or take no action to protect it, hence - again - why I do not have 30 votes yet cast.
So this post is both an invite to proxy to me and also an invite to inform me of witnesses that I am not currently voting for, who are a good fit for the goals I am stating here. If you are a witness who is strongly for free speech on Hive, then please leave me a comment below that demonstrates that this is the case. Also, if you want to nominate someone else then please do, but I won't be voting for anyone who cannot provide any evidence that they are aligned towards free speech.
Some Examples of Who I Am Voting For And Why
@Ausbitbank - One of the longest active witnesses. I have known him since the beginning on Steem and he is the one who is most responsible for me blogging on Hive today. He consistently upvoted my posts over the years that exposed numerous serious crimes and problems in society, many of which continue til this day. Many in society take 5-10 years to catch up with accepting what I expose. Some take 1 year. Ausbitbank is right there with me, with no delay!
@Steempeak - Creators of @peakd, still the best general use Hive front end, as far as I am concerned. I am not aware of any action they have taken that is anti free speech. PeakD could definitely do with being optimised in order to prioritise posts in ways that aren't so easily manipulated by large stakeholders and it is possible that 3speak will take their crown in the near future. For now, they are adding a lot to Hive and deserve support.
@yabapmatt - Developer and Founder of Splinterlands. Open minded, seemingly fair, creative and supporter of exposing important topics via Hive. I have never seen him say or do anything that is against free speech.
@stoodkev - Developer of Hive Keychain, a fundamental tool for Hive. Again, like Matt, I have never seen him do or say anything that is against the interests of Hive.
@quochoy - Developer at Hive.blog - actively helping Hive. I have never seen him take action that harms Hive or that messes with free speech.
@someguy123 - Owner of Privex, hosting company, and maintainer of Hive deployment packages that keep everything running (among other things). He tirelessly helps Hive and to my knowledge has never said/done things to harm free speech or growth here.
@aggroed - The other founder of Splinterlands and also Palnet and more. He has a shared interest with me on free speech and specifically exposing the important issues of the day that the mainstream and their allies seek to bury at all cost.
@threespeak - @starkerz and @theycallmedan are strongly focused on free speech and putting huge amounts of time into improving Hive, both as a free speech platform and as a successful financial investment.
@drakos - Ex top 20 witness for Hive. Outspoken advocate for free speech.
@timcliff - I have known Tim since the beginning of Steem. While I haven't seen him being so active lately on Hive, he generally is able to make neutral and reliable decisions for Hive governance, without letting politics or agenda get in the way.
@bobinson - Developer at 3Speak (amongst other projects), so aligns with the free speech intent there.
@apshamilton - Lawyer who runs the class action lawsuit against Facebook/Google on behalf of the Hive community. He consistently pushes for free speech on Hive.
@r0nd0n - Another long time Hive/Steem member. He helps run the MSPWaves and Minnowpond organisations (PAL) and hosts regular chat shows for the Hive community. He demonstrates good knowledge of the key factors on Hive, spanning technical through to social and political. r0n is a big supporter of free speech and open debate, as evidenced by him running the @freezepeach counter downvoting service.
@liondani - Another long time Steem/Hive witness. Haven't seen much from him lately, but he has shown support for freedom in the past enough for me to vote him.
@disregardfiat - Free speech advocate and creator of D.lux, which aims to help lower access to Layer 2 communities on Hive.
@ura-soul - Me! I have worked for nearly 2 decades to help heal, balance and evolve Earth. This specifically requires unconditional respect of free will, which means full free speech and doing whatever is needed to ensure no-one is being overpowered. Currently developing a site for Hive that can help overcome the ideological downvoting situation and also looking at launching Layer 2 communities that will provide free speech spaces too.
How To Proxy Your Witness Vote
I am asking you to re-evaluate your current witness votes on Hive to make sure that you are voting for people who you KNOW are aligned towards free speech and that means the wise and non abusive use of downvotes/upvotes.
One way to do that is to proxy your witness votes to me and to let me take care of the research and maintaining the voting list. To proxy your votes to me, just use the button to do so in the 'interactions' menu in PeakD when viewing my profile or go to the witness voting page at Hive.blog - then scroll to the bottom and add my name into the 'set proxy' box and click the button.
- Make sure you are logged in at Hive.blog and go to the witnesses page.
- Enter 'ura-soul' into the 'set proxy' box at the bottom of the page.
- Click 'Set Proxy'. You are done.
From then on, you will automatically use your Hive stake to vote for the witnesses that I vote for. Your Hive Power will not be used for anything as a result, except for voting for witnesses. This action does not give me any ability to upvote or downvote posts on your behalf or anything like that.
Again, if you have any comments on my choice of witnesses or want to make suggestions for others for me to consider then please leave a brief comment below stating your case.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Read My User Guide for Hive Here
You Can Vote For Me As A Hive Witness!
Click the big black button below:
View My Witness Application Here
View Some of My Witness Related Posts
Note: Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Hive Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Hive blockchain or DApps such as PeakD and 3Speak... You can really help Hive by making your witness votes count!
looks good!
@tipu curate
https://twitter.com/ura_soul/status/1470069467568906245
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the person sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Good luck. I will probably keep my votes under my control but I will be watching who you're voting for.
Behold the powah!
Here's a couple recommendations I have - love the list so far!
@hextech - run by @rishi556, @sn0n & @edicted... I don't know the other two folks at all, but edicted is great imho, in terms of free speech, community support, and his content.EDIT: It was brought to my attention that rishi (and the hextech account intself) are downvoting content because it doesn't fit the mainstream narrative - and doubling down by down-voting comments about the fact that they are doing so.
@pizza.witness - run by @thebeardflex & @hivetrending - these two are creating all sorts of wonderful things for Hive, focused largely on the gaming side of things, but also just community building, engagement, and offering solutions. They tend to stay out of political discussion and such - in the proper way of just staying out of them, instead of trying to shut them down.
I swear I was supporting a witness who specifically ran everything on their own hardware at home (since Hive is SOOO heavily run on privex servers), but now I can't seem to find them, even though it still says I have 30 votes out... I'll circle back if more come to mind, or if I find that one :-)
EDIT: @shmoogleosukami is the other witness I was trying to think of.
A witness who runs on home equipment to help decentralize the blockchain, and who runs an HE witness, and various other projects on-chain. You can see their opinion down below in a reply, and here is a small excerpt:
I’m the one running my witness on my own PCs in my own properties.
I actually have geographic diversity now. One at home and the other at the office across the road.
I knew you did (not the multiple locations, that's awesome!), but there was someone pretty far down the list who had said that too... or maybe I'm just mis-remembering.
Anyway, we both support you, and I'm grateful for the awesome work you do, on chain and off!
You probably mean me as well, I also run everything from home.
Ah, yes! Did you remove it from your witness description?
Thanks for doing what you do!
I'll read your comment below momentarily :-)
Excellent, thanks. I will check out those two witness accounts now.
Running a witness server at home is not really the best idea because the average home connection to the web is not as reliable as a purpose built data centre. On the other hand, having all the nodes in the same data centre (Privex) is not ideal either. Originally, I was specifically sourcing servers with unknown companies in order to further decentralisation, but over time I've realised that this isn't really needed. For the moment I am using Privex too for ease of use and speed. As I move higher in the ranks and have more funds available as a result, I can put more time into the hardware and might look again at a different solution.
I'm on a similar domestic Israeli Fiber to the home connection though via a different isp to @apshamilton .
Since I mothballed the isp's Spyware router and bought my own $20 Fiber modem, the connection has been rock solid. I actually have bigger problems with whole building power and I should also replace an old router.
Yes, the power supply is also a major issue in domestic situation. In general, data centers will have fallback solutions for all of the key infrastructure elements that just aren't available at home in most cases (unless you are Elon Musk or Bill Gates).
I have a UPS too.
There is really nothing that a data center has that you can’t easily duplicate at home.
But a data center will always be vulnerable to pressure from hostile parties.
Data Centres tend to have multiple lines in/out - plus be in hardened, high security facilities and have numerous levels of redundancy to facilitate nearly 100% uptime. You could recreate that at home but it would be extremely expensive and I doubt anyone on Hive has done so.
If you visit a Layer 3+ facility it will resemble a nuclear bunker more than an office :)
I will soon have redundant internet links by sharing my home fibre via wifi with the office across the road (which already has dual redundant internet).
I could easily and cheaply get a second fiber link at home too.
My apartment building is already highly secure with guards and nuclear, biological and chemical proof safe rooms - although my kids are in there not my Hive node :-)
Not really sure why a Hive node would need multiple layers of security in any case.
Overrewarded comment, hopefully you understand.
Yes, it was a bit excessive. :-)
This is a good example of an appropriate use of a balancing downvote. Countering a single perhaps overly generous upvote.
In contrast nuking lengthy original posts to zero because of political differences is what I am concerned about.
Me too and I have been one of the few countering some of those, that is if the authors haven't behaved like small babies over them.
Except that your account ocdb is 2nd only to curangel for doing the downvoting of long, original content, because you disagree with it.
I can literally prove that what you're saying isn't true. I haven't downvoted you with ocdb. I've downvoted 3 posts of @ura-soul, one with mostly quotes about tether, one was a bit longer with text + quotes of people's comments but was about disagreement of downvotes which I don't find valuable nor "content" and the last one was of a video clip on 3speak that wasn't his along with very little text.
Are you thinking of lucylin? Either way I'm pretty sure I've downvoted a lot more with this account than ocdb but it hasn't been cause I disagree with the content, it's been the rewards.
As I've made clear from the beginning of this, and which you keep ignoring: This is about systemic behavior, and was never about ME getting downvoted.
So, your actions don't count if you use a different account to commit them?
OCDB has downvoted plenty of content from ura-soul, dbroze, and many others, just in the last couple of weeks - AND you're downvoting with your personal account(s) as well.
Even if you never downvoted content with ocdb, I would still be urging people to withdraw support; because of your actions as a whole.
Cool and people who aren't braindead and understand my downvotes are there to protect the rewardpool from inactive leeches who bring no value to Hive will probably understand that it's curation same as all my manual upvotes and I'll continue doing that where I see fit.
You have that right, according to the code.
Just as I have the right to not only remove my support from your project(s), but to inform others of my decision, and why I made it.
If anyone chooses to remove their witness vote from us it still won't affect the curation from our project upon them.
That's good to hear.
It's almost as if it was a mistake, and communication could have been used instead. Weird?
Removed the upvote, I was simply on the wrong account when I placed it.
Just as a note, almost all of Privex's apps are open source and everyone is welcome to use and contribute to them, these also include Hive related apps (like Dockerized versions) as well.
Moreover, we support people self-hosting their own nodes and witnesses outside of Privex's server ecosystem (we have a Discord channel dedicated to this in the first place) so if anyone has their own servers and just need our help setting up their nodes and witnesses, we are available.
For the "everyone is in Privex" argument, we currently have 4 different data centers, in 4 different countries so, in theory, we're quite redundant :) -- To be honest, it's a lot better than sourcing servers from unknown sources where you do not know what might happen tomorrow, as well as the quality of their servers and datacenters in general.
Thanks for clarifying. From an absolute security perspective, a single point of failure is always a risk - rogue employees with axes to grind may be able to access all data centres - not that I am suggesting you have an axe or like to grind it. lol.
Fair point :) I am sure none of us have axes though people over at the datacenters, the technicians, might... Because, fire is always a hazard after all.
Nevertheless, when renting servers from anywhere, I advise carefully researching them to make sure you are getting what you are paying for. Not just "Very fast CPU, a lot of RAM and storage space" but more in-depth in terms of technical stuff, and for non-technical stuff, of course the second most important thing is the reliability of the company, their privacy policy (Do they sell your data for ads? Marketing? How long have they been in the market?) to locate the best one fitting your needs and budget.
Yes, there are definitely many poor hosting companies out 'there'!
Hextech downvoted me for questioning the efficiency of the vaccine more than once. They are not free speech. Especially rishi who is probably a sociopath if I had to guess from he responded to my questioning of the downvote.
I'm sure observers here would like to look at that, do you have any links? Thanks
https://www.peakd.com/@phusionphil/boycott-the-witness-who-is-against-questioning-the-vaccine
Thanks, I will take a look.
Lol they even downvotes this comment. Make sure you look at the comments before they were edited too, these whales like to redact their statements sometimes and the original comment speaks to a different truth than the edited one.
Thanks, noted. I've removed my vote for their witness, will edit my comment above, and will include them on the do not support side of my upcoming witnesses post.
I wonder if there is even 1 person in the top 30 witnesses who has any experience with PR.
Not that I am aware of, though maybe.
well someone i invited to hive is a english teacher and comedian, he is very confused about the ethics and considering not even using this platform due to the way this top 30 group acts.
its making me look stupid and like I am as low of a human being as the top 30 witnesses to stay on this platform, i have to constantly defend free speech and sovereignty of wealth, when i could just use Blurt instead with no downvotes which would mediate 100% of the drama we see here.
I'm just observing the downvotes on this comment which seem to confirm what you are saying.
Yeah. Those folks downvoting in comment sections sure play dirty, eh.
Lol, I have noticed that a lot of the downvote complainers are quite promiscuous downvoters themselves. But its ok, if they're doing it... :OD
I especially liked the part near the beginning of Hive and for several months, any artist, photographer, personality, entertainer, and the like, got downvoted heavily just for doing a good job and making the place fun, while this crowd sat on their hands saying nothing, ignoring it, turning a blind eye to it, and sometimes even mocking those on the receiving end claiming they deserved it, most likely because the one downvoting would often upvote their political drivel. Funny how that works...
Funny how I only started downvoting on a regular basis after I was zeroed for weeks on end.
I downvote because it's the only way I have been able to get people to start having a discussion about the flaws of DPOS.
Until they are loosing money they don't seem to care about anything.
Yeah they are psychic leeches, the type you find on the bottom of your boot after a revolution.
God... damn it!
Dissention in the ranks!
I'm happy to adjust my statement (again) and go back to supporting your witness if this is addressed.
I don't know your two partners at all, but I've always appreciated your content, comments, and presence on the chain.
Rishi goes on a self-righteous rampage once and a while.
Kid needs to chill out.
Luckily most devs (including my devs) are quite poor and I mostly get to run the show.
Can we buyout rishis interest in this witness? (to remove the bad actor)
Technically likely but logistically no.
If that makes sense.
Rishi does most of the work :D
Or at least did quite a bit.
Don't worry about it though I have big plans.
I don't think @hextech's 14k stake is too big of a problem at this point.
A vote from me is what? x10 that?
Perhaps I could work more on my database to track these things.
I have always enjoyed you debates and blogs so please do let me know, i will buy out toxic actors because im not a poor piece of shit that needs money from hive.
If you buy them out... what's to stop them from buying back in to resume their actions on the blockchain?
I think the intent is good... But we need to rethink the fundamentals of the blockchain so as to strip away individual centric egos/subjective opinions/outright abuse (even)/ etc. with the use of the DV.
This is and always should have been something maintained by the collective DPOS community. Outsourcing Hive integrity to the individual is a sure recipe for disaster.
DPOS has it's holes... but we can still innovate new and better solutions for controlling abuse (like spam, plagiarism, hate, threats, violence, child pornography, etc.) and doing so in a way that doesn't trade one abuse for another.
What we are (potentially) dealing with would be considered MASIVE things for any individual to deal with.
Flagging individually makes sense... but in order to deal with (and send a clear message to those content instigators) we really do need to innovate away from the RAW DOWNVOTE and towards a process/multi-step Flag AND Downvote.
In it's current state it's undeveloped, inadequate, and the cause of a lot of harmful social interaction that might not have been played out had we seen things for what they really are.
This is an opportunity for positive action...
I think so anyways...
We have to take the attention away from "This individual did that!" or "That individual did this!" and fix social at the code level.
Steering the blockchain towards more positive social outcomes will bring us all UPwards... all of this infighting will not.
We all need to continue innovating new and better ways to human... THAT is the opportunity and blockchain and the social surrounding it is the means.
We are empowered for positive change but only if we truly want it.
Why not decentralized the top 20 and make it like any other blockchain where anyone can mine transactions for profit?
It's not really important to pay the witnesses imo, and their services could easily be automated with the right care put into a cloud back end. A cloud could verify all tx too if we went to pure PoS.
Having these elected members seems just stupid to me, as if they didn't learn from the fallacies of the failed democracies of times past.
You bringUP some very interesting points I must say. In many ways Hive is a digital reflection of our current societal norms. Democracy by representation really does have so many flaws inherent in its constructs and ideologies.
It’s intriguing that you have mentioned individualization of the witness function here on Hive. Recently I have found out that the BLURT Blockchain can run one of its nodes on a Raspberry Pi! Imagine if there was a user friendly easy to setUP way for everyone to host the protocol? This would fundamentally shift Hive’s entire framework and it would hold the current Witness’s accountable.
EVERYONE WOULD THEN BE AN ACTIVE VOTER & STAKEHOLDER.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about how we could collectively innovate and improve our social here on this blockchain.
I think it’s valuable to be able to share openly like this… open (without fear of a subjective DV) discussion is how all humans effectively collaborate and innovate new and better ways to human!
Who wouldn’t want that right?
Here’s the thing. If someone doesn’t want that then we all need to begin asking better questions… questions like…
Why is that?
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
And sometimes how?
All 5 need to be answered imo.
I really like decentralized economics where no one gets credit or feels special.
Special treatment is for special interest groups and I don't support special interest groups, I support freedom of expression and any individual has that right to speak their mind without the pampering of a support group or network mediating the affairs of those humans.
Bad Rishi, bad!
Great post and great work keeping up the fight for free speech.
I want Hive to be a place where downvotes are for spam, plagarism and poor quality posts but not for legitimate differences of political opinion.
Thanks and absolutely, I agree. Downvotes have a place but it is not to stifle debate!
@ura-soul I liked your post, will follow you and asap I'll proxy my vote or approve yr witness. (I'm only with posting key at this device)
Good job keeping hive a Free speech platform.
I'm following steem since 2017, and now I'm understanding better the proposals and witness role on the network.
What happened with steem was prof that we need to check closer this part of the system. Centralized power is not a good idea.
And the Hive fork was the best think that happened and i followed it. Still have my steem account but Hive become my favorite.
Free speech vs downvote: IMHO is totally different. I dont agree with a lot of posts but don't down vote it. It's not a "dislike". I just don't upvote it.
I use downvote for bad content such as violence, plagiarism or when i realize that is not a original content. And sometimes i think that i should use it more often. 😆
Thankyou! Yes, we agree on all points I think. :)
Voted!!!
Amen brother.
I have $10,000 USDT for the first witness to blacklist azircon and curangel. Just those 2 accounts to make a point to the others who are just beta followers and will likely cut their loyalty as soon as they are not able to be downvote by the same sociopaths.
That money will not be available for ever either, I have netter things to do with my life than piss in the wind on Hive...
You're seriously trying to bribe a witness to censor accounts on a post about free speech ?
I think he thinks this is Steem.
Shows his integrity.
Yeah, it really does. Pathetic!
At least offer 20k...
This group is misguided. If they believe everyone is just doing this for money - they definitely should offer much more as an incentive.
You ended your holiday, just in time for the holiday season to start.
Going away to live life in the middle of nowhere without an internet connection and a lot of fresh fish to eat was far more appealing than sitting here losing braincells over these goddamn platform politics.
Whatever though. Trending internal memos and people who hate the place but never miss a day of work in order to tell everyone about it, constantly.
But the odd downvote is the reason the kids aren't lined up around the block to get in here and show off their talents, not the atmosphere these people create and push on everyone else...
Good to see The Soulster is working hard on creating an echo chamber safe space for free speech or whatever though, for those folks, who wear the blinders, and can't seem to see everyone speaking freely.
It is the same tiny group of people, saying the same thing over and over, not paying attention to everything else that is happening. All they care about is the rewards on their posts - which has nothing to do with free speech at all.
Sounds like you had a good time. Did you catch the fish yourself - or do you have a man-servant do it for you like Robinson Crusoe?
I used the man-servant. It's a long story but I ran out of bait one day so I just chopped him up into little pieces and used that instead. Worked well. Got my money's worth for sure. Kept his head though. Added it to the pile with the rest. They look good together. The sun hits it just right every morning. I should take a picture and show you folks. My art has come such a long way.
Anyway yeah, I can see it's the same group. I was gone for nearly four months and the first thing I saw was some of their promoted posts, talking in circles, like usual. Same shit, different day. After this much time, and not making any forward progress, seemingly only digging the hole deeper instead; well that just tells me making progress and getting positive results was never the goal. AKA Smear Campaign. Even this post is framed in a way that makes it appear as if if you didn't make the list, you're somehow a villain and not worthy.
Everyone loves a good headchop.
The entire argument they have is nonsensical. I don't assume it is going to change any time soon.
As numerous people have already stated, there seems to be a misunderstanding among some here on the meaning of 'censorship'. I covered it in this post. Censorship is NOT only 'deletion of content'. Censorship is actually suppression of content (usually for ideological or fear based reasons). The odd downvote is still suppression in some senses, but it is a grey area on Hive due to the way the algorithm assigns rewards. However, to me and also to many, many people who already left Hive/Steem for this reason - constant downvoting, including total nuking of accounts and especially without even offering any explanation or attempt to debate the content, is absolutely suppression of information and is therefore - according to the etymology and meaning of the word - also a form of censorship.
There's no need to argue about it, we are either applying logic according to the dictionary meaning of our language or we aren't. Those who aren't will not likely agree with those who are.
As far as I have seen, almost no one has left Hive due to this. The biggest complainers who are "continually leaving" are, still here posting daily.
This is nonsense in regards to Hive, as no one is supressed. The only thing the downvotes do is remove the rewards associated with the content saying it. If that stops people from posting, that is their issue. They can also create a hundred different accounts and say exactly the same thin, over and over and over - it just won't get rewarded. People can still say exactly what they want and if people want to read/listen, they are free to do so. The argument is invalid. There are no repercussions for speaking her from Hive users, other than the opportunity to remove the rewards. The only reason people complain about it is that it affects what they can earn here, period.
I know a very large number of people who either left or who laugh at the idea of opening an account. I personally know medium sized youtubers with 100s of 1000s of followers who refuse to come here because of the (relatively small) number of flaws, but that which are a major concern to them. These can be overcome if the community understands the issue and takes action, but it seems the community is split in their understanding of the situation - we might say 'polarised'.
The purpose of downvotes is to limit the reach of content, to limit the growth of accounts through removal of rewards and to also lower reputation in some situations. The large downvoters constantly receive more upvotes and few downvotes - so inevitably they will eventually have the highest reps on the system and will be able to zero everyone's reps. Zero rep means near invisibility on most front ends. Even I, knowing this, still gloss over some comments that are muted because they are almost invisible in the UI.
If you think this isn't suppression then I suggest referencing the meaning of the word:
Source: Mirriam Webster
Numerous of these definitions accurately describe the results of downvoting.
Lol, none of them apply to downvoting.
So many of this group "know all the youtubers, all the rich investors, all the..." but none will come here because of downvoting. 5 years I have been here, five years of the same impotent protestations.
You have literally no way of knowing whether you are correct about the perceptions of such people you have never met. If you think I would lie about such things for no apparent reason then you clearly don't know me or have any respect in your soul.
With regards the logic of the definitions provided in the context of downvoting. Downvoting applies to the action of expressing messages on Hive, with intent to be heard by others by:
Dude - you are digging deep for those trash connections.
I will just comment on the last one... Inhibit the growth and debe moment of what? Hive rewards? Say what you want, it doesn't mean it will earn. That is not censorship - no one is stopping people from speaking here.
What you guys should do, is create your own interface like dozens of other people have done. Then, you can do all you want there, see all you want. You don't need downvotes, you can tokenized it how you want and, everything will still be immutably written to the Hive, censorship-resistant blockchain. No issues.
Oh, you won't earn Hive necessarily though. But that doesn't matter, since the only thing that is important is having your words seen by the millions of people who care about them.
Inhibit the growth of social accounts, their reach/audience and by extension, also possibly limit the growth of Hive as a whole. Obviously, people will debate whether Hive itself is being limited or not as it is difficult to measure without solid and consistent analysis of traffic metrics (which I don't have access to, but it is part of my job to analyse such data). According to dictionary definitions, the behaviour is indeed censorship - I have no interest or time to try to convince anyone here - the truth does not need to be convincing.
Layer 2 solutions are in process, yes. We would already have our own layer 2 space but a key team member had to drop out for a while and so things were delayed. Having everyone sharing the same rewards pool IS definitely limiting Hive's growth, that is for sure.
Nope, downvotes don't do that. If anything, they can actually help an account to grow and get support - well, if they don't incessantly complain about how unfair and "illegal" downvotes are.
The only people I have seen "argue" this are people who believe they are getting censored.
"legit"
I has not been "the same pool" for nigh on four years - where have you been? Alternate interfaces that show/hide different kinds of content have been around since 2016 - Remember Busy.org? That showed nuked content that didn't appear on steemit.com. Your key person must have been out for a very long time.
I'm not sure you understand how the reward pool on layer 1 works. There is only one reward pool that is shared by all the UIs. PeakD, Hive.Blog and the other sites all display posts from the same blockchain database and the rewards are drawn from the same single rewards pool. I have no idea what you are talking about tbh.
I know precisely how it works - but layer-two options have been around since about 2018 if i remember correctly.
You are talking about the suppression of content - busy didn't hide it. You could have done the same for almost 6 years now. You have been around longer than me - you should get organized with that interface already.
Layer 2 options exist, but the majority of stake is in layer 1 - with layer 2 posts also accruing (potentially) layer 1 tokens. There is no reliable layer 2 token for either general content or 'truth' content that is beyond the focus and reach of the current layer 1 large downvoters yet, so most content creators currently end up having a focus on layer 1. There are plenty of people who don't even understand how layer 2 works - please remember that most people don't have the time/focus into things like Hive that perhaps you and others you speak with do.
I personally had built a social network before Steem existed (more than one actually) and I built it with the intention of solving the problem of my own online censorship (which was real and unusually high even back then.. I have consistently been a top performing profile on any network that supports free speech and consistently not done well on silicon valley, controlled networks). Anyway, my intention has been to relaunch my own site as a Steem (now Hive) community, but SMTs took forever and Hive Engine has a high cost to entry that I personally cannot afford due to personal issues in my life atm. However, I am working on a layer 2 token as part of a team, which would have already been live except for factors outside of my control. Currently, I am looking to help the SPK network to lower the cost to entry and at that point all of these reward pool problems may be resolved, as communities will be empowered to action a 'Justin Sun Defence' strategy and just fork their community and coin if someone comes in with nefarious intentions.
I have said all of this multiple times in the past few days, both in the 3speak community session and in my posts and comments.
Wait until Justin Sun takeover this centralized junkshop once more 🤡
I am doing this because my online friend @frot was threatened with cyber stalking, he doesnt feel safe walking his dog anymore. he wont play victim but I seen this happen, the threats are real and curangel supports the one making these threats to stalk my friend frot in New Zealand.
have you see the person at the dog park yet @frot or did they stop threatening you?
@frot should go to the police then or you should, if it is of actual concern to you. What you are suggesting has nothing to do with this at all. If that is your reasoning, it is completely illogical.
So when you see cyber stalking your first inclination is to not care about another human being being abused?
Morality and ethics are not mutually exclusive to logic in my books.
Another illogical argument.
In NZ, cyberstalking is likely illegal, so, call the police. However, downvoting is not cyberstalking, nor is it illegal. The Hive blockchain or the mechanisms it has have nothing to do with this.
You seem to have missed my point entirely and do not know what you are criticizing.
Best regards.
You seem to not have a logical argument. Have a nice day.
Logic, was never at any point, a part of my objectives when approaching this comment thread.
yes - that is obvious. Perhaps you should revise your approach.
Maybe @frot should go to the hive-cabal and ask to have all his posts and comments downvoted until he moves to Blurt...
Code is law...
If that is what he wants as an outcome.
A police officer already interjected into the thread and has stated he will taken personal action if Azircon does not apologise, to my knowledge no apology has been forthcoming, so we shall see what arises.
lol - he will take "personal action"? Perhaps if he is police, he should involve the law if that is being broken. When random people on the internet think the CIA is after them - they likely have some issues.
Here's the comment, read it for yourself - seems legit to me:
https://peakd.com/pob/@orderbook/r2zlun
"Legit"
1 comment 21 days ago, nothing before, nothing since. Doesn't instill me with confidence at all. Funny how little meat any of this argument ever has.
By 'legit', I mean that the sincerity and detail provided in the message conveys a tone that I am open to accepting as being from a real police officer. Maybe it isn't. Having zero history on the account has no baring on whether the person is legit or not.
Oh, so by "Legit" you mean, how you feel about it.
Right. I wonder what the dictionary definition of legitimate actually is and whether your feelings of legitimacy are relevant to fulfil the requirements.
Your are consistent. Unfortunately from an argument perspective, it is consistently inconsistent.
'legit' is a colloquial usage of the term 'legitimate'.
The third definition of 'legitimate' in mainstream dictionaries is:
What is valid or justifiable is subjective and thus anyone can say anything is legitimate, without needing some kind of bizarro external authority to pat them on the head.
You have justified that anything you believe must be true because of how you feel about it, regardless if whether it is true or not.
"truthseekers" - finding the truth in how they feel about things.
Spoiler: don't let facts get in the way, everything is legitimate.
Great work there mate.
No, I haven't. I didn't even mention feelings, you are just using this tired trope as a lazy get out clause to avoid the depth involved.
whewww! Come on @tarazkp!
At this point (having read all the comments on this post) what you have to say is looking rather bare to the bone.
This speaks to your character and I am compelled to ask the obvious questions anyone reading these comments of yours would be wondering about.
Why do you feel the need to go through all this mental gymnastics?
Clearly @ura-soul has represented himself and the topic of this post (freedom of speech) very well...
But you on the other hand... I'm shaking my head that you would expend this much effort to only show the cards you have... and to what end? Is this the foundations of some greater ideal? Why are you working so hard to attempt at discrediting the message (and the messenger)?
I'm seriously beginning to wonder about that now.
In the past I have read some of your posts. That content was good and my interest in your thoughts was peaked. But this... It's all a discredit to your true potential to say the least.
You might even want to reconsider what side you are standing on.
Freedom of speech is something worth working towards. It's the pillars the holdUP the very roof we call home and it's something even bigger than this blockchain.
Why pitch your lot in attempting to counter an ideal that is greater than all of us?
That's folly if you ask me.
Now...
I realize your probably commenting out of the heat of the moment... But in all seriousness. MOST of us want a social blockchain that protects the human rights of free speech...
All to often (these days especially) I find myself shaking my head (like after reading your comments here) and wondering why so many people don't see the harm they are doing by siding against higher values and the voices UPholding them.
Please don't tell me that financial capital has shaped your perception of the importance of the social aspect of this blockchain...
We all need to aspire to something greater than ourselves... (If we want to live a meaningful and rich life that is.) Why don't you lend your intellect and passion to the greater cause?
...because ultimately every voice is important and should be valued for what it brings... But what's the point of all this if the social environment doesn't support or nurture what we all hold so dear.
Please reconsider your stance and who you are aligned with.
Sincerely,
@wil.metcalfe
all these words and nothing said. All that comes out is your hurt feelings - not any understanding at all.
Well... It was worth a shot!
This is actually my first attempt to communicate with you @tarazkp... And it's not been so positive.
I'm not looking for contention however...
I simply wanted to extend a hand...
Every decision we make is an opportunity after all.
Thank you for making yourself known.
-Wil
Yup. That looks pretty legit to me.
Wait, aren't we all here for the quick money? Should've stayed at steem, damn.
최고의 사기꾼이 머무는 Steem
I have people who will double me, but they think no one cares so wont even come to offer. Maybe the person who is being stalked by the azircon will have something to say because I personally witnessed them invest over $20k into blurt... so i am assume there is alot more to go around.
That joke flew over your head eh?
Do you guys get paid to advertise for Blurt? I see some of you folks apply the product placement tactic in much of your conversations. I think it's odd behavior to invest money in Blurt then turn around and invest time here. I often wonder what's holding you folks back from simply making something of what you think is an opportunity.
At a glance that forum looks depressing. Apparently I have 15k Blurt tokens somehow so yeah if you guys want to, go ahead and pump the price. Maybe you could use your 10k for that? It is Christmas...
I don't have a sense of humor on hive, I come here specifically to see attention brought to the critical flaws of DPOS blockchain systems.
Nostakelefttouse
Sounds like a productive hobby that'll get you far in life. Got any tips for me?
You have never come up as a bad influence on hive in the last 3 or 4 months i have spent reflecting on the usage of the rewards pool.
That is good. You are a neutral or good influence on hive.
I know I'm cool shit, but thanks for reminding me. I haven't been online at all, anywhere, for the past few months. One of the first posts I saw when I got back here included a portion where I was getting thrown under the bus, for no apparent reason other than existing here, I guess, and not being a part of the hater clique, I suppose. I'm only guessing. It's too bad the whole being cool part wasn't a two way street. Not sure why I have to be alone in this.
I wont leave you hanging, i would have stayed on hive but i got ultra downvoted for my views on vaccine efficacy, i tired ot encourage a debate but after being out right denounced as a conspiracy theorist for sharing my opinion about vaccine efficacy i didnt really see the point to staying here.
I am not here to fill peoples head with shit, and encourage discourse in my comments. Its just sucks when i come back to read the comments, and half of them are flagged, and just crying about downvotes. The downvote is a powerful tool and no one respects it, so i dont respect one one lol easy as that.
Tips hat, hopefully we will be here in 5 years when this blows over if the coming downvote war doesnt manifest in a undesirable fashion.
This platform lacks the required AI algorithm razzle dazzle fancy shit working behind the scenes herding you folks that do nothing but talk about vaccines all day into echo chambers. That's what most other platforms offer. A safe space or whatever to share your beliefs with like minds in order to achieve positive reinforcement, good job buttons, and baseball butt slaps. Whether you're for it or against it, if all you do is talk about that stuff nonstop as if you're obsessed or experiencing the same day over and over doing loop de loops or whatever, that bubble is a requirement. That's just how media distribution has worked for well over the past ten years now. Get into a situation where not everyone is on the same page and yeah, I can see how, without the preconditioning, the situations can lead to seemingly shocking behavior.
I don't really take a position on these things nowadays since it's mostly old news now and heavily distorted anyway. For instance, you're not a doctor or a specialist. You simply don't like something. I don't like runny egg yolk but you certainly won't see me bitching about that nonstop for several months. At any other point in history, acting like that was also called being insane, but now in this 'progressive' world where people cancel everything including medicine if they feel like it, you're not even allowed to call crazies crazy.
Heard it all anyway since most contributors simply parrot the same stuff nonstop, for several months, without even stopping to think about anything else. I mean, for instance, a vocal/loud minority on this platform feels pain from downvotes. Well the same type of human getting downvoted on say a platform like this was also out smashing windows and destroying neighborhoods, holding up traffic, costing people millions, calling a 'protest', and not giving two shits or a single fuck about all those people caught in the crossfire who might even agree with some of the message, or disagree, doesn't matter.
As we speak you've mentioned this looming downvote war that at this point is just a figment of your imagination. Similar to the bullshit about the 10k you don't actually have and wouldn't actually spend on a hit even if you could, knowing full well in advance you can't. But you're that type, so whatever, you'd enjoy things like that, but don't be shocked if you run head first into a fist. And if you do, try to blame yourself for a change. That could be a rewarding experience. Enlightening even.
Anyway. I'm done messing with you.
I agree with the majority of what you say. I just have questions that a doctor hasn't answered and wont, I have those questions from what I discovered in the Soul Sherpa Society PPSR Lien that was put on Pfizer here in Canada.
The Soul Sherpa Society is a decentralized economic lobby group that is very progressive with blockchain technology being adopted by the general public, they are objectively oriented to see cryptocurrency be used with mainstream adoption. They put a Lien on their business partner Pfizer based on a free trade violation that is cited in this document, along with supporting evidence that Bill Gates is in fact lobbying the Canadian government with private donations directly to politician campaigns here in Canada. this information would be in the publics interest, unlike the conspiracy "crazies" I have a real legal document I have to support the majority of the concerns that I have.
https://open.lbry.com/@PhusionPhil:0/FINAL-MAILING-CANADA-HEALTH-CRIMES-TRUST-PPSR-LIEN-FINANCING-STATEMENT-GOV-OF-CANADA:8?r=9rxwJ5C9C1Tdb4qjj5k4P8XDVRE1b2wk
The downvote war I mentioned, would be fought with 0 Hive Power in my case.
I also have a diverse content on my blog, i did go echo chamber though so i understand a few of the downvotes I got, but not all of them. especially entire weeks at a time, and all active rewards I had.
I find it odd you saw this as an opportunity to hand me a pamphlet. I'm not interested in these things.
I find it odd you think I would care about the status quo on a DPOS blockhain, so I wasn't sure how to respond.
I don't recall talking to you about DPOS or even mentioning it. So now this moved on from odd to awkward.
So this comment was not about DPOS?
https://ecency.com/witness/@ura-soul/the-hive-freedom-proxy-over-dollar17m-worth-of-hive-witness-votes-available-for-serious-free-speech-witnesses#@nonameslefttouse/re-phusionphil-r41ukh
Which blockhain are you referring to then if not hive, I am confused now...
That link doesn't lead to anything specific, unfortunately.
And you wonder how things get distorted...
Has more stake than most deep dive authors combined...
To censor cyber stalkers who are using their funds to commit crimes against people like @frot when he is walking his dog. Have you see nthe threats?
When i almost zeroed az, curangel was there to upvoting him, making sure the sociopath who is threatening frot is making money.
if we do not remove them, we are encouraging cyber stalking and internet crime. I personally...
DO NOT FORGIVE.
DO NOT FORGET.
EXPECT ME. ZERO HP in HAND now.
Well well well. If you're seriously concerned about the possible blacklisting of creepy dimwits at the level of block producers it's probably because the headlight for decentralization on hive isn't blinking very bright to begin with
What do you mean by blacklist?
The exact same thing that was done to Justin Sun and the accounts that made it through to hive. Start supporting a hard fork that would remove the accounts from the reward pool and zero them forever.
@frot was threatened with stalking by azircon, Curangel upvoted azircon when i almost had his posts zeroed... If we let them keep their shares, we are encouraging cyber stalking.
These are not only sycophants eager to impress their peers status quo but also willing to commit to psychopathic things like stalking to achieve their goals, as well as threats. This is textbook sociopathic behavior that has already escalated to stalking @frot while he walks his dog.
That is a fork, not blacklisting. All of those accounts are actually able to post here, they are not censored at all.
Yeah a fork to 0. Which would be enough, if they were not criminals who are threatening people on this platform.
Wow - you really expect witnesses to destroy the integrity of the entire Hive blockchain because you don't like downvotes?
Oddly that was not a problem until i realized a few bad actors doing the majority of downvoting were actually criminals who were engaged in online cyber stalking.
repeated contacting someone, with downvotes, would be able to be brought into context, so the downvote may have been used as a utility in the crime if you want to get smart...
If it is criminal activity, report them. Forking the chain does nothing.
Actually forking the chain sets a big precedent that would increase the outside perspective of the North Korea of Blockchains.
You do realize that you can fork the chain if you want, right? It isn't hard. You can also create an interface that shows only downvoted content or censors the people you don't want to have there. You can create your own second-layer token to incentivize usage of it for those you want there too. and control it centrally as you wish, like all the other tokens have. You can also go to other blockchains that are out there, like Blurt - sure, there might not be much activity there, but you can be the ones to make it active.
There are many more options too but,
What you are suggesting is ridiculous.
This is a social blockchain, there is a social dynamic to all operations.
I do not believe the double edge sword of exclusivity will do use any good here.
You can read my post about that;
https://peakd.com/hive-122315/@phusionphil/the-double-edge-sword-of-exclusivity
Does azircon's stake represent an existential threat to Hive? Does a threat of cyber-stalking (or is it real stalking) somehow relate to azircon's stake?
To your offer, the answer is obviously no. You won't find any credible witness who will accept that offer. This post is a strange place to make it, too.
We will see strange in the coming downvote wars. I am just happy I sold while i was up 3000% so i don't have to watch a project crash and burn again with flaring egos in the blockchain space.
I don't think the solution to downvoting legit content is more downvoting or outright censorship. Blacklists are much worse than downvoting.
I think that @ura-soul's approach is the correct one and will be voting for witnesses that support my values above.
Yeah I have done that as well but the problem has persisted for months after I changed that.
I'll show you a better way to spend less than Half that for some good results.
... seriously.
May as well trust you over anyone else here, at least you are not in bondage with a blockchain...
Yea.. I'm into Yoga and Cannabis. The Blockchain just keeps the Keys safe from Weirdos with Boundry issues.
@ura-soul I guess @pfunk is deciding what comments are monetized on your post.
Yeah I don't think Hive should pay 0.001 of anything to someone trying to bribe a witness into blockchain treason.
So the distribution of wealth is a role you are active in?
if someone is actively engaged in the distribution of wealth, that would make a case for hive being a security.
I don't agree with this type of thing, there is no need to blacklist people.
Well this same group of top 30 witnesses already destroyed the shares of @steemchiller so what's different now?
There was people who were affiliated with Justin Sun zeroed, so what's different now?
A reason why I vote for you as witness. Amongst others. Thanks for being you.
and personal bullying just because someone with a lot of stake doesn't like someone.
Personally, I'm just sitting back and watching for me most part. I used to.. just downvote a lot of 'truth' and 'conspiracy' stuff but now I just don't bother.
Because in the end.. It's up to the individual to actually have a brain and make up their own mind.. I'm of the firm belief that a lot of people will just be moronic nutcases in my eyes but hey. that's their choice and their life.
I'd probably be able to counter a lot of the conspiracy stuff like debate wise.. If I felt it was worth my time, but I don't so meh.
I will say that if people want to downvote because they disagree with something then that's fine. Just like if people want to self vote.. that's fine.
Basically.. what I'm saying is. if the hive software allows it then it's ok. (except plagiarism and you know theft and all that) With that in mind zeroing post that are CLEAR Abuse, spam, plagiarism or reward pool farming. it's K
The distribution of tokens is still... Very bad. These massive pools of HP used for political reasons or otherwise is.. It sends a message, it has reputational consequences, it effects the way people feel and perceive hive. So the people in control of those account need to think very carefully about how and when they downvote. Ofcourse.. they are also free to do as they please because that is HIVE.. you do what you like. the software allows it, it doesn't care what you downvote.
It's just the people who care. if they care. Some do, some don't, some just ignore it.
I donno.. It's messy imo.
My personal view on downvotes is it should only be used to null stolen content, plagiarism, spam/reward farming.
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I have found over decades of looking into denied topics (that lazy thinkers try to write off as 'conspiracy theory') that when the details really emerge and logic is applied, there are a very large number of topics which are clearly provable through the weight of the evidence to be legitimate and deeply concerning issues that are being completely denied by corrupt establishments and vested interests. The idea that the world's richest people and governments are 'perfect angels' is absurd and history shows us over and over again that these people tend to be involved with extreme evil that is of a level that most people's mental filters aren't calibrated to assess and accept. Cognitive dissonance is king for many people at present.
That being said, there are many claims of wrongdoing that are nonsense - so it is relatively easy to disprove them.
Most economic oriented projects reflect the core imbalance that we have inherited on this planet and stake will tend to be used to try to manipulate public perception. Key for humanity is to understand this and to think/act wisely in response.
That is a very healthy way of dealing with differences in opinion. I really like your attitude. It is tough to reach the hand to somebody (or let them keep doing what their doing), when you think that person is believing in nonsense. We would live in a way better world if all of us would behave like that and the need for conspiracies and debunks would probably evaporate into nothingness.
Do you consider questioning the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine to be conspiracy or practicing informed consent?
It's practicing informed consent, I've personally seen enough data to come to the conclusion that the vaccine is effective enough to warrant getting.
I have done a lot of drugs in my life that are hard on my heart, I can't risk the heart inflammation that comes with the Pfizer or Moderna shot.
When I post about myocarditis is when I have been flagged, even though u have the Japanese Health Minister as a source for that claim.
Yeah, The NHS also forgot to inform my dad of that as well, he has a heart condition, Thank fully he had no side effects from the vaccine and getting covid is far worse for him than the side effects of the vaccine.
EDIT: iirc actually he had the astra-zenica one.
He got covid and was bedridden for a week, this was also back when we didn't know or rather the news never told use about how covid can inflame the heart as well.
Generally the distribution of information from governments has been pretty terrible and inconsistent throughout the pandemic.
I appreciate that some people will for some reason think I am lying here, but I genuinely know many more people who have been paralised or died from the shots than have even been mildly ill with COVID19. Even I am surprised because I don't go looking for these people - so if it's true for me then I don't see how it's not true for a lot of other people. Granted, I stay away from large groups of people anyway - so the people I know mostly do too.. but still. I know of about 5 people who have been sick with COVID19 and I know of nearly 10 personal friends of friends or relatives who were seriously ill or died from the shots (as in immediately or within hours).
The gov stats (as far as can be ascertained, considering the inaccuracy of the data collection) confirm this in a few likely ways, which my readers will know - but if you only go as far as believing what you are told in the mainstream, then you will think I am making this up.
I did my own open vaers search, even the censored results I got, that are 10% estimated of the real numbers, were enough to stop the use of any other vaccine in history.
25 deaths was the highest deaths allowed from any vaccine in history to my knowledge from the H1N1 vaccine in 2014-2015.
The estimated under-reporting of VAERS that comes from the only study ever publicly published that I am aware of is actually 100 times, so only 1% are reported. The actual figure is unclear, but may be somewhere between 1% and 3%. Other vaccines have likely killed more than 25 people, but this is obscured in every way possible by the vested interests. The H1N1 vaccine is logged to have killed around 25 iirc, yes - it was pulled by the same German expert that is currently working with the German legal firm that has been interviewing hundreds of experts during COVID19 and has concluded that there is a massive criminal agenda at play among the various entities developing/marketing the COVID19 shots:
I watch all 8 hours or so of ever session of Coronavirus Ausschus with Reiner Fuellmich, the patent trail that Dr David E Martin has will be the real conclusive evidence at the end of the day. It's good they have the testimony of government workers, but the often trail is the evidence that is black and white that will prove the criminal racketeering of a pancoronavirus vaccine.
Yes, absolutely - I have a friend who personally knows Dr Martin and vouches for his sincerity.
I would like to send a card that says thank you just a simple commemoration for his effort, if you could pass that along I'm sure he's heard it a million times, or if there is ever an appreciation live event please do invite me because I would like to show gratitude to this individual who speaks to an objective truth.
A family friend, hasn't been able to walk since the age of 10 or 13, having constant surgeries for any hope of using his legs again. This was a reaction, unique to him (only 3 to 5 other kids had a reaction that bad) it was a normal vaccine that many of us have, even my self.
After this story has been explained to me 100s of times, the family has questions that 5 doctors declined to answer. To this day the kid doesnt know what he cant walk. It seriously fucks me up inside when I think about him trying to live a normal life, and with no answers from 5 doctors all of whom will NOT for any reason even consider the vaccine. 1 of the 5 doctors told them they will be honest, they will loose their license to practice if they so much as question the efficacy of ANY vaccine NOT JUST THE COVID vaccine.
This is a systemic problem and the public should be cautiously critical to the point of not hampering the science.
My personal reason for heart conditions is playing into this phenomenon that can only be explained by bureaucratic red tape and greed. I actually think vaccines are very interesting like the polio vaccine, yet at the same time want to make sure there is accountability for those who are making these injections.
Just like a street drug dealer is charged with man slaughter for his drugs giving a heart attack, I feel a doctor who administered the vaccine in his clinic should be accountable for that manslaughter if someone has a heart attack. At the end of the day, its your doctors responsibility to inform you, not the media.
@ura-soul I'm with you Boo-boo
Well, you had my vote before and I am glad you are now getting even more support! Good luck with your witness project. I hope that all sides are able to make a step closer to each other, instead of creating an even deeper schism.
Thanks, yes, teamwork and mutual understanding is required here!
HIVE!D
Feeding the UNHOUSED - FRANK BACON reaction POST | CHain JITTER - ForceD Freedom NEWS FEEDS
Awesome, keep up the good work.
Great post and I guess you’ve proved that you either put up or shut up. Bravo for your actions. I’ve been watching what’s going on and adding my 2 pence in when I feel it necessary. As far as I know and this is how it’s always been sold is that Hive/Steem are/where immutable and sensorship free. Downvotes were solely for those gaming the system, plagiarism and copyright. Since Covid it’s been open warfare on those speaking out against “the science” but without any active debate, just downvoting. I’ll certainly take a look at my own witness votes with your post in mind. I have nothing against those who choose to be against free speech but I can’t stand by and vote for them as a witness while they are acting the way they are. So far I’ve only seen one of these major stakeholders giving any sensible justification for his actions. As for the rest I think their attitudes are way out of line. I hope this is a wake up call for them but I suspect it will only provoke their egos.
Thanks and thanks! You have described the ethos that was present on Steem and for most people seems to still be on Hive - however, various 'inner circle' people decided that Hive has changed and that the 'new normal' involves unrelenting downvotes for whatever you feel like. Obviously this was not widely discussed or agreed upon. In fact, this is exactly the stance that @guiltyparties took before pointing me to the Hive whitepaper which actually has a section in which actually ommits the downvoting part of the consensus forming of rewards payouts (in a key section of the document). GP stated that he would have an urgent meeting with me to discuss the downvoting situation several weeks ago, but has been silent since then.
I would also like to point out that SILENCE is exactly the response from most of these characters, including @acidyo after I left a lengthy rebuttal to him recently. But hey, when you are king of the castle, you can do what the fuck you like right? I'm sure that never leads to any problems.. The plebs are just peasants. lol
How have I been silent throughout this drama? I've been busy inviting new users to Hive this week so excuse me if I don't have time to reply to your walls about people complaining that they're getting less rewards for providing no value to Hive.
You have been the only one to actually engage and reply, which despite your propensity to resort to name calling and ad hominem attacks - is a step above pretty much everyone else.
I was referring to this comment when I tagged you here. I am getting tired of people publicly posturing that they are engaging while in truth they aren't - isn't that the exact behaviour that people get downvoted for by the guardians of the blockchain?
Well look at my wallet transactions, obviously I'm not done onboarding.
Yes I do downvote people who are just leeching rewards for content no one consumes, shocking I know. Enjoy centralizing witness votes.
I have no idea why you think this post is about centralising anything - the majority of witnesses that will be voted for here are lower rank ones who simply share the intent of decentralisation. Claiming that voting for people who support decentralisation is actually centralisation is completely disingenuous and misleading in the extreme. In reality, Blocktrades has massively more stake than I am able to direct here and he votes for you.. So I presume from your totally rational and well thought out comment above that you will be petitioning him to remove his vote from you in order to avoid centralising the witness votes? Awesome!
Many witness votes being concentrated in the decision making of a few = centralizing. Is it too hard to just tell people what to vote instead of making their decision for them? Didn't you guys learn anything from that korean proxy?
Blocktrades voting on witnesses is the same thing you are describing at an order of magnitude higher. So anything you are saying here applies to you to a larger scale.
He's one person making his own decisions, which everyone should. It's a stakebased platform, get more stake and make bigger decisions. You're literally taking one weakness of the platform = not having KYC thus no 1 vote 1 user and trying to also concentrate their witness votes now into 1 user doing the decision for everyone trusting them with their witness vote. What your intentions to do with it are doesn't matter, you can change your ideals in 1 block and not everyone will be aware or decide to step out of it in time. Which went really, really bad for a lot of passive stakeholders when the biggest korean proxy tried to use it as leverage to get something both from the community and justin sun. I'm sure you were there and saw it happen so not sure why you'd attempt to do this again. Not that I read the full post but that's what it seems.
Either way, go away. I'm busy.
The proxy systems allows people to make their own decisions, including trusting that other people might have more time/focus available to research the subject than they do. They can easily come and remove the proxy at any moment if it is necessary. People proxying their votes is basically no different to an individual stakeholder voting - it's just that SOME of the thought process is distributed over more brains than just the single brain that would be involved without a proxy.
No, not at all. Not having KYC and not having 1 vote 1 user is essentially why we have DPOS stake weighted voting. This is the system we have, I am not really commenting on it per se - just using it in the same way everyone else is.
My ideals haven't changed in this regard since I was about 5 years old and that is clear to people who follow me and part of why they trust me. In any case, even if I suddenly give you a run for your money and try to be the downvote dominator king, it will be obvious and probably not take long before most people remove any proxy they give. By saying this is a problem you are basically saying that the stakeholders are lazy fools. If this were the case then they would be just as problematic whether they used a proxy or not.
Yes, stake can be misused, that's part of the point here all around. When stake is centralised into large accounts that dictate to the rest of the blockchain via downvote crusades, the community only has limited options to respond. Combining forces is the main one and proxies do that. If you want to go to the cause of the problem here, it is the downvoting patterns, not the community that wants to defend itself and create change. You seem to be totally unaware of how the logic you are using here is contradictory and missing the point over and over again.
Why aren't you building a curation account instead? Why witness votes?
Either way as I said I didn't read the post, just my thoughts on this new movement.
I'm pretty sure most people know I'm not a "downvote dominator king" by now, if downvote receivers weren't behaving like a bunch of dickheads I'd most likely counter downvotes I feel are too big and happening over a longer period of time, as I have been before and am doing now. But hey, it helps your narrative and using my vulgarity against me, so go ahead and best of luck. I'll be busy bringing some actual value to Hive which will hopefully generate content people actually read and may take the time to dispute if it's complete lunacy.
I've created accounts for over 500 people this week and still taken a lot of time from that to deal with entitled dickheads discussing downvotes. What you call a problem is you want people to get rewarded without repercussions from other people's stake no matter the content, effort or value you bring to Hive and that no one should be able to have a say against it because that equal's "censorship".
What you also call a problem really isn't, I spent 2 votes this week countering overdownvotes and it didn't cost me much. I was happy to do it and the person wasn't a complaining piece of shit yelling at the top of his lungs that he was being "censored", nor did he instantly turn his back on Hive and say he's going to purposely shit on it and tell everyone they shouldn't join Hive because him and a few others weren't getting what they wanted.
You really don't need to try to make it any more complicated than that, if you aren't a dickhead posting content people don't find value in or think it shouldn't be valued that much, you're most likely going to have others step in and help you against big downvotes.
As was pointed out by Dan at 3speak in our recent community chat, it isn't really possible for the community to rally to counter downvotes as long as the downvotes aren't easily visible. That is part of why I am going to make that possible soon and he has stated he has funds set aside just to counter the downvotes.
As far as people shitting on Hive goes - I only know of a small number and they aren't really on Hive any more.
Well I read it with my own eyes, probably someone you're defending while grouping me in with people who overdownvote in your post.
It doesn't sound like rocketscience to build a tool that notifies people when big downvotes occur late while filtering out hivewatchers or anti-abuse accounts like that so many can go and decide for themselves if they want to collectively counter said downvote and share the loss of ROI from that vote with each other until it's back to a realistic/fair reward.
Blocktrades having 7 million HP is centralized and that stake being used to vote on witnesses is King Maker level of Centralizaton almost.
2000 people who total have 7 million HP is decentralized and direct Democracy when they all choose to vote.
I dont know how hundreds or thousands of people putting ura soul on proxy is centralizing, it's the definition of Democracy, People voting on something isnt a bad thing.
All I'm saying is there's another layer of trust needed to entrust others with your witness votes, it's not even the same as delegating HP to a curation account. It's about the security of the blockchain. If these guys are this loud about disagreement of rewards, how easy aren't they going to be bought off to vote in a bad actor's favor? There's someone in this thread literally offering 10k USD to blacklist an account from its stake and before you bring up steemit, azircon has purchased his stake, not promised for years it won't be used in governance voting or to invest it in the future of Hive.
Blocktrades has it in his best interest to keep the chain secure because he has the most skin in the game. You guys want someone with close to no skin in the game to have a major witness vote. It's close to irrelenvat right now at times of "peace", but if another Justin Sun were to appear who happens to only need a few more million Hive witness votes after months of powering up anon accounts before making his move, then everyone will be in jeopardy because 1 or 2 people with close to no skin in the game are most likely to sell out and endanger everyone's stake.
That's why we need more inflation on the chain so Hive is spread out to more people. Hive being around 430 million total right now inwould like to see it be over 1 billion in a few years. The more tokens out there the harder it will be to buy enough to control the chain is how I view it.
@edicted has written about needing more inflation I think months ago.
A Justin Sun will be a problem unless we to go POS in the future. That's why Ethereum will be the king when the switch. To take try and take over POS you will get punished and lose your stake, their security mechanism will be world class and almost impossible to take over.
I don't understand how a difference in amount of coins would change literally anything?
There's over 100m unstaked as far as I know, BT has over half of all staked Hive voting for him, more inflation wouldn't change anything as far as I know. What would is getting people to not hold their coins on exchanges and maybe also enable liquid Hive voting for the traders, but maybe to a lower effect than staked ones as they're supposed to have the risk of having their tokens locked if the put the blockchain in danger. A lot of different scenarios here to take into account but it's way past midnight for me to think clearly and deep about all possibilities and what vectors of attack these changes would open.
Very true. Exchanges ate a huge problem as well
He's literally doing what logiczombie did a few weeks ago, it took logiczombie 2 weeks to turn around and become a bad actor using frankbacon's delegation to downvote random legit newcomers.
All in the name of "freedom of speech" and that they'll use it to vote lower witness ranks. It's hard not to see this as anything other than what the korean proxy was attempting to do during the hostile takeover, use it as a bargaining chip to get the best of both worlds.
If ura soul starts a curation trail and then weeks later uses it to downvote I will be against that also
Point is the damage done there is way less than what steem witnesses did to 20m steem that belonged to people.
I am doing what Hive is designed to facilitate and only doing it because I was given a large proxy without asking for it. Since I have been given the power to use wisely, I need to put time into researching and actually using it wisely. As long as I am going to be doing that, I may as well maximise the effort by inviting others to proxy to me.
Everyone who holds HP has skin in the game, but might not have enough time or generate enough value from their smaller stake to do the research and to maintain an up to date witness list. As long as the person doing the proxy voting is on top of the situation, it should actually result in a more secure chain, rather than a less secure chain. How many people still have witness votes set for totally inappropriate characters because they aren't up to date?
If you see me doing malicious or dangerous things with the stake then by all means raise hell. The fact is that you won't find anything more than the occasional restrained downvote from my account over 5 years. No scams, no genuine abuse.. Just a full user guide for Hive, numerous posts helping people, sharing info and generally trying to help shape Hive into a form that can both gain mass acceptance and also solve human problems at the same time.
Arguments against humans organising for shared self interest and common goals needs to be solid, but I don't see any solid arguments here - just clutching at straws.
New employees
Also, go ahead and fuck yourself for this. It doesn't take a long time to figure out what I do for this chain and the time I spend on anyone and everyone to enjoy their Hive experience and receive fair rewards. Just because you happened to be one of the cunts I disagreed of countering big downvotes on doesn't mean I treat other people the same way. 99.999% of them aren't told what I tell you and kennydipshit, lucylin and some other entitled overly loud assholes who want to keep earning on Hive at any cost. In the end it's all about that for you guys I suspect, most people know the effort I put in and have put in for Hive, it's inflation distribution and decentralization. If you can't take me calling you a cunt then feel free to call me things as well but if you're going to make it sound like I treat people the way I treat assholes, then I'm going to make it clear that that's not true and I'm sure I have plenty of people who'd back me up on that. Unfortunately most don't read your content.
You have come here numerous times and accused me of all kinds of fraud, lying and abusive behaviour - dropped acidic verbal attacks and claimed to know all about me without ever attempting to engage in anything approaching a friendly manner or even reading my posts (or actually knowing anything about me). This is not a healthy or even 'normal' way to relate to people, so I'm sure you can appreciate why I might be a bit annoyed by the situation. I only know a limited amount of information about you and I aim to not judge anyone, but I'm sure you can appreciate how what little I do know of you is pretty caustic.
This isn't 'all about the money', but it seems to make no difference how many times this is said as the alternative would shatter your narrative.
I don't see any value in judging people and throwing abusive names around - it serves no purpose other than to ineffectively attempt to process emotions within the one doing it. Like others here, I am more concerned by the effect that 'spicy' and abusive language has in the minds of onlookers than I am actually bothered by it personally. Free speech includes the right to throw around pointless abuse, but it doesn't negate having to deal with the effects caused by those actions.
The idea that you are loved for 'helping everyone receive fair rewards' is a bit big headed - surely you can see that right? Proof of brain is a consensus mechanism meant to reflect the combined views of potentially large groups of people. Regardless of your intentions or how positively you view yourself, please never forget that national dictators will tend to also tell everyone they are loved for looking after everyone.
I could not personally say what you are saying here without feeling I sound like a politician who is trying to sell others on him having them do as he says. I'm not trying to annoy you here, I'm just genuinely baffled how we can have such wildly different senses of self perception.
There really isn't any need for conflict and attempts to inflame here. I will just continue to operate in mine and others best interests, as I understand them, within the law of the code of Hive and continue to suggest changes that people can voluntarily go along with or not. You say you are doing the same in your own way - the outcome is what consensus decides.
I will only add that it would be nice if this could be done in a peaceful and respectful way.
So you say you know very little about me yet you say my self perception is wild? I'm not one to go around often saying what I do for Hive, it's quite obvious for people who are involved so it doesn't need mentioning. I felt the need for you to know in this situation since your view of me is obviously flawed because you see me as a mass downvoter and "censor" which you've many times stated but never mentioned how limited and seldom my downvotes appear and my focus mostly being on inactive "influencers" who are more fake than the content they produce.
I'm okay with your other comment and I doubt this will become anything big since your community is rather small compared to the stake being used towards it and I doubt it'll grow as there hasn't been much sign of it in the last few years so feel free to do what you want. I've made it clear by now the dangers of proxy'ing witness votes to people en masse but I don't think you'll get to the levels of the korean stakeholders.
Anyway, I tried to be peaceful in this comment even if you undermined my activity on Hive based on barely knowing anything about me before all this disagreement of reward era occurred I assume.
Sorry but I'm pretty sure I've read your posts early on and wasn't instantly aggressive, especially the one about the word censorship and how it may exist on Hive. If it got aggressive over time then it's probably cause of things you've said. Not my fault most of the content you guys produce gets so little engagement and possibly consumption that the thing that pops in my head is that the possibility of sockpuppeting to pretend to be spreading that stake around but in the end it going to the same few people exists and is highly likely. Social activity is something we focus on with our curation after years of bloggers just dumping content no one reads and getting autovotes/"friend" votes and not giving a shit about anything else and taking it for granted. It's also not something you can prove, obviously, that's probably what makes it something easy to accuse you of so I'm not really defending it being a great retort just in general disagreeing with your ways and adding vulgarity on top of it. I'm passionate about Hive, not to a point where I'd go against reason but if there's suspicion that people are acting against it for ulterior motives then it does trigger me quite a bit because I've seen most reactions to downvotes over the years and when it's not complete morons acting out it's not as easy to deal with it but in the end it's been proven that it's mostly about the rewards and not the things they suddenly come up with when the downvotes start happening.
Wow this comment has moved on. Nonetheless, this is the most interaction I’ve ever had from a post/comment but I get the feeling I wasn’t needed for it to happen 🤣
End of the day downvotes CAN be used for whatever someone wants them to be used for, but every action has a reaction, and that goes for everyone involved. I understand where acidyo is coming from and for me he’s by far not the main protagonist in this, he’s just the only one who’s been big enough to argue his point with some sensible reasoning and for that seems to be taking flak that is more deserving for others. On the other hand, to say that anyone’s content is worthless and brings no value is personal opinion and certainly not a good enough reason to downvote someone to nothing, and besides, if that were true and it was worthless content it wouldn’t need to be downvoted because it would get no upvotes in the first place. By downvoting for that reason and particularly to that extent, those who are doing it are proving the point that hive is not decentralised.
While I don't like to proxy out my votes to anyone, I took the opportunity to review my witnesses in light of the recent developments, and align them with my own views (supporting free speech, of course). I think the last time I looked at them was when we were forking away from Steem. Imagine my surprise when I saw that my votes were already following your recommendations, to a great extent. So I thought, I'd also vote for @ura-soul as witness, but guess what: you already had a blue check mark next to your name, too.
So now, what's next? I'm thinking of removing my delegations from the two curation services that only use it to nuke posts to zero because they don't like their content.
!gif standing applause
Via Tenor
Hehe, you have impeccable taste! ;)
It would be a good idea not to delegate to groups who are being so reckless, yes. You can always delegate to @freezepeach to push things the other way if you like.
Well, as you can probably guess, not too long ago, before all this crap came to the surface, it didn't seem like a bad idea at all. But we all do whatever we can, and that includes voting with our feet, our wallets, or in this case or delegations. So @freezepeach it is. Let's see... So far I quite like what they've reblogged.
Excellent, I will let @r0nd0n, Prince of the Peach, know. :)
Cool
I can't believe what @logiczombie has revealed about the witnesses.
I support this. If you are new to hive and don't understand, please allow me to share.
LogIcaL
ZombieS
Solid move and an effective way to rally the community. This is how it should have been handled from the beginning. I hope the others are watching.
{Edit}
Thanks for the reminder and suggestions. It prompted me to review my votes and switch some around. I had only chosen 9, now I'm supporting 16. I'd really like to see the witness list shuffling consistently, because we can't allow these important ambassadors to become complacent.
Yes, variation would help a lot - but there isn't enough clear benefit for users to motivate them to do that. Maybe a 'Hive O'Clock News' show that tracks the politics of witnesses on the chain would help inspire people. lol
That's actually a great idea. Politics here is just as important as irl. I'd like to see more campaigning by the lower ranks to make the top 20 step up, communicate better and more often, while reminding the userbase of their responsibility. Since voting is always ongoing, so should the campaigns.
Fundamentally, 'representative democracy' has always been a terrible and flawed idea.. lol. But as long as it exists, it requires vigilance and engagement, yes.
Guess who reached out to jamesc privately to get him to change his witness votes, at which point he proxied ura-soul? Guess who also reached out to 100s of thousands of stake scattered across more than a dozen people, to do the same?
But I'm sure I'm just being paranoid by assuming your comment was directed at me (and probably others as well)
😜
You're not paranoid. I was referring more to the approach than the specific act though. There are still other options available as well.
I understand - and I just wanted to make sure it was very clear that you can take both (or many more) approaches, and I have been.
I have been speaking privately to witnesses, stakeholders, creators, and people who aren't on Hive yet (including the 20 or so I was in the middle of onboarding when this started) the whole time, coming up with solutions and alternatives - even though I don't really see a point.
And I've been out helping to shine more light on the problem(s), the conversation, and the actions of the folks in power (which they are generally more than happy to put on display for us)
Hive is lost. Steem was lost. From launch.
Basing governance & voting power on $take means it's never going to be decentralized (truly), and that there will always be a large power disparity (which will always favor those with the most power in Babylon to buy stake with.) That inherent flaw in the basic logic of this chain means that it can never live up to the hype/mythology of itself - without a fresh start.
I've wanted to leave Hive/Steem (both to create that better alternative and to get off the computer) for years - and this was the final straw that allowed me to fully release my attachment to this place...
And then I was bombarded by people asking me to stay, asking me to help fight/change things, and thankfully, actually showing a lot of interest in the alternative I've been designing - which is a first :-)
So, I'm pushing forward, and I guess I'm helping lead the rally to decentralize Hive more and get some abusers out of governance roles - but I see it all as simply moving furniture on the Titanic.
I'm just hoping as this becomes more and more clear, that the momentum for a real alternative keeps picking up - and instead of bringing 2 new whales into Hive (they wanted to try to win the stake-battle, but we are way too far behind to ever catch up), we're building out a dev budget to make this thing real.
Creating your own is another valid act, which I mentioned in the comment section for one of your posts. I'd consider how you present it would be your approach, or at lesst at the level I meant(the communication). I'm very interested in such a project.
I agree that 'as is' Hive cannot be decentralized. That being the case, forks/updates are possible to change this. The benefit of this approach is better understanding for the userbase by an ongoing campaign and if successful, starting off with a ready-made userbase.
Growth of a new platform will be very slow and require many to make a new home, which the majority are resistant to, unfortunately. That being said, a new platform further decentralizes the social sphere even more.
I wish you luck and hope to be kept in the loop. Will you be sharing your progress here or elsewhere. Note: I don't/won't use neither discord nor telegram...
I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. Amen
Exactly, like ehm, literally all witnesses.
Ahahahahaha
I have my proxy as @informationwar and if you want to take a look at that feel free. I dont know all the people that are voted on it but I picked the best 30 I could at the time.
Personally I havent been downvoted that I can remember recently, but that's likely because I put a limit on how much my post can earn. I have been doing that as a proactive measure to avoid being downvoted because I likely will, as well as sometimes my posts are super short.
In general, I have noticed that the "old way of doing things" on Hive seems to be on the way out. People are wise to what Justin Sun did when he took over Steem. Some Hive people have massive amounts of Hive and we still have the same issues carried over from Steem. Some Steem issues went away and others like having the same people on charge who sank Steem remain a problem.
From what I see, the same top witnesses who allowed people to go on rampant downvoting and constantly cussing people out on Steem are starting to get the boot. I would really like if people stopped swearing at eachother when commenting back and forth. Everytime I see a top witness doing that it makes me cringe, because the chain looks like it's being ran by teenagers who want to resort to name calling and fighting on the playground. Again, as long as those people stop that, while also turning their downvoting efforts to focus on spam bots, plagiarism, illegal content then I am ok with them. Currently those things should be downvoted in my opinion.
This chain is 5.5 years old now. I think it's time to really evaluate who we vote for and who is in charge of it. Downvoting has never really been critically attacked for the censorship that it is, the definition of Censorship isnt "deleted", its Suppression. Many people continue to comment Hive is censorship free, censorship is built into the protocol as downvoting.
What happens when a post is downvoted? It is suppressed. What's the definition in all dictionaries for hundreds of years for Censorship? Suppression. So I'm going to continue to point this out over and over and over again.
Downvoting needs a huge rework.
In regards to plagiarism, graphic content not tagged as nsfw, or illegal content, downvoting is ok for that stuff. But theres better ways of dealing with these things like seeing content you dont like, Blacklists that each user already has access to utilize or muting someone so you dont see their content. There are global blacklists too.
Reducing rewards late after a post has had its time to shine (which often is subjective if it even deserved it to begin with and stakeholders should be able to use their downvotes in that regard as well) shouldn't be seen as surpression. Have you guys never used any other platforms with downvotes such as Reddit? Do people go around yelling censorship and surpression there when quality content gets missed or just isn't lucky enough to get to trending? They don't. It's even more important to use your downvotes here as there's also stake on the line that comes from all holders. Not just that but we also have the transparency to see who the downvoters are and judge their behavior and counter them if they're overdone or personal/malicious. If you get enough people to want to defend you depends on you. I'm sure the downvote system can be more finetuned but saying it's censorship and surpression isn't really the full truth. It's kind of like saying all upvotes are supressing any niche that doesn't get any rewards, like original porn content for instance. Damn all stakeholders who haven't incentivized it with enough rewards are the reason there is none on Hive! Surpression!!
Another great post - worthy of a repost and various mentions - this is an action plan and that's what people need! It is important we all give this our best shot!
I recommend editing your previous post and including a link to this one as a possible action plan to sort out this downvoting/free-speech/POBvPOS dilemma.
And as always, happy blogging!
Boring.
Thanks for letting us know and increasing the excitement.
Us?
How many of you are inside there?
I was referring to the many people looking at this page via the internet.
Would these millions (and millions!) of The Soul's fans observing The Soul in action now be a little confused as to how The Soul is so heavily censored yet shining so bright, all at the same time?
To be clear, there have been times when a few of my posts were number one one 3speak's view count, number one on the Posh Twitter stats and number one on PeakD's view count. The outer world pays attention to the topics I cover in large numbers. The logic you are using that, in your mind, 'not enough' people look at my content might just have something to do with it being regularly downvoted.
An irony of the logic that says that my posts don't get 'enough' comments for... the subjective preference of some people, is that:
a) This and similar posts have 5-10 times the number of comments (at least) of all other posts on Hive at present.
b) There is no direct connection between the stake used to upvote posts and the number of comments being left anyway. Stakeholders have the capacity to point rewards and drive exposure to posts via trending - by design. Even if that results in posts in trending that aren't as engaged as others (of which there are often many that don't get downvoted), it's still the stakeholder's choice to upvote them and put them there.
In terms of 'censorship', as I pointed out in a previous post on the topic and as others have pointed out already in the comments under this post - the actual definition of censorship is deliberate suppression of information. This does not need to include total blockage of access to the information and can (and does) take the form of reach restriction on social channels (among other forms of control). Anyone who uses silicon valley social networks for anything of real value to humans has, at this point, experienced reach restriction as a result (whether they know it or not). The very long list of highly cited and respected doctors and scientists that have been blacklisted by silicon valley is a testament to that. Are they completely impossible to access online? Some may be, but generally they aren't. None the less, the censorship of their content dramatically limits the number of people that can hear them and that can therefore also support their work.
The idea that anyone questioning downvoting is just a greedy rewards pool rapist is extremely hypocritical, since the entire purpose of the rewards pool is to essentially empower content creators to make more, according to the subjective preference of the community. Obviously, content creators are going to want to access as much support as they can - ideally without being pushy or going against the wishes of the audience. Contrary to the assumptions of a minority of people here, I personally don't want to take rewards from a pool where people don't want me to have it and don't want my content.. I would just go somewhere else.
However, I have put years of my time into helping to build Steem and Hive and I still hold the vision that it can be a beacon of free thought, free speech, open mindedness, decentralisation and generally a human support service. So, I am here looking to build audiences. Clearly, since I regularly receive a lot of voluntary upvotes, there are plenty of people who value what I do - so I am still here. If the upvotes are removed and no-one comments, then there would be no point in me being here, but that is not the case.
Well yeah, if I sit here and have a conversation with you and several others who want to speak to me, of course the amount of comments will increase.
Try not to take all the credit. I'm a human, not just some number that only exists to make you look good or feel important.
There's no real need to overly explain yourself either. This wasn't a job interview.
He does that, if you don't always read and reply he'll say you've gone "silent" to defend his narrative.
I wasn't even being serious. That was a Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson reference that somehow, miraculously, turned into a speech about something requiring a thorough examination and essay style response. The man complimented my ability to bring excitement, so I thought that was an invitation to continue messing around. Next thing you know, he's saying all these things to me and I'm not even sure why.
So why did you send his comment to the bottom? Seems suppressive. I hoped you would stick to your guns and wouldn't downvote it but this proves an even bigger point.
If you are talking about the 'boring' comment, I have already replied to your previous comment on the same topic. I didn't send his comment anywhere and no reach was lost - despite the comment clearly adding nothing of value except to snarkey people wanting to snark.
Your downvote, or something else, seems to have censored the comment to the bottom of the comment list despite sorting by rewards.
The 'Boring' comment is at the top of the list of comments when the comments are sorted by Reward level:
Well that brings up an interesting point. I see it at the bottom on PeakD and at the top using hive.blog. It illustrates Hive front end is the mediating layer for censorship, and voting done on the blockchain level doesn't censor.
Both apps render trending comments in the same order. The boring comment is at the top in Hive.blog too.. Not sure where you are going with this.. Maybe you need more sleep?
Not sure why but I see his comment at the bottom now.
I haven't noticed PeakD giving original-poster primacy on comment order before but maybe that's what's happening. Or it's something else, I'll inquire.
Giving a bit more thought to where you're coming from, getting downvoted consistently for COVID related posts, I can see that it does feel like economic censorship, removing the financial incentive to post things on the topic. And that's where I think the divide exists between those agreeing and disagreeing with you here. From my POV Hive's anti-censorship is more about not being able to delete content, less about distribution of pending rewards.
Anti-deletion is where a blockchain shines. Posting rewards is a secondary issue on the topic of censorship. You can still post and reach your followers. And there is the ranking of posts that can allow you to have a greater reach for those sorting posts by value, but compared to outright deletion or hiding of posts (or people's token balances for that matter), I don't give that nearly as much weight.
I am actually getting downvoted to zero on most posts, whether they are COVID related or not. To make matters more spicy, we now have a world expert in data analysis posting to Hive who has totally echoed and vindicated what I have been saying all along about the COVID data - he is freaking out that the mainstream have been lying to everyone. It's terrifying to me that the data is so clear and yet the majority have declared it to be a certain shape without even looking at it - it's like being in zombieclownworld. I almost don't want to share his profile because he'll likely get nuked too and he is probably one of the best credentialed people on Hive. Honestly, as a student of history, they has all the hallmarks of purges in totalitarian societies - except it is happening digitally so it's 'not real' and I should 'get over it'.
Again, please listen to the 3speak chat where I address this topic, it's easier than me typing the same things out hundreds of times.
After asking around, this was the culprit of the comment sorting. I turned the default option off. I think it reinforces the point that front ends can be capable of manipulating content visibility, but the blockchain's censorship resistance remains strong because running a front-end for the network is permissionless.
I see, ok. Yes, UIs can do whatever they want with the posts and can completely ignore the reward pool if they choose to. This is what 3Speak does and what they are advocating for all Hive sites to do. This, though, pretty much removes one of the main points of the reward pool - Proof of Brain. If posts don't gain traction and aren't curated by the POB process, then what is the rewards process for? At that point it will very much just become a system for people to buy stake and then upvote each other - even more than before - since the actual content itself is essentially bypassed in the process of issuing rewards.
Your assessment here is not taking the nuances into consideration. If you didn't already, you can listen to the (heavily downvoted to zero) discussion I had with the 3Speak team on this, here: https://peakd.com/hive-181335/@ura-soul/jgwxmjtg
You're being GASLIT and you just let this loser take the top part of your comment real estate with his "LOW EFFORT CONTENT"
His account ought to be Downvoted to Oblivion like all of it's "fiends" suggest. [sarcasm]
The blanket of useful idiots is filled with holes... IMHO.
I didn't 'let' anything happen here, I have no control over who upvotes the comments and pushes them to the top.
Sorry to goose you then 😎🥓https://shop.qux.tv/product/advanced-pre-release-quxtv/
I appreciate the work youre doing 🙏👍
Highest regards!
50:00 minutes is a good starting point.
Can i rely on you to handle onboarding these FreeSpeechActivists onto THIS Plaform?
Thanks for calling me a loser. I hope that makes you feel like a winner.
🖕😎🥓🖕
Remember that time in the past you pretended to be my friend? I do.
Thanks for showing me your true colors. Had a hunch you weren't being real with me.
How insulting.
If i met you in Real Life... I MIGHT say the word Friend. But I DON'T KNOW YOU!
For all i know you're with 👆THIS TEAM👆 who is "Flaggoting my account to oblivion" as THEY like to say.
So im filing some Paperwork to sue about 6 separate PARTIES, in 4 different countries... Not for any money mind you... JUST TO GET THEIR NAME AND ADDRESS OUT IN THE PUBLIC with Fancy Court orders. And also so that more evidence comes out about how HIVE works so well for many of the top people.
The TEAM of Flaggots have decided im bluffing and have gone ALL IN on the evidence collection so ANY side Distraction like this sets me off...
I'm VERY SURE we've not met...
We have very little interation.
I don't play on the chain to MEET... I work here.
Have a nice day.
I don't play for any teams here, dude. And all you're doing is demonstrating why platform politics are so lame. Last time you spoke to me here, you were acting friendly. Now you're just being a dick. So go ahead and be a dick. But don't expect me to give a shit about anything you say or do. Totally not interested in your ramblings, videos, nor the random picture show that never makes sense and only helps to make you appear mentally unstable.
Mute and move on LADY
Okay Francine.
Why did you censor this man @nonameslefttouse? Seems... hypocritical.
If you are asking me that question then I have already said that I am not opposed to downvoting per se, even for cases of 'disagreement' over rewards. What I am opposed to is downvoting that has the result of burying information that would otherwise have gathered a lot of attention and interest - not only does it repeat the problems of web 2.0, but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.. The difference here is intent. My small downvote on a comment that is obviously massively overvoted by most people's sense of scale will do nothing to limit the reach of the comment and is so small as to barely be noticed anyway. Regularly having all of my efforts on Hive zeroed or virtually zeroed feels slightly insulting enough, but to then have the word boring massively amped feels like adding further insult to injury - it is just not a good faith action... I am more about the social than the money, which makes the claims of people here saying that I am 'only about the money' all the more ridiculous and irritating. But to be honest, I feel that is the goal - simply to irritate.. And so here we are.
The goal was not to irritate but to challenge. And I figured nonames would have some interesting things to say if his comment became controversial and I think I have been proven correct.
It just feels like caustic, biased and hypocritical attempts to bolster egos to me - but, hey, whatever floats your boat.
No man. I was bored. If you look closely you'll see I was only joking around at first but then slowly as things progressed was placed in a position to take things a little more seriously. Sure there's some sarcasm injected here and there but that's just how I am when I'm bored. I enjoy lighthearted banter, as do many others, but some do take it all a little too seriously. Certainly wasn't trying to impress anyone or make myself look good. If I cared about that kind of stuff I probably would have taken a different approach, and maybe put on a tie.
You and Pfunk are talking about the comment positioning. On my screen it was shoved down to the bottom as well. That kind of stuff truly doesn't bother me though. I'm using PeakD as well. So not sure what's happening there. It's not a big deal though. Just know some of my sarcastic quips here and there aren't meant to be taken seriously, at all. I have a Canadian sense of humor.
I'm not even offended by your display of arrogance here, downplaying my efforts, and treating my words/presence as nothing but noise. I actually appreciate the honesty.
Look, I don't know hardly anything about you. Today I have been informed that two people close to a friend of mine (brothers) have died shortly after receiving a COVID shot. I have also heard that another FOF's wife died immediately after too. To those not sharing my perspective on what is happening here, my posts seem like amusing content to prod and ridicule - but for many people this info is potentially life and death. What might seem like a bit of fun to you, does not feel that way to me.
I can't be expected to know what's happening in your private life in advance without prior knowledge, then tiptoe around your sensitivities.
I hope that wasn't an attempt to shame me into feeling guilty or look bad. We all have bad days. We've all lost someone. I've had bad days. I've lost people close to me. You've treated me like crap but I certainly won't be using my bad days and experience of losing loved one's as leverage in order to make you appear heinous. The times I was joking around are just that and at no point did I mean to come across as hateful. But you can seriously treat me like crap? That's a little unfair and I think you can do better.
I'm legit sorry to hear about your loss but it's hard to stomach the idea you'd use that as a way to make me look bad, so I truly hope that's not what's happening here.
Have a good day, or at least try.
I am not trying to make you look bad, I am just expressing to you the emotional reality of the situation. We CANNOT understand other people without knowing something of their emotions. Emotions make up about 50% of the information we hold and we have totally lost (for the most part) respect for this and intent to communicate on that level.
I just spent 9 months while helping a victim of serious assault (having borrowed a lot of money to do so) and hive was the only way i had to get income as I was not allowed to work in that country while I was there. I blogged every day for a while to expose heavily denied (yet obvious in the data) info about COVID and the shots etc. - I have worked in big pharma and amplified whistleblowers for 15+ years - I knew the topic inside out before COVID happened. The blogging helped me to survive and to support healing directly of someone who was in a very bad place.
To be told that this is all BS and I deserve to be nuked, while all around I see direct proof that what I have been saying is accurate - plus many highly accredited people agreeing with me - is disheartening and saddens me for the future of Hive. More than that, dealing with it takes up a lot of my time that I could be using more productively.
In general, I do not treat anyone 'negatively' unless I feel they have done so to me and need a reflection of that. I may have broken that goal/aim in your case, I actually don't remember the details. I apologise if that is the case, it is never my intention.
I never once said you're full of shit and deserve to be nuked though. I think you're just lumping me into a pile and expecting me to be like those who you feel act that way towards you. I suppose my only true grievance with the material here was basically what I attempted to explain. I've become so incredibly bored with platform politics, and that's what this post is. An internal memo making top dollar, like usual, while something like the best singer here today for instance not even being heard. Since when in the history of arts, entertainment and information distribution would an internal memo outperform something like a musical act or work of art? These platforms thrive when arts and entertainment takes center stage, yet in over five years, that sort of thing rarely gets a chance to shine, though that aspect is improving. So, when I feel like being constructive, I often suggest these types of content have their own place, since they don't mix well.
Also, when it comes to downvoting, I rarely use the damn things. For instance, here I disagree an internal memo should earn, all while you agree over valued posts can be downvoted, BUT, if I downvote this, you'll spin it around on me and act like I'm attempting to silence you. WHAT IF those folks downvoting you simply feel it's overrewarded. I don't think you'd accept that as a valid reason and carry on acting like your speech is being suppressed.
And for the record, I sat around here here various forms of communication, whether you like them or not, to help prove free speech is very welcome here. To be fair to this community, and to be completely honest with you, I feel your list of those who support freedom in this context is far too short. Maybe you wanted to narrow it down to witnesses you like but for the most part, the glaring majority of people here past present and future I can guarantee are proponents of free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the arts, and so on. That is something thousands of people here take great pride in. Myself included.
This is a post about the emotive situation on hive at present and your tone in this context causes you to merge with those doing the nuking. I am not saying you are doing it or agreeing with it, but you are taking up a lot of mindspace in this area so at best it seems like derailment in some senses.
Fair enough, it's understandable, but the nature of this platform is such that internal politics will continue to be a major issue until things evolve significantly (maybe). We either have to carve a space through such processes and stand a chance of greatness for all - or we dive back into the mediocrity of Web 2.0 (or we just don't get involved with online communication much at all).
I actually work with artists and make music - so I understand. At the same time the reason this post is high in the trending is because it is attempting to gather focus to make shifts that serve everyone, including the artists - in the long term. I assure you that this post will probably have zero rewards on it's 6th day.
all of my posts are likely to be zeroed regardless of what you do - so while your downvote wouldn't make much difference, it would be logical to conclude that in the midst of such a situation - which you are aware of, a downvote would be a thumbs up to the general gist of nuking the account. much more downvotes are guaranteed on this post than you can add.
They have mostly made clear that the downvoting is due to disagreement over science and understanding of health. They claim the posts are 'dangerous' while presenting zero evidence. All this really says to the community is that Hive is not a place to share scientific info/data and understanding. Since science is literally the open quest for truth, this effectively says that hive is not a place for truth. This is a terrible image to present to the world. This is NOT about a disagreement over the level of rewards, first and foremost - that is just a convenient cover to spin to those who don't look closely enough. I appreciate that there isn't much public evidence to look at, because the downvoters are usually careful to say as little as possible to demonstrate any intent at all - but it exists.
As I explained, I don't know enough about all of the witnesses to have a full 30 votes at present. My standards for respect for freedom of speech and free will are higher than most peoples. I have studied this topic for a long time and I know that most people have not and so are not seeing things as I see them. Denial of free will is all around, dressed up and normalised as being something else. We have to track cause and effect right throughout complex systems to know what is really going on - this is what I have done for decades professionally and.. well, just constantly for as long as I can remember. Most have not really started in this.
Why not simply work on solutions? I've already spent enough time in the past not only experiencing and dealing with being handed the shitty end of the stick but also talking with people under their posts, offering potential solutions, literally wasting my time with several people who seemingly only want to yap about the problems and make a scene. Other times I felt like we gained some ground, but still went nowhere. Then it comes up again and again and again and again. All talk, no action. So I'm bored of it now. And I'm certainly not going to waste time retyping everything I've already said about this stuff, including the potential solutions I've offered. Pretty sure I'm already voting for majority of the people you list here and respect several more. Even voted for your witness at one point but not these days.
These platform politics though and the way things are framed, creating the great divide, then expecting change, when that change involves everyone to be working together and on the same page, go nowhere, because of the created divisions.
So whatever. Since the platform politics are now boring and unproductive, I suppose I'll just ignore the next edition of this post, since I expect to see several more of the same events, going on forever and leading nowhere. Prove me wrong.
FWIW I've voted to rearrange the comment order a little bit. Sorry if voting nonames' comment diverted where you wanted this post's conversation to go.
Thanks ok, I appreciate it. :)
Hello quitter! :)
Hi! Totally noticed I quit being on vacation again eh. Nothing gets past this one!
Good to see you, is what I'd say, if we all weren't so heavily censored here on the Hive thing, as they say, nowadays, for some strange reason.
Good to have you back. I hope you enjoyed your break :) I missed your energy (No sarcasm).
I missed my energy, too. It drains out fast though when having to observe the embarrassment that is 'trending' platform politics. From day one here on Hive I've suggested providing this community with a forum/community/tag whatever specifically designed to cater to all these 'local world problems' where people can freely air their grievances but at the same time have that content automatically pulled from general 'trending'.
But I suppose it's more fun to create the illusion of being oppressed by pretending there's only a handful of good folks around here. No better way to promote a project and the people you like than making everyone and everything else look bad or somehow inferior/flawed. (sarcasm)
Was a good break though, yeah. Home for the holidays, I guess.
I'm not sure why you feel so entitled to shape the trending page only to your own whims. Isn't that exactly the attitude of entitlement that is justifying the downvoting sprees here? If people posting challenging content are 'entitled' when they are upset by constant and unreasonable downvoting, then surely people who want to remove all content that doesn't tick their own boxes are also entitled, no?
I'm simply saying give platform politics a proper home so the issues can be tackled more efficiently, all while not chasing away potential new customers or stealing the spotlight from all those hard working types consistently desperate for an actual audience and engagement. Has nothing to do with entitlement, but I'm not surprised even a little bit to see you personally and purposefully spin what I said, take it completely out of context, and attempt to make me look villainous or somehow working against your flow. Many people, yourself included, would seemingly prefer to create a drama fueled spectacle rather than simply getting down to brass tacks. What I'm talking about has literally nothing to do with content ranking. I'm not saying remove content at all. I'm saying put it in a proper home where the right eyes can see it, rather than mixing it in with general content. This isn't some zany concept pulled from the mind of an irrational madman. Do you see boardroom meetings on Youtube trending page? No. So does that mean they don't have problems? No. A simple tab right at the top of all frontends that leads to this internal style content that only makes sense to a few on the inside is fully transparent and the exact opposite of something like censorship. Plus the internal content is no longer pushing general content to the back burner, which would effectively lead to far fewer reasons for anyone to even want to downvote it. I'm not saying remove rewards from it either. Nothing like that at all. I simply feel taking a more professional stance would be far more beneficial and productive. Always have.
P.S. This content isn't 'challenging' so please stop acting like a hero and champion of the people. A few folks on your list of 'freedom fighters' have been loud and in support of completely dismantling the entire reward pool, taking it all away, from everyone. So I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. At least one was also big into selling votes for the longest time, and all that did was drive thousands of good, organic talent away, forever, in order to replace it all with one of the biggest disasters I've even seen in the history of content distribution online.
You have a very warped view of what is happening here, from my position - at least your views are not reflective of what I see at all. Firstly, 'my group' is not 'my group', it is just people who share a common interest. If you see a football fan being violent it would be wrong to then point to children in the crowd and say 'look, this group are violent' as if everyone who you can fit together into a category are the same or even vaguely similar. Seeking the truth in society is not a 'niche', it is simply what enquiring minds do. Enquiring minds do not always agree.
I had no intention to turn you into a villain, I am simply applying your own logic to yourself - something that is extremely valuable in self analysis and creative thinking.
I agree that large communities need to be structured so as to optimise content discovery and to maximise the value of people's time when they interact in them. Layer 2 communities are likely going to be the solution to most of these problems, as I have said many times. What you seemed to be suggesting was to keep trending all posts, except the specific categories that you personally think shouldn't be there. That is the opposite of empowering people through categorisation and intelligent content discovery.
I have never heard the term 'internal content' before, so I am not 100% sure what you mean by it, but the way you said it originally made it sounds like you were referring to information that you personally perceive to be not of interest to 'everyone' - but I would argue that that definition applies to pretty much all information except 'there's a giant meteor that's about to destroy the planet' level of information.
The only reason I have ever been given for the downvoting is 'You don't know anything about science' from Pharesim, which considering no downvoter has ever even attempted to challenge the science I have shared publicly, leads me to conclude that the content is a challenge to some people's personal beliefs (aka challenging).
I have only ever heard anyone advocating for moving rewards from layer 1 to layer 2, which makes a lot of sense. It is likely to happen organically over time anyway.
I have no idea who you are talking about here. I was on a crusade to stop bid bots for years. The main vote sellers I know of are today top 20 witnesses and I don't engage with them.
Actually, you misinterpreted my logic. And now it seems like you want to 'win' a conversation. I don't see how this is helping. Thanks for the downvote. I suppose I should freak out now?
The content isn't 'challenging' because one of the most common events on this platform is people speaking out against it or other members here. It's the small town mentality with neighbors gawking over the fence and gossiping at the gas station. Platform politics in general has always been one of the easiest ways to get attention around here. The most common post on chain is people talking about the platform in some way. To the outside, that has always made this platform appear to be your standard echo chamber and the content only appeals to this small group within. The localized internal platform gossip earning top dollar is a direct slap in the face to all those talented enough to create amazing content while earning very little and going unnoticed, then eventually leaving. The internal content for the most part does nothing to boost morale. It's not challenging. It's lazy, especially when it's all talk and no action, which is the most common result.
Plus yourself and a few others want to dismantle the reward pool, tuck everyone off in some barren wasteland to work for unproven second layer options, effectively deplatforming the glaring majority of talent and offering them no clear future.
As for the former vote sellers you're in support of, let me just say I'm glad that's all in the past and people changed their ways, for the better.
I don't think anyone would say that a single word 'boring' is worth more than many accounts receive in a month. I have never said I am against downvotes for spam or even for rewards disagreements completely. I am against massive downvoting and downvoting for ideological reasons that amount to suppression of information.
I think the specificity of the topic has gotten lost. I was referring to the content that gets downvoted as being challenging (e.g. COVID/politics content). I was not saying that discussing downvoting in posts is challenging in itself.
I don't think witnesses discussing publicly the mechanics of the platform is 'small town gossip', personally. It's a necessary part of the active engagement of a decentralised system such as Hive.
Ok, I understand more of what you are saying now. To be clear though, most of what I have been downvoted on and that has been removed from trending is not the kind of content you are describing, it is general interest content of the kind that gets big traffic elsewhere online. You might not like it or agree with it, but it is not echo chamber material per se.
Lol. It is highly likely that layer 2 will become the norm whether I say and do anything or not. this is how the designers of the system see things progressing almost unanimously as far as I am aware. layer 2 offers the opportunity for communities to be empowered and to achieve their goals in the best possible way, without cross bleed and annoyance occurring with people who aren't interested in their topics. In one thread here I have Taraz nagging me for not having created a layer 2 token and here I have you nagging me for even thinking about a layer 2 token. lol.
Again, I don't know who you are referring to - I am not aware of anyone I am friends with having done that.
I don't really care about the downvote or expect to be rewarded for being bored. That upvote was well beyond my control and unexpected. I have spent a lot of time here but that's beside the point. I just saw irony and a bit of humor in the downvote, who it was coming from, combined with the context.
It's fine if you want to laugh about that portion. If you find humor in my investment becoming useless to me and the fact I'd be forced out as a content creator, that's fine. There's no clear future. You supporting that but not the downvotes you receive is an incredibly fancy way of contradicting yourself.
COVID content isn't challenging. Nearly every human on the planet was able to form an opinion in that regard. It's something everyone has in common and the market, no matter which team you want to play for, has already been established by someone else. Political content isn't a challenge either. All the groundwork is laid out; all one has to do is tell their team what they want to hear on a consistent basis. Super easy and generic. Sure, opinions are like assholes since everyone has one, but in COVID or politics, there's an automatic 50/50 shot at impressing someone or pissing off someone else. It's lazy, easy, highly predictable and by far the most common thing around. It's controlled by robots. Manipulative. Nearly everyone involved has some sort of hidden agenda. Far from original and for the most part helps keep society divided and at odds with one another. As a matter of fact, the last time we spoke I saw you straight up insulting someone for not thinking the way you think. But that sort of thing is normal in politics and to be expected. It's hateful, deceitful, and of course incredibly boring. Being an asshole is one of the easiest things any human can do.
Anyway, I agree with Taraz. You should create that second layer echo chamber. It'll solve all your problems. Guaranteed. Just like POB solved all the problems. Just like Blurt will solve all the problems. Basically like how any other knockoff of this concept solves problems. Sure, they're often mismanaged and quickly fail since what actually happens is all the haters find themselves locked inside one room and all they know how to do is hate, so that part doesn't change, but it's 'The Solution.' I think maybe Taraz is just challenging you and this group to go and put their money where the mouth is, knowing full well the reason you don't is because deep down you know it'll fail. That's my guess anyway. And of course once you strip out the base layer, the foundation is gone, so when these segregated tokenized communities do fail, they've nothing to fall back on, accelerating the failures and making them permanent. Even getting one off the ground without a universal base layer would be next to impossible. Basically everyone would have to start from scratch and all this progress over the past several years would have been for nothing. Akin to removing the planet so you can just have cities.
Don't worry noname;
It won't be in trending for long. Please tolerate these folks a little bit...
Blah. Take a chill pill and let these folks have their fun. I don't mind suggesting there should be an open forum to help tackle internal issues, professionally, then being shot down, called names, misconstrued, eventually silenced, downvoted, yadda yadda yadda, by the very people claiming that approach should be frowned upon. When one attempts to offer possible solutions to problems people latch onto in order to get attention and make money, it's only natural to get pushed aside because an actual solution puts them out of work. Go with the flow and see where it leads. (Hint: Nowhere)
Keyword: Nowhere!
and yes, and agree. I have all the time in the world. This is nothing new. :)
So gay
Maybe you should quit the quit, and come back. A certain quirkness is lacking from Hive which only you provided. @dreemit is also back - she introduced us iirc. I wonder if holidays are a trend setter for comebacks. If so, hope you stay around.
I've been seriously considering bringing my brand of content back to this place for awhile, again, like I usually do once I return from being away. Is the timing right though? That I'm not sure of. I've always felt so out of place bringing entertainment here and mixing it in with all this Celebrity Witness fake reality show platform politicking hatred nonsense. While I was gone @dreemit left me a comment saying the place just isn't the same anymore. Could it be because doom and gloomers are doing nothing but doom and glooming? I don't even know anymore...
I don't know man, I was part of the drama - not as a protagonist but definitely as a part of - for a while and now that I am just a spectator writing about my own thing, I found that the Hive experience still had a lot to offer for people like us. Sounds a little ignorance is bliss and Poncio Pialteish, but sometimes it is better to not engage in drama if one can do nothing about a situation in order to enjoy all the other things a place has to offer. I'm not saying to turn a blind eye, but to not engage in order to keep one's sanity. It'sAllSoTiring.jpg but still, the timing is never wrong, especially when you're appreciated around the block.
I've always had a blast enjoying the good side. Posts like this act like that's nonexistent. I'd be away and out of the loop completely, for a long time. Got everything settled on a new device, signed in...
The first post I clicked, out of curiosity, was a promoted post published by someone loosely tied to the group of consistent haters/doom and gloomers. I had been mentioned there for some reason. There were a lot of comments that turned out to be that individual talking to itself nonstop but in the post itself was my avatar, some bullshit about me and a link to an old post of mine where I was talking about how frustrating it is to come here, produce actual content, then be shit on and thrown under the bus by these hater types. So yeah, shit on and thrown under the bus first day back. Following the trail of breadcrumbs trying to figure out what all this drama is about after some time basically led me straight to this post, so here I am, bored.
Oh yeah, I avoid any doom and gloom which might be why I have a more positive outlook than I did lol
I don't think it will ever be the same as the magical beginnings of 2016/17, but it is definitely improved from a couple years ago. I came back around September and I've had fun connecting with old friends and making a few new ones. And it is definitely Way better than any other social platform out there.
Definitely worth giving a chance :) Good to see you!
Majority of my memories here are good. Plus I got a to write and illustrate a never ending novel of nothingness, which really helped get me through some tough times. Maybe I'll add to it. Creative freedom truly knows no bounds here and much of my work is a prime example of that, hence why I'm so baffled when I come across these posts...
Whatever.
Sir be careful, words can make people censor themselves.
Actually, he downvoted me, censored me to death, and now I have no ability to speak freely. My life is over, basically. I guess the next step would be to write a post and include a list of people who I feel are special. Then I'll talk about my accomplishments and do everything in my power to convince people I'm a nice guy, so they listen to me and do as I say. I'll talk about how important free speech is, but as as soon as someone comes along to say things that don't sound like praise, I'll try my best to make them look like an idiot, then downvote their ass, and pretend I'm not being a hypocrite.
You're hired!
Niger
Damn man, condolences on the censorship. I liked your comment the best and gave it my upvote. But how evil it was for it to be downvoted and sent to the bottom once more. This comment thread has the most interesting discussion about the topic at hand but the OP has done his best to hide it. Too much challenge? Not enough yes-sir? I guess I know who I won't be voting as a witness.
What really hurts my feelings the most though is how I have this fancy new keyboard I won't be able to use. Pretty much everything I say just sounds like the spacebar now. I'm surprised you can even see me. Trapped within this void, I found myself, in the dark, feeling abandoned and alone with thoughts I'm not allowed to use anymore because a freedom fighter kicked my ass. And to top it all off with the hardest pill to swallow...
I'm not even as cool as abshamilton...
Did someone write something?
Nothing to see here, man. Just me, captivating an audience, by being bored, in some random comment section on the internet somewhere. I'll try to be more productive, tomorrow.
Yo should stick to smoking acid ser together with jack dorsey
Vote for Curie & Leofinance! Cuz they are da best! Details will be provided upon request. lol.
Too tired to make a case right now.
It's a good start!
I wanted to add another comment to this with some other thoughts for historical context.
When Trump won in 2016 there wasn't almost any internet censorship going on in the USA. In fact, in many places the Trump communities grew exponentially and were getting more engagement and were larger than left leaning communitities. Most of the people who work in Silicon valley are left leaning and they don't like the rise of all the right wing/libertarian/anarchist stuff.
Soooo, the censorship starts somewhere around 2017 from what I can remember, it was on Youtube first mainly and what Youtube did was take about 90% of the views on "channels they don't like" and give them to channels they do like. Years later this turned into CNN/ABC/FOX News and others getting all the views. Corporations are now getting the views/search results/trending because Youtube changed the algorithm to do that.
The censorship of individuals is at the highest it's ever been. This is the reason why everyone is a lot more upset about the downvoting happening on Hive in 2021 than they were on Steem 2017 201i 2019 2020 etc
There arent many free speech platforms out there. The censorship is rising exponentially. None of us cam afford to sit back and hope it doesnt come for us anymore, it is already affecting us
Our YouTube got a strike for medical misinformation despite it being the truth. Fauci presided over the aids epidemic when that happened decades ago in the USA. At the time there were life saving drugs and treatments that were very low cost that he didnt allow to be approved, instead only allowing super expensive treatments. We have him doing it AGAIN with covid 19 denying ivermectin works for it. There is actually. Huge blockbuster movie that covered this whole thing about the aids epidemic Fauci was in charge of, movie is The Dallas Buyers club. Where a few guys help out people with aids by getting them to exercise, ear healthy, take vitamins. Aids makes attacks and lowers your immune system, doing all these things improves your immune system, Fauci at the time went after these guys and tried to get em charged with crimes.
When we have people with huge stakes down voting and they dont know history like this, THEY are the conspiracy theorists and are factually incorrect.
It is our duty to tell the truth no matter the cost and we cannot afford to have huge downvotes censoring that any longer, the stakes are too high. Please just stop downvoting content you dont understand or dont like, leaving it alone is the way to go.
Actually, Youtube has been censoring content since (iirc) at least before 2010 - there were many researchers who I followed who just got deleted by Youtube at that time (and ever since). It is more common for accounts to be sandboxed and reach restricted, so they are definitely censored without them even realising most of the time. This is the norm for Youtube and occurs on a large scale. I proved this by viewing my videos and comments via Tor - the anonymous browser. Many of my comments are invisible to the wider world, but visible to me. This has been the case for probably over a decade.
The pattern you described with Fauci is the EXACT same pattern that occurred with Morris Fishbein, ex head of the AMA: https://rense.com/general19/enemy.htm
He was putting up posters of people who were treating cancer using non toxic methods, saying they are public enemies and ruining their careers (hurting patients in the process). Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was trying to acquire the patents on their recipes in order to steal their thunder. In general, these people are obsessed by personal power, so they crush anyone who has it in an attempt to take it and use it for themselves.
I prefer to control my votes by myself. But yes, I have to check votes after some time from the last adjustment.
Is there anything more to say? I use downvotes rarely, but I use. For spam or plagiarism. But we live in the strange times. There are blocked / deleted post of university professors by youtube, vimeo in our country. Just for only different opinion. And I can't be familiar with it. The government should serve to the citizens. Not the other way...
Everyone should think about quotation:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Yes. Should. The reality is that the government suppress/oppose us. I live with multiple disabilities under the local minimum wage in Hungary. I receive a low, pension-like income, which is approximately only $250 USD per month, and nowadays I also work as a packager in a four hours per day part time job, but my total income is approximately only $470 USD per month, while the local minimum wage is approximately $550 USD.
Greetings from Hungary.
I'm sending greetings from Czech ;)
I'm a bit busy today, but I would like to discuss some topics with you later. If you use Discord or Telegram, we can chat later this week.
Have a nice day
I'm also on Discord, same username
Eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind.
I remember you had developed the impression that I was a partisan and thus deemed my thoughts of little value. Now you are being downvoted by an account touting the label of alt left.
It slightly amuses me but perhaps to you the irony is lost. Don't get me wrong. I wholeheartedly agree with you on the matter of opposing ideological downvotes but think you had pegged wrong, my dude.
I think you may eventually come to terms with which side of the spectrum you are catching the most downvotes from as well as those that are downvoting others for political reasons.
Not to suggest the GOP doesn't censor. Try going to Parker and posting about the ZOG in the US and think you will find out.
I criticize both sides where I believe criticism is needed. One caveat is it is difficult to ascertain to what degree you are being downvoted on an ideological basis versus politically agnostic disagreement of rewards.
Do believe if I took the time to craft thoughtful posts with some degree of verbosity aligning to my political ideology that I would likely be subjected the the same. I've had friends that have told me they think I may be spared on because they know that I will continue my work on moderation incentivization e.g. anti-abuse, a mutually beneficial interest.
All things aside, I respect what you are trying to do here so have upvoted 100%. 💪
Ahoy! I don't recall all the words involved in the conversation you are recalling, but I think it was more to do with religious beliefs than politics. I don't really adhere to left/right thinking - as I have said many times. The left/right wing concept is from the French revolution and outside of that context has little practical meaning to me. Different people apply it in totally different ways and it misses the mark when it comes to identify the key factors when devising systems for human support. Politics itself is mostly a waste of time since if politics were meant to solve people's problems, they would, by now - be mostly solved.
Note: For me, 'right' is 'empire builders' and you can rest assured that the biggest censors also try to build empires.
There's a reason why FB and Twitter want the most timid content while erasing dissenting voices - it is partially to appease advertisers and partially to please the board who have interests in the corporations who look bad when dissent is allowed. In other words, they are professional lie systems.
Presumably the avoidance, by some Hive characters, of such real world discussion on key topics that might challenge the mainstream narratives follow similar patterns or might at least just be based on uncourageously trying to emulate silicon valley sites without understanding that Hive will not equal those sites as long as it simply duplicates their agendas.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to communicate and co-create with more than a tiny percentage of people I am contact with - so I have to try to filter them out rigorously based on what I feel is their intent to view expansively and to radically re-assess pretty much everything we have been taught or programmed with.
That's literally me except the programmed part because my metaphysical disposition is one of divine determinism.
What I mean is there is a God or higher being if you will that orchestrates everything even to our most minute thoughts. He's just determined that you and I would arrive at different conclusions.
Concerning the world, I question EVERYTHING. Concerning my God that has decreed I would find a treasure in His work, I dare not.
I know we have discussed this topic in lengthy discourse and I am glad to continue doing. You and I differ from those that you have called out as we promote this dialogue.
In such, is where the truth is mined if you will. I think every person had some degree of malleability to what they believe but, for others, they are inhibited by their own hubris.
I will say that according to the metaphysical doctrine to which I hold it is impossible that I can think anything otherwise than believe that Jesus Christ is LORD and died for me over 2000 years ago.
So, in that sense, you are correct. I think it would be a fool's errand to try to convince me otherwise because my doctrine properly understood does not allow for apostasy.
When someone believes on Christ's death and that alone for righteousness, that's what I would call a "done deal". Thus, I understand why you had chosen to disengage because you had rightly judged you would be unable to change my mind.
This isn't about you or me. The question becomes what Christ's death if it were for anything what was it for precisely? I am a wretch no better than any other man.
If ye think yourself higher than what Jesus did or do not believe He did die on the cross for certain person's, there is nothing else I can say but wish you the best in your quest for righteousness.
post will probably be zeroed on day 6
Day 6, Hour 22 of 24.
Wonder if the timing of these downvotes are automated or if there's some hateful little scion of downvoting with a timer set waiting for the very last hour before clicking the dreaded downvote
Not really familiar with the guy's ideological position but it's probably fair to include
good-karmain that list. To my knowledge, his siteecencyis the only front-end that directly displays censored items in plain sight without having to click multiple times just to reveal the text or image,peakddoesn't support that let alonehive.blogwhich is even worseOK, yes, I was planning to look into @good-karma for that reason - thanks for the reminder.
Cool. Post from users with zero to negative rep, like myself, are all well visible on
Ecencywith no problem displaying hidden text. A great place for exiles from persecutions of any type, truly free speechTheres obviously nothing wrong with downvotes removing rewards as that is an absolute right of every stakeholder to determine in what direction the reward pool is distributed, so the question here really is:
How should we treat that occurrence thats actually more of a symptom of the frontend algo problem then onchain facts, that are downvotes..
Im sorry to say but most of the recent posts from your supporters about censorship, retaliation towards @acidyo, @ocd, @curangel, etc., trying to portray them as tyrants, are nonsense. Especially this guy here trying to bribe witnesses into destroying the chain.
How should we as a community treat the current right of community members to affect content placement on the trending pages and elsewhere? Thats something that can be discussed. Its a matter of quite some importance.
Even though you claim to stand for freedom, you must surely be aware that by supporting the idea that the community cannot affect content placement youre essentially removing one of their ways of expressing themselves. A way for them to affect how Hive portrays itself.
Shouldnt that be a right of community members?
I have never said that the community should not be able to affect content placement - I have always said the total opposite. I have only ever said that I support POB and I have said multiple times (on this page even) that I am not even against downvoting for 'disagreement over rewards'. For some reason most of the counter commenters against me here are posing strawmen instead of actually responding to what I'm saying. Maybe there is someone in a discord server inaccurately telling others what I'm saying and those people are then commenting without actually listening to me? I don't know.
Changing trending aglorithms is one aspect here, but the other is the entire economic model of rewarding posts on Hive. If you remove POB from trending, then really you remove a key limb of POB itself - so what then is the point of having POB at all? It's pretty minimal from my POV. You will then have a situation where the only reason to try to get upvotes is to get rewards and most people won't even see the posts that are getting the most rewards.. So you will probably have an ever greater disconnect between rewards and the quality of the posts involved.
But you are saying exactly that. Even in this here comment.
So youre excluding all other reasons. And that IN FACT is restricting the community ability to affect content placement.
Youre saying that disagreement on rewards can be the only "allowed" reason to downvote. Or the only reason that should "count".
I think thats wrong. I think that if the community doesnt want to see a piece of content on the trending pages they should be able to reduce its visibility.
No, I am not saying any of these things. I have made very clear what I am saying numerous times.
No, I'm not. You aren't really explaining yourself or making sense here.
No, I'm not. Nothing I have said even sounds vaguely like I am saying that. Is it a full moon? lol
< Youre saying that disagreement on rewards can be the only "allowed" reason to downvote.
No, I'm not saying that.
To be super clear:
Free downvoting was introduced primarily to counter bid bots, which it did. I was 50/50 split on whether it was a good idea before it went live and when I saw the bid bots disappear I thought it was mostly a good idea to have free downvotes. We were then left with the somewhat rare problem of people going on downvote rampages for ideological or other reasons - which sows discord in the community and sets a negative PR tone.
As long as there is spam and plagiarism and other problems, we need a way to protect the reward pool, to optimise the attractiveness of Hive to users and to maximise sentiment and morale. Downvoting is currently the best tool for doing that that I know of. I have never said anything other than this.
So for now, downvoting is a good idea to me.
The problem is that it introduces a grey area of potential issues - such as was typified by Bernie Sanders and his malicious downvote crusades on Steem that had nothing to do with POB or respect for community spirit. As Dan stated in the community talk session that we both participated in (after you had left), the use of downvotes has a place, but an be abused to nuke accounts and destroy reputations in ways that have nothing to do with enhancing the spirit of POB - but are actually just driven by fragile egos or worse, an intent to stifle debate or limit information.. This is especially a problem when the information involved exposes serious potential corporate crimes that those involved may be financially invested in through stocks, employment or other routes.
When bad actors get large stake, we have problems. This needs to be addressed somehow and this is what I am addressing.
You keep on making completely contradictory statements.
If youre ok with the community affecting content placement, why are ideological downvotes wrong? You shouldnt be treating ideological downvotes any different than reward disagreement downvotes.
So obviously you do not support community affecting content placement for any reason they might have.
If its ok for the community to place content high on the trending pages for WHAT EVER REASON then it should be ok for the community to vote if off there FOR WHATEVER REASON.
And those that do so should NOT be called tyrants.
Now, you can disagree with their downvote and vote otherwise, but their action is as legitimate as any other action.
If you support the community affecting content placement freely, then you should have no problem with what @acidyo and @curangel are doing. Yet, you do.
Could it be that you just dont like getting downvoted?
I am saying that in principle I do not have a problem with downvoting for a variety of reasons. There are many scammers and spammers here who will try to take reward payouts and this is a problem for the value of Hive and also the attractiveness of Hive as a source of quality content. The rules surrounding what is plagiarism and what is spam could potentially even be hard coded into the blockchain to remove the human element involved in downvoting or removing them.
When it comes to downvoting content based only on differences of opinion - whether that be about the level of rewards involved or just thinking differently - people need to carefully weigh up the pros and cons of doing so. Small downvotes to express sentiment can add up and then the community can truly speak as a consensus if they want to remove larger amounts of rewards from posts. This is what Dan from 3speak was highlighting and advocating for - more downvotes, but on a smaller scale, with no nuking from one account deliberately destroying other accounts.
Such downvoting, when the account holder has not broken any community rules, is reasonable to me. What is not reasonable is people with larger amounts of stake deciding on their own that entire accounts are to be nuked, regardless of what they say or do. Sure, the blockchain currently allows that to be done, but even since the earliest days of Steem it has generally been understood and agreed that this is not a good idea, either from the perspective of community spirit or from a public PR perspective. The main public sentiment about steem and hive has always been that it is a pyramid scheme run by scammers. That might have changed a bit now, but that was always what I saw on social channels from influencers and others. This is because POB favours circle jerks and all the other issues we know so well. If individual stakeholders go around nuking those who are doing well on the platform, it just reinforces the image that POB is a sham and that there is only proof of wallet. This leads to a situation where investors who might have been interested in POB, instead just see a platform that rewards and promotes the content that is preferred by the wealthiest people - which is EXACTLY the problem with FB and MSM etc. - so the key selling points of this Web 3.0 platform fall apart rapidly. No real decentralisation, no real POB, no real change from Web 2.0. This was all explained in the show that you were on and generally agreed upon by all parties present.
If you want me to say it another way - I am saying that I am offering the suggestion that this behaviour is not inspiring to anyone, gives people a sense of being able to be dominated at any moment - despite what literally hundreds of other community members want.. And to top it off it is being done with a sense of aggressive tone, no feedback, ridicule and even threats of physical abuse in the case of one of them. No rational person considers this 'social' or a good PR look for Hive. I know for 100% sure that the majority of people I have personally tried to introduce to Hive have seen this kind of thing and just walked away.
A SOCIAL Network requires SOCIAL skills - not Gulag skills and a big wallet. It's time to evolve.
Youre sailing very dangerous waters with that statement.
Extremely dangerous. I hope you are aware what it is youre saying here.
You seem to have a problem with investors deciding what the platform they invested in will look like but you have no issue from benefiting from their investment.
Especially when it comes to the big investors. You would like to suppress the power the wealthy have even though their power is proportional to their investment, just like with small investors.
I think thats unfair and absolutely reprehensible.
Disagreements are extremely social. What is antisocial about disagreeing? Whats not social is calling others tyrants because they disagree with you.
Demonizing others for disagreeing with you is antisocial behavior. Something im seeing a lot here in the comments section.
It very much seems that you are the one promoting Gulag skills, I have to say unfortunately.
1.You want to strip the wealthy of decision making power.
2.You do not want to allow individuals to make their own choices as you so clearly state above in the first sentence I quote here.
3.You want to create a centralized decision making "party" on downvotes.
I mean, this is extremely concerning stuff youre writing here.
You deliberately removed the context from my comment in order to frame it in a way that is not the original intent. The original comment is:
I am describing a situation which is equivalent to you sitting in a public park, paid for by tax payers and some rich guy coming along and forcing you out of the park because he wants more space.. Then saying that it's all fine because he paid more tax than you. Then he says that, also, you are a liar and a dangerous cheat - provides no evidence and then walks off saying he's too busy to talk. That is literally what is happening on a social level here.
The sum total of the reward pool is not owned by one stakeholder, yet without sufficient community focus into their downvoting behaviours, one stakeholder can act as if they control the whole thing. We lack the visibility needed in terms of data at present for the community to counterbalance such activities - but I am developing them and threespeak will be rolling them out universally asap.
People can elect to downvote however they want. It is not 'dangerous' to point out that they can use that in an unreasonable way. Even the original Steem whitepaper identified the concern here and theorised that Steem itself would not face an existential threat from such behaviour because any hugely hostile actions would reduce the value of the token and the bad actor would lose money as a result. Essentially, self interest was held up as the only defence against bad actors. We currently have a situation where so much profit has been generated that some people don't see enough risk to their own interests to prevent them behaving in ways that risk the public image of Hive overall.
Let's do a thought experiment here:
Marc Zuckerberg buys up enough stake (covertly) to have a big sway on the network. His team devise a strategy to not only promote pro FB posts, but to also downvote all anti FB posts and also to generally destabilise the platform by downvoting all the highest quality posts. This might actually result in them generating greater profits overall and a few million dollars in Hive might actually yield double or more profits overall for them as a result of them ruining Hive. They literally buy out most competitors, so this would be the only equivalent strategy for Hive.
Should we just stand by and allow that to happen because 'they have the stake and we have to respect it'? Most people would probably say no, if they are aware of the situation. Without changing the core logic of Hive to remove downvotes, which I have never suggested doing - before you say that I have - the only way to address this is for the community to rally to combine to counter the downvotes or buy more stake to do the same. None of this can happen without awareness, diligence, teamwork and visibility of the downvote behaviour.
I am simply highlighting this dynamic and the problems it can cause. I am suggesting we organise to build a defence against this in ways that strengthens the community. I am suggesting that people who disagree with heavy downvoting come together to take the logical action to prevent it using their own stake. There is nothing authoritarian or wrong about this - it is literally 'democracy in action'.
I am and am doing my best to ensure that you are too - because you seem to have the wrong end of the stick here.
I have over 15 years experience in social networks and community building - I have a good idea of what will draw people in to Hive, how many potentially interested people there are out there that could come and use Hive and also what will turn them off. I know for sure that this behaviour will harm Hive more than it helps it. If you disagree, that's fine, but this is about balance and not just about a black/white sense of 'wealth = bad'. There's nothing wrong with wealth, but power without balance tends to do damage.
I have never said anything about suppression, I have simply highlighted that power without balance does damage. The more power that is centralised, the more risk there is of one single mind (point of failure) making decisions that cause harm to large numbers of people. This is one of the founding motivations and principles behind the drive for decentralisation and something that most people here understand. Decentralisation is more than just a nice idea or talking point for marketers.
I think you are thinking in an overly simplistic way about a very complicated system. Maybe my comments above clarified my reasons and actual position.
No, I want to create an environment where people feel a sense of balance and mutual support that feels good.
Already addressed above. Actually, I am wanting the choices of as many people as possible to be respected, without being nullified.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I am not trying to create any parties or centralise anything.
Does not matter in the slightest what you find a justifiable reason to remove rights from the wealthy. Here, ill edit the comment and put it in. Does not change what you said in the slightest.
Literally nothing you said here justifies doing what you want to do yet youre trying to justify it by giving misplaced analogies that try and hide the actual arguments youre making.
Fork. As we did from Steem.
No, you do not know that. Quite the opposite might be true. What kind of content is promoted here is something that affects who comes here. That is why the investors decide what we want to attract here.
Im seriously questioning if you even think through some of these things before you write them.
You absolutely state that you want to suppress top investor power to affect content placement.
You state it openly and ABSOLUTELY clearly.
I just quoted you above.
You say it more than once.
If you want balance, buy more stake.
... by removing the decision making power of individuals with wealth. As you state so clearly multiple times.
Hive is not a Utopia where each vote is equal. If you think it is, you have a completely wrong perception of what Hive is. If you want more say, you have to buy more stake.
You just said above that individuals with a lot of stake should not be allowed to make the choice of downvoting people on their own.
Then who is it that should make the choice?
A designated group of "those that know best"?
I might be reading too much into this statement, but I am in England - where 'the wealthy' are literally in the process of nullifying 'human rights' because it suits them. In any case, I NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT 'REMOVING RIGHTS'. I never said anything about changing the rules of Hive's blockchain. You seem to be viewing an image of what I am saying that is not what I am saying.
Again, I don't think you understand what I have said because 'what I want to do' is literally nothing at all, except provide easier access to already public data to make the downvoting patterns on the platform more transparent and to also provide ways for people to come together to direct their stake in ways that serve free speech. Everything else that you have interpreted that I 'want to do' seems to be coming from your own imagination.
I described a situation where Facebook actually profits from ruining Hive. They would just repeat the process on the new fork too, once it became profitable. A successful implementation of this kind of community requires all the help it can get for individuals to protect themselves from others.
Additionally, the average stakeholder does not have the option of just pressing a button and saying 'fork' - they want their own ability to use their own stake to take defensive action. Maybe the fork on Steem could have been avoided if the community had better tools at their disposal. It was probably best to fork anyway, but I'm just pointing that out. I don't personally think that forking Layer 1 Hive will be necessary again, as long as Layer 2 communities provide sufficient decentralisation to make a hostile attack much less practical.
From my POV, that is a strangely warped way of interpreting my words. Every stakeholder has the ability to amplify or suppress all other stakeholders ability to affect content placement - this has always been the case. You seem to be getting riled up about the way that Hive has always worked, it is not a very logical position. I presume you have misunderstood something I have been saying. I am saying that if stakeholders choose to go out of their way to stifle the growth of other accounts, for ideological reasons (and even sneer and mock as they do it), then naturally, people will feel a sense of injustice and want to support a response to that, simply because they prefer not to see that kind of behaviour. I am simply saying that the provision of tools to facilitate those people wanting to use their stake in completely code legal ways to counter the situation, is a good idea and helps to keep the balance. There isn't even anything controversial in what I am saying to most people. I feel like maybe you are viewing me through a pair of glasses that have communist flag logos overlaid on top of me. lol
Or unite the people who think the same who already have smaller stake but aren't using it in a unified way yet.
No, I didn't even state that once. You say you have clearly quoted me saying this in an absolute way, multiple times. Please humour me by quoting me one final time, exactly where I have said that I want to change the rules in any way regarding how rewards are calculated based on the voting of accounts - since that is the context within which the decision making power of accounts is relevant to this discussion.
A voting system that involves governance is effectively a form of democracy. Yes, there is no one vote, one account option on Hive currently - mainly because of the problems of identity oracles and KYC etc.
As we know from traditional politics, exposure of problems leads to those with shared ideals forming intents to act to achieve shared interests. That is all I am really advocating for - it's nothing new, totally democratic and is really only a problem to those who seek to dominate, such as those who see themselves as monarchs for some reason.
No, that was what you said I said once you had removed the rest of the sentence. What I actually said was:
This is not reasonable to me personally, because Hive is a DECENTRALISED space where the whim of an individual is not meant to be able to completely overpower that of others. DPOS does enable that IF THERE ISN'T ENOUGH DECENTRALISATION. I am advocting for MORE decentralisation, not less. lol.
You are basically saying that whoever has the most stake must be able to dominate everyone else in order for things to be decentralised. This is totally illogical in every way, except the one you are focusing on - which is that DPOS allows it. DPOS is not perfect decentralisation and this is the crux of the matter. In a pure sense, whereever there is any variation in power there is a form of (possibly minor/subtle) centralisation - so it is disingenuous of you to try to claim that simply by taking action to attempt to effect the actions of large stakeholders, a person is 'centralising' things - when in truth, simply holding and using large stake is also an act of centralisation that is of a far larger scale than most can achieve on their own. There is absolutely nothing that I am doing which is anything more than a response to centralisation in a certain direction - being redirected in another direction. This is indisputable to anyone who thinks deeply enough about the essence of centralisation/decentralisation and how it applies to network topography on Hive or related distributed/decentralised graphs.
Theres not a single thing wrong with what they are doing.
Youre making up stuff to justify making this a systemic problem on Hive because you cant accept that some people just dont like the stuff you post for reasons that are as justifiable as reasons of those that like that type of content.
They dont like your guys content and downvote you. Get more people to vote you.
Buy more Hive. Give your Hive to other people.
Ill see you around.
Your attitude regarding this blockchain is no different to the attitude of any major investment company.
That's just it, one of the major draws for Hive is the decentralization aspect and the censorship resistance.
If a regular investment opportunity is what you seek to offer those with more than enough means to gain more money - Then Hive will do its little dance in the rain. And woopee doo!
So many of us were convinced this would be something different.
And many of the key people developing it had in their mouths the words of freedom.
Yet, now that money is coming in - a new vision is replacing the intended one - it seems the core conditioning of the pursuit of wealth has simply taken over the minds of the stake holders by default.
Good on you for standing up for stake holders. However, this post clearly outlines that for true growth there must be another form of value that places a more equal footing to those with cash.
Not all those that have cash are good people. You pre-suppose the old world of oligarchic pursuits onto Hive.
If that is the key motivation of the people here then the life will leave and you'll be left with leeches, wolves and vampires.
I bet you'll all feel right at home.
And what voice do I have? As much as you allow.
There is no 'tyrant' per se here but there are actions that emulate tyranny.
If a person cannot put two and two together to see this for themselves. It's ok - keep going with the accumulation of wealth strategy - see where it got... the world!
Monopoly doco link - https://rumble.com/vn7lf5-monopoly-who-owns-the-world-must-see.html
Spoiler alert: Basically Blackrock and Vanguard own most of everything.
It's time to do something different don't you think? Aren't you sick of playing this game of castles and knaves - it's been the same game for a few thousand years - aren't you tired?
Hive has an opportunity to become something truly different - something that usurps this need and focus solely on wealth.
If fail-safes are developed to protect more than just stake on this platform - the rewards for those that hold stake will be exponentially more than if you follow a classic wealth accumulation plan - because there will be no other place like it.
Infact, Hive in this new future would actually threaten tyranny and governments all over the world. To become the first online nation based on decentralisation and equality. It would expand into something truly limitless.
That is the potential.
Or, you can just keep stacking those bills.
Entertain me with a discussion. I will now go push some cows.
How is wanting to preserve the ability of the community to affect content placement me treating Hive as a investment company.
Theres nothing more in line with the decentralization aspect than what im supporting.
You guys are complaining about getting downvoted. Youre as obsessed with the pursuit of wealth as anyone.
Not all those without cash are good people.
You are free to say anything you want just like anyone here. People just might not like what you say.
Hive is decentralized. Biggest holder holds only 2% of the supply. Its just that you dont have enough people voting you.
Equality is in the ability to say what you want and not be censored and in the ability to purchase as much Hive as you want and affect the chain.
What you seem to want is called equity. And thats a big no-no.
I am disappointed.
EDIT: Article reply posted here - https://peakd.com/hive-168088/@montycashmusic/limited-value-set-if-you-have-more-you-can-do-what-you-like
Hey brother!
I'm not sure whether you can see this comment. But i suggest you take look at @actifit. Such a great community and great leader @mcfarhat.I can share 100 incidents in last few months, where Hive friends have mentioned about Actifit helping them and improving their lives. Actifit is a real use case and game changing idea eying on 450B $ fitness industry. Latest addition to Actifit is the launch on BSC to bring vast audience onto this wonderful hive blockchain. It is trying to incentivise more and more users for motivating to move by addition of more and more branches to core ecosystem like Actifit Defi which was launched in November 2021. There has been so much love from the community in recent times and this project want to replicate it back as as much as possible. I you willl surely keep this name on you top priority list.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't know much about Actifit's Witness operator in the sense of free speech. This proxy is specifically for witnesses who are willing to stand up for free speech in the fullest way possible - I'm happy to check out any evidence for any witness that they fall into this category. Do you know of any links for Actifit that would fit this criteria? Thanks.
Well shit... I must admit, I haven't paid much attention to witnesses or what they were for. But hell if Hive is turning to this cancel culture bull shit, then let's turn it around while we can. I'm on board.
As of the writing of this comment, you still stand to make 1.84 Hive dollars worth on this post. That's quite an achievement considering all the negations!
Maybe there should be a new Hive trophy for such a feat.
Can we call it..
You have received the,
HIVE WARRIOR TROPHY
You've received over 50 large successive downvotes while simultaneously also being upvoted over 400 times and are still up by 1.84 after all of that fucking bullshit.
Well done for being a trooper!
lol
Excuse me.
Keep up the good work man! I look forward to future posts and developments on upcoming projects!
ps. Who do we tag to make this trophy real?
ha, yeah - thanks, I am energy, mostly unable to be destroyed! :)
I didn't ignore the post that you linked, I've just had limited time to read/respond - will try to get to it today.
No worries, I look forward to engaging in discourse.
I am not sure how to take this post.
I think downvotes are an expression and a form of free speech, too.
voting is not really speech. speech is a form of communication that doesn't inherently alter economics. i wouldn't personally say that the right to free speech means that i also have the right to buy a nuclear bomb.
the votes are a form of expression, yes, but then we don't really have a full right of free expression in modern societies - since this would also include people 'expressing' themselves by decapitating random people.
Writing is not really speech either, since it's written (?)
Splitting hairs here. Freedom of expression is what I would like to see.
Censoring art or music impedes people's freedom of expression as much as censoring speech.
Of course, freedom of expression does not include violence... but I am not here for that type of philosophical debate.
...
On Hive, everyone shares a reward pool. Hive(power) is a governance token.
Since you can allocate posting rewards with upvotes, I think downvotes are necessary, too.
Everything you post on chain is imutable on a deeper level and that in itself makes it a great tool for free speech (expression).
I don't agree with curangel (pharesim) downvoting you this much, but your speech is still visible at the end of the day.
Also it is not impossible to power up enough to counter these downvotes... but that's another pointless debate.
I would like to see myself as a free speech advocate.
I agree with some of your points, but I also see it as everybody's right to down- or upvote a post as they please.
The main problem here is the unbalanced distribution of stakes ...and it has been since day 1.
...still not sure how to take your contribution above.
I see some really stupid behavior on both sides.
Acting like whatever you say should not have an economical impact of sorts has little to do with the right to express yourself freely.
Free speech generally includes written forms of communication, since they are equivalent to vocal sounds in terms of their intent and capacity to cause change.
Only really because we generally agree that we don't want violence. In a pure sense, violence is expression of what is inside of us.
It's only visible to the extent that the Hive websites ensure that it is - some do this more than others.
It's not completely impossible, but only possible for individual people in the top 1% of the world's wealth distribution. In powering up, they also create a situation where the current stakeholders can take some of that invested money for themselves. However, the reward pool is stakeholder's money to begin with - so arguably that isn't so much of an issue overall. It is still the case, though, that by creating a tension through downvoting that promotes buying stake to resolve it - the downvoters could think that they create a buy pressure.. However, at the same time they may also create a sell pressure as people get annoyed and just leave.. In that sense, downvoting is arguably more of a creator of sell pressure than upvoting is, since upvoting entices people to buy in and compete with their content (plus is obviously part of the fundamentals of the system, which is more obvious to many people than the effect of downvoting is).
That's a key issue - but since Hive can be bought using Fiat money and the Fiat money has been created totally fraudulently in massive quantities for a long time, there is very little chance that Hive will be distributed in concordance with genuine consensus via POB.
For me, this issue circles around POB since it entices investors and creators to envision a meritocratic, consensus based system where good content gets more eyeballs and therefore advertising. It's a great idea, but it falls apart to some extent when 'the wisdom of the crowd' becomes 'the opinion of a whale'.
Not much left to say here...
That, I fully agree with.
I think we need more small accounts powering up.
I am running for witness, too.
I have been around since almost the beginning.
I have a long history on chain, including saying some stupid stuff and downvoting posts...
I have always tried to help increase wider distribution of stakes.
I have been curating by hand with only my own account for 5+ years now.
For the most part, I try to stay out of political debates (on Hive), but sometimes, I can't help it. I have opinions on all sorts of topics, but avoided downvoting posts for political reasons.
Not sure, if I actively support free speech and what you mean by that, but a witness vote would help me a lot.
It has been a bit worryingly difficult to get witnesses to do anything at all to try to receive a large witness vote from me here. In fact, I don't think anyone has provided any evidence at all yet!
I am looking more for actions than words, though publicly spoken words in important conversations/ways/places is relevant. Examples might include organising counter upvotes on dubious downvotes, developing apps that change how Hive works in order to protect free speech, being a free speech activist outside of Hive in some way - these sorts of things.
Promoting decentralisation in practical ways is also relevant, but since anyone can just say 'I support free speech', we need something more than words.
I understand.
I am probably not the right candidate for what you want to see, then.
Anyone can take action now to become such a candidate! :)
As mentioned above, I see enough potential here to increase the freedom of expression for all sorts of people.
I think I can have more impact, if I don't fight against windmills. My main mission is to support weaker accounts in building their own hive power and reach and not by opposing other people.
I have downvoted ocd for a while, confronted acidyo on chain and pharesim in private, but that's a about as much as I see beneficial for what I am trying to achieve.
When the weaker accounts are crushed routinely, with no way to respond then there is only so much help that can be provided without addressing the cause of their issue. Sure, accounts that post unchallenging content may not have such problems, but then what is the point in saying we support freedom of expression if the caveat is that the expression has to conform to a few people's opinions? lol.
If you provide some links to your downvotes and discussions with these folks then I'll definitely take a look. Thanks.
Phew, that would take me a while.
I don't think it's worth it, as I am not who you are looking for anyways.
Maybe if I find the time, I'll write a script for finding those downvotes and discussions, as some of that stuff is old... and I want to show proof, just for the record.
Oh ok, I didn't realise you meant that the posts were so old.
I made this post recently:
https://peakd.com/ocd/@felixxx/hive-blockchain-vs-curation-business
In the comments you can see how crazy acidyo is.
And that we go way back.
However, that was not about free speech, but more about how they influence content and its rewards here.
Thanks, there are some interesting statements made in that thread - in particular that they value commenting and engagement over the quality of the actual post. So they are not curating for POB, but POC (proof of commenting) - which is not really a valid metric for POB. If commenting were a sound measure of POB then commenting would be a factor in the reward algorithm. So at the very least it is reasonable to say that all investors and creators need to be aware that the 'code is law' selling point of POB and Hive is being distorted by the POC approach of the major curating projects at present.
Look at the profile I mentioned in the main post:
They curate for OCD, their friend (or they themselves) also curate for curangel. Then, they just circle vote (curate) each other.
The content format is always the same: 3 pictures, xxx number of words, school essay type of content that would get no traction anywhere outside of Hive. It is so obvious, it's incredible.
yes, I can see that - just more to add to the sketchiness of the whole situation!
I think I followed logic zombies witness trail a few weeks ago now, I am happy to take your judgment on the witnesses on your list prioritising anti bullying and free speech, I'll follow the trail thankyou for doing all the research.
You are welcome. I will put time in soon to adding some more to the list too. :)
I have been coming across this post (and were linked by multiple people over a period of time) and I wanted to say a few things.
First of all, I believe that free speech is one of the most important aspects of our lives. Not just on the internet, but in real life as well. Nevertheless, one of the crucial aspects of free speech, in general, is that, just because free speech exists, does not mean there are no consequences for it. After all, I believe that it is important to mention that while opinions can exist, no one is obligated to agree, or disagree with them. However, this does not mean that free speech, no matter what it points to (agreeing or disagreeing with something) should be suppressed.
I think the biggest plus that Hive offers to its users is a platform where no one has to worry about their post being "deleted by admins" because the person wrote their opinion on a subject and it contradicts the opinion of a site's admins. Hive does not have that. Thanks to the nature of blockchain, what people say, will stay.
Since the first day, I announced my witness, I have always advocated for having more witnesses. More witnesses mean better decentralization, both on a technical level and a political level. Witnesses, just like everyone, have a say in the development and advancement of Hive as a platform.
As a witness and as a regular human being, I may not agree with everything that is written on Hive. But Hive's biggest strength, its immutability is something I will fight for. Is downvoting a post on Hive "censorship?" In my opinion, no. It is not. We always argue that anyone, at any given time, can stake Hive Power and it is up to them what they would like to do with it. If they want to upvote every post left and right, so be it. The other way around is the same. Do we need anything implemented on a technical level to counter this? In my opinion again, no.
I am not a native English speaker, so, when I hear the word "censorship" what comes to my mind is that restricting access, completely, to a certain item due to certain reasons by people in power. Hive, when we think about it, does not have that. Especially when we have more and more witnesses every week, adding their own decentralised nodes to the chain pushing the notion of immutability further.
On the other hand, if we wanted to talk about the "viewership" aspect, I agree. Certain communities as well as the trending page attracts quite a lot of people. This does not mean there's censorship or an "attack on free-speech" in my opinion. Anyone can create their own community to get around "community mutes" since they would be the community's manager. For trending and/or negative reputation related stuff... Those are all frontend. A developer can certainly build a frontend that completely ignores downvotes. This is, at the moment, technically possible. Utilizing Hive to its fullest. The data is available, the data will never be censored. It is up to frontends to utilize it however they see fit. It is possible that some people may agree with it, some people may not. But... does it really make a difference? They would definitely be opinions to be respected. If a person likes it, feel free to use it. If they don't, feel free to use an alternative frontend. The possibilities are endless on Hive.
"But rewards?" if anyone asks, has to remember that on Hive, rewards are never promised. Our biggest strength on Hive is the fact that I mentioned before. Whatever you say, will stay.
This text ended up longer than I would like to admit, still, there are a lot of things to say about this topic. However, as an advocate for decentralisation, I said it before, and I'll say it again. If anyone has the necessary experience or skillset to host a Hive node and have the means for it, please go ahead and become a witness and contribute to the technical and political decentralisation of our chain.
Thanks for responding here. This topic has gone on for many posts and probably over 1000 comments by now, so I don't expect you to have read it all.. but one key point is that in English, the word 'censor' does not only mean 'total deletion'.
So censoring also includes actions that suppress content deliberately.
The same dictionary defines 'Suppress' as:
Definitions 1, 2, 2a, 3a, 5a and 5b all result from downvoting (especially downvoting to zero).
Big downvotes mean that content which the brains of the Hive community have specifically valued and wanted others to see have been 'put down by force' and possibly kept from public knowledge, since the public will not know about something which is almost invisible - despite it's continued existence. Proof of Brain, in the minds of many/most people is intended to enable the wisdom of the crowd to elevate ideas/things for the purpose of them becoming public knowledge and for the public to be made conscious of them. This is similar to how news editors either publish or hold back ideas from the public for their own reasons.
Whether anyone agrees with my points here or not, I think they will find it hard to disagree with the applicability of definition 5b in the context of downvoting on Hive, since downvoting definitely inhibits the growth or development of the idea and author of the idea within the post in question. I appreciate that 'post rewards are not final until 7 days is up', but the reality is that posts on Hive gain reach and followers BEFORE the 7 days is up and downvoting cancels that out. We could say that the posts do not have their 'correct' POB level of reach until everyone has voted that is going to vote - including the downvotes.. However, it doesn't change the fact that the downvote has inhibited the growth of the post an the author.
Most people agree that censorship is a good thing on Hive where it prevents and inhibits the growth of spammers and plagiarisers. However, what is being addressed by this thread are those actions of downvote censoring that are done not for these reasons, but instead for personal reasons that may or may not be shared - but which have no justification.
It's clear that such downvoting can be performed by corrupt state actors, corporate criminals seeking to hide their crimes - having already bought off already being in cahoots with mainstream media corporations (not unlikely in many cases since the same 2/3 investment funds now hold controlling shares of ALL major corporations in ALL industries). This is the main reason why I and many others feel/know how important it is to minimise downvoting to clearly defined situations that clearly harm Hive - since otherwise it is the downvoting that harms Hive's reputation and the sentiment of many in the community.
Other than the language issue here, I think that the main difference between our positions is that I am looking at a broader range of implications that result from downvoting and the possible effects on Hive's longevity, growth potential and PR moving forward. Hive is already known as a place where censors operate among influencers in the free speech movement, so it is essential to take some action to address this asap if Hive's primary selling point is to be taken seriously.
The decentralisation is important and there isn't much that I can do to stop big whales coming in and totally dominating - but we have literally already gone through this with Steem and the result was a lot of work leading to Hive. To me it makes sense to take all possible action to limit the possibility of similar occurring again.
The blockchain 'law' allows for a hostile takeover and we can fork again - which is not great but is an accepted feature of the design of blockchains in general. However, Hive includes certain rules that directly influence all of this and which can be changed relatively easily. The key one that I see is the paramter that determines the amount of free downvotes that each account has. The number was introduced and then never adjusted following community feedback - personally, I see the lowering of this number as the simplest possible way to influence the situation without requiring much effort. The result is that power to censor through inhibition of growth of accounts is significantly reduced, which should increase decentralisation in some senses (or at least the perception of it), while easing up the tensions in the chain and improving the public image of Hive.
Since you haven't commented on this aspect, maybe you can add some thoughts in light of what I have shared here?
Cheers!
Free downvotes were initially added to help combat plagiarism/abuse without the fear of losing potential curation rewards. So people either had to be quite altruistic to forego their own "income" to combat abuse. If I am not misremembering, the number of free downvotes each account has is approximately 2 (per 24 hrs). So only 200% worth of downvotes can be given out before it starts affecting VP, therefore, curation rewards.
I do understand your point and it is true. Technically, when you see a big red "you've received a downvote" notification from an app you're using, that might end up in a negative psychological effect, which might cause the person to lose enthusiasm to continue doing whatever they're doing on the platform. Is it because free downvotes exist? I don't think so. Even before free downvotes, even though it could be less than now, people did use the downvote feature.
But again, it revolves back to the "frontend" aspect of things. Just because it is technically possible to downvote someone does not mean a front end has to display it (a la trending). Having a front end that simply does not count downvotes is relatively easy. On top of that, it's also important to point out that eventually, when Hive becomes more "modular" it is possible that L1 will not be the social/posting aspect any longer. To be honest, even today, someone can create their own sidechain token and award it however they'd like, ignoring downvotes altogether. (That is if the worry about rewards outweighs the viewership.)
To return back to the removal and/or adjustment to free downvotes; It won't stop people from downvoting. But it might affect the fight against obvious spammers, plagiarists as well as reward pool abusers. So it is a case of "lose-lose" in my opinion.
To sum up my comment, I do think that Hive is going to evolve even further in the very near future and have proper L2 operations. Having L2 is going to give us so many options in terms of various apps and how they operate freely, utilizing Hive's features, depending on what they'd like to use. From reward pool to voting power, to basic stuff like upvoting and downvoting. Currently, any change in the system causes an issue. It's a case of you win some, you lose some.
Regarding governance and potential "takeover" attacks; Hive is definitely stronger than Steem. On top of having features like delayed voting, we do not have "Hive Inc." and that is a huge plus for us. Anyone at any given time can power up Hive to become a major player. Hive was just $0.09 just a year ago. As I said before, I would really like to see more people stepping up to be witnesses, taking an active part in governance and consensus, deciding the future of the chain while contributing to the decentralisation of it. That does not necessarily mean they have to power up a million Hive.
My summary needs a summary; Unfortunately, in my opinion, there is no "best of both worlds" at L1 with what we have right now when it comes to downvotes, however, in the future as Hive develops further, it will unlock even more freedom for developers and users alike to customize the platform to their liking.
My understanding is that the level of free downvotes is set at 25% (or 2.5 full downvotes per 24h for free). That's based on my memory and the comments of other witnesses recently (I haven't check the code lately).
The psychological effect will be present whether the downvotes are free or not, but people who understand how the system works 'may' be more bothered by the free downvotes since they know that the downvoter has actually financially gained as a result of the downvote. This is because, as Hive Alive's Untrending report now shows, around 4-8% of the rewards pool is returned to authors through downvoting overall - which therefore then gets paid to everyone making posts.. and this means that the downvoter will gain a boost on their own posts as a result of the downvoting. Not such an issue if downvoting is done for justifiable reasons that secure the chain - but definitely an issue with ideological downvoting.
My suggestion to consider lowering the rate of free downvotes, perhaps to 1 free downvote per day, is untested, but would result in downvoters being forced to be less ideological in their actions.
As long as rewards are being adjusted by the downvoting, the issue is not just a front end one. The back end is directly affected by the downvoting, which directly effects the core economics of the entire platform.
Yes, layer 2 tokens already exist for this purpose, such as VYB, but creating layer 2 tokens is expensive and only addresses the issue if enough people choose to buy into the token and leave core Hive behind. This is not a simple task to pull off for a variety of reasons.
For the moment, the majority of action and stake is in layer 1 Hive and so the issue needs to be addressed on layer 1. In future it may be that layer 1 becomes a 'governance' token only, but we are not there yet.
I think your conclusion here is premature, given that we don't have data with which to assess the impact of an adjustment of free downvote rates. The aim in reducing the level of free downvotes is not to stop all downvoting, but to force downvoters to be more judicious and careful in their downvoting. At present, single account holders have ample downvote power to target scammers, spammers and plagiarisers, while also zeroing accounts of people who aren't any of those.. and STILL have downvote power left over - this leaves them free to basically dominate whoever they want, generating more profit for themselves in the process.
I can run analysis on the downvote data to produce useful calculations on how reductions in the free downvote pool might affect the rewards pool, but I haven't got to that yet. I personally don't know what a better level than 2.5 full downvotes per 24h will be, but I find it absurd to think that we have arrived at the absolute best figure by complete chance - even though it has never been experimented with publicly at different levels.
A perfect system would be dynamic, adjusting how many free downvotes are available per 24h based on community feedback. There could be reports on bad downvotes for example, that might lower the rate. All of this could be experimented with.
For sure.
From my observation, a lot of people who downvote quite regularly are "curators", in other words, they focus on curation and/or other aspects of Hive as opposed to writing posts themselves. So I don't think they downvote specifically to increase their gains.
I see your point and would definitely be interested in seeing how it would play out if free downvotes did still exist, albeit at a lower rate.
Tests and data (potentially simulation) on how things would turn out if free downvotes were reduced to 1/day would definitely be useful. I don't know and can't really estimate if it will cause any substantial changes (both positive and negative) but it's nice to see nevertheless.
In conclusion, I believe we can both agree that there are a lot of data that needs to be analysed and hopefully tested (could be simulated) to find the best sweet spot for our situation now. However, our solution lies in the future. With a proper, preferably free (or minimal costs) L2.
Thanks for your comments.
There are several relevant issues here, one is that we have no way of knowing how much they profit from authoring since they can easily run numerous of their own accounts and 'curate' them (they can also just do this for friends. I have had several accounts pointed out to me that are doing this (basically upvoting their own curator admins to a high level over and over again). Every downvote increases the rewards for their own posts and that of their friends who they don't downvote. For large accounts looking to maximise returns, it is a no brainer to even have downvote quotas, to make sure that they downvote as much as possible in order to maximise returns. Obviously, they will say they don't do this, but the maths are clear - that they are motivated to do it. This is another reason why downvoting without giving a reason is a bad look.
Yes, agreed.
Agreed again!
I think that support for these ideas and ideals are sufficient justification to say that a witness is genuinely aligned towards holding Hive to a high standard of support for free speech. I will upvote your witness now!
I don't know if you remember, but even during the "haejin flag wars" it was something like 2%. I am pretty sure that this 4-8 is utter nonsense. There is about 150M vested, @blocktrades (main account) has about 6M, so about 4% of the vest. That is like BT downvoting 100% something like 10-20x a day and taking 3500-7000 dollars away from authors. Firstly, he gets 2.5 a day. Which secondly means that at least 6M in vests needs to vote the rest 7.5x. But, they get 2.5, so that is more like 18M extra vested HIVE downvoting at their 2.5 a day. Thirdly, that would also have to take it away from upvoted content to return it to the pool for redistribution. This means that 24M Hive voting 2.5x a day and hitting posts that have at least 3600 dollars would have to be happening to get to the low 4% and, 48M Hive at 2.5 downvotes a day to get to the 8% - which is about a third of all powered up HIVE using all of their downvotes. Does that sound right?
thank you very much for the post, have a nice day
Dear @ura-soul, I agree with you! I admire your efforts and struggles for freedom of speech.