"You can stop right there. Downvotes aren't punitive, they are voting on where rewards go. You are free to post and no one is punishing you, but you aren't entitled to rewards unless the blockchain voting allocates them to you, end of story."
Let's be honest for a moment. In your downvote activity, you're not voting where you want the rewards to go. They are safe and sound in the reward pool and haven't gone anywhere. What you're doing is voting where you don't want them to go, and that is punitive. It's plain as day that you are blatantly targeting specific types of content with your downvotes. And if you're saying I want my vote to minusculely increase all other upvoted content at the expense of an [individual post], there's no way to see that other than as a punitive action of sorts.
I noticed you were talking to @truthforce about comments, balking at the number of comments on some of the content you're downvoting. Well, here's the thing, every time you ding a post, it drops a few if not many places in any given feed. This kind of action makes it less noticeable and almost ensures less engagement on the content. And if we address comments being the deciding factor of whether a post merits receiving one of your downvotes. Then why are you upvoting instead of downvoting the spam comments on your @hbd.funder?
Nobody is engaging with those spam comments with comments. And you have them upvoted to the tune of hundreds of dollars each daily while reaping massive amounts of curation rewards on autopilot by curating textbook spam. Now, I know this project is allegedly for a good cause. However, you're gaming the curation scheme in one of the laziest ways possible to benefit yourself and your project all-the-while griefing people who are trying damn hard and putting forth a lot of effort to make it in this ecosystem.
I know that code is law, technically speaking, but it's like the 'Law of the Jungle.' The best of men in days of old have expounded upon this ruthless fact, that there is a thin veneer between civilization and all-out chaos, and they've created additional layers of law for the betterment of humankind. The most simple, effective, and least-offensive form of these is natural law, and all other forms of laws are built on top of that one.
Here's a thought experiment, a crazy man can go and murder or rob someone and be in complete harmony with the law of the jungle. But that doesn't make his actions right, and that's where natural law comes into play. I think it would greatly benefit the HIVE platform if the DEV team tried their best to conform to natural law--this is opposed to the "law of the jungle." You see, if HIVE doesn't feel or gel right with people, then the lack of retention will be the sole blame of stakeholders like yourself who make it this way.
We're still in a quasi-state of first mover advantage. We got some time to get good and show how engaging HIVE can be. But if people like yourself keep shitting on the user experience of those who demonstrate intelligence and show an effort--then you'll have nobody except yourself to blame for just another random token that fails to reach its best potential.
Because I believe high(er) rewards there are beneficial to Hive.
Technical correction, though. I don't make those posts/comments, so they're not mine. They do benefit a project (hbdstabilizer) that I run, but which also does not benefit me personally except to the extent that I'm a Hive stakeholder and I believe it benefits all Hive stakeholders.
The curation rewards must be pretty sick, though. How many of those spam comments do you upvote at 100% daily?
My curation rewards are absolutely crappy because I do nothing to optimize it. Yes, if you have a large stake you get large curation rewards, but compared to the ROI of those who actually try, mine are terrible.
It isn't because I don't know how to do so either. I've both done successful manual curation and run curation bots in the past, and I had among the highest curation ROI for both. I just don't want to focus on extracting rewards at this point when there is far more to be gained by increasing the value of Hive. With the value circling the drain, focusing on maximizing rewards is fighting for second to last place here. No thanks. Let's get Hive to be worth a lot and then we all do well.
"Let's get Hive to be worth a lot and then we all do well."I bet you if you considered focusing less on downvoting the work of content creators, more people would feel comfortable telling their friends to come here, and when people start feeling good about HIVE, they'll buy more tokens. It's this kind of (block)chain reaction that'll cause market activity that drives up the value of HIVE in the marketplace.
We don't have enough clout to be ("the literal") 'Soup Nazi' anymore. The decentralized paid social media marketplace is rapidly expanding to places like odysee and theta. Once any given platform perfects the formula, then we've blown our chance at being the first (successful) mover, and folks will migrate there. I don't think you want that. Nobody does. Everyone I know wants HIVE to get good.
Everyone I know wants the "large stakeholders" to get friendly towards lowly content creators that do their all to make this place work. To give you an idea, I could earn more panhandling for a couple of days at an intersection in a homeless man's attire than I did for all these years that I've poured my heart and soul into this platform, and this should let you know that I'm not here for the money.
Although, I do get torqued when people interfere with my earning potential. HIVE might only pay in peanuts, but I worked god damn hard for those peanuts. So please don't be a (hold your tongue and say) peanuts.
For that matter, I'm pretty sure my rewards were higher when I just delegated to a curation project, even though they take a cut. I cancelled the delegation so I could concentrate my votes on to hbd.funder. Doing so likely cost me money.
That's the same thing and no I don't see it as punitive. Voting where they don't go means they go to others. They don't get taken by the downvoter.
I know that you are not "taking the rewards," but you are not allocating them either. When you diminish the earmarked rewards for a post, you are, in effect, invalidating the upvote actions of others who've mindfully read and resonated with the content. Your bold assertion that leaving it in the rewards pool is like giving all other upvotes a tiny increase is rather obtuse. I say this because people know without a doubt that you didn't read all of those thousands of posts to determine whether or not they merited the imperceptible boost in value. That said, some of your downvote activity has more of a harmful effect than anything else because you're handing out demerits to content you don't like instead of allocating rewards to content that you do. I want you to know it's a very demoralizing experience to be on the receiving end of a smooth downvote, but I think you know this already. I think you enjoy this aspect of your stake power. But mark my words, one day, life will downvote you, and I say this because it happens to us all eventually. Shitty things happen all of the time to good people and bad people alike. But whenever life deals you a sour hand, take the time to reflect on your past behavior and how you got off on doing shitty things to good people. Many of us on HIVE genuinely care about each other, so much that people will blog about their hard times or a bad experience, and we receive and give words of support and encouragement to each other. But I can't help but wonder when someone sick like yourself runs into hard times, if you have someone to go to, or if you've burned all those bridges down and to the ground. I had better quit right now. You're going to end up having me talk me into feeling sorry for yourself, and I just don't have that kind of time or energy for you right now. Get well, get gud, stop breaking HIVE, you're stinking up the joint!