Hive is a very interesting social experiment that merges technology, finance and social interaction in a sometimes messy collage of experience. The subjective valuation of other people's ideas in exchange for financial reward might always yield conflict in a public setting - so it is essential that we optimise our understanding and process in order to ensure Hive's public image is maintained in key ways.
Having been witness to a variety of strategies used to silence or limit people's communication over the years, I feel I have a lot to say on the topic of censorship and the associated control involved. Control of the communication of other people can take a variety of forms and in this post I will highlight some of them, why they are censorship and some of the issues involved as they are relevant to Hive.
One person's personal vision and understanding can often be at odds with others, but just as in real life it always pays the most to communicate respectfully with people before stumbling in like a bull in a China shop with downvotes, swearing and attacks.
What is Censorship?
Firstly, let's look at what censorship is and is not.
It is important to know that our language has been seriously warped over the centuries, so that the original meanings and intent behind words has often been twisted and manipulated - sometimes to the point where it means the total opposite. We need to look to Etymology to get a more rounded understanding of the meaning of words, especially ones that are liable to have been 'adjusted' by those seeking to manipulate people's thinking in ways they wouldn't like if they knew what was being done.
Etymology is the study of the origin and evolution of language, including words themselves. The etymology of the word 'propaganda', for example, is particularly interesting since it comes from the same root as 'propagate', which essentially just means to spread and share to create growth. Prior to the world wars, 'propaganda' actually did not have the negative connotation it does today, it was a word that could be used to describe the actions of a school, a religion or just about anyone who shares information with others!
World War 2 was so rife with deliberate lies and deception on the part of both the major 'sides' in the conflict, that the information sharing of the day was thoroughly exposed by both groups to be full of false information by the other side. This became such an issue that the actual word 'propaganda' took on a negative spin, whereby it now mostly only meant 'deliberately false information'. So we can see how our modern perception has been 'adjusted' as the result of conflict and manipulation here.
A 'Censor' is described by the main online Etymological Dictionary as:
1530s, "Roman magistrate of 5c. B.C.E. who took censuses and oversaw public manners and morals," from French censor and directly from Latin censor, from censere "to appraise, value, judge," from PIE root *kens- "speak solemnly, proclaim" (source also of Sanskrit amsati "recites, praises," asa "song of praise").
They also had charge of public finances and public works. Transferred sense of "officious judge of morals and conduct" in English is from 1590s. Latin censor also had a transferred sense of "a severe judge; a rigid moralist; a censurer."
From 1640s as "official empowered to examine books, plays (later films, etc.) to see they are free of anything immoral or heretical." By the early decades of the 19c. the meaning of the English word had concentrated into "state agent charged with suppression of speech or published matter deemed politically subversive." Related: Censorial; censorian.
Source: EtymOnline
So the essence of censoring is taking action to assess information based on it's content and to decide upon it's morality. In the previous hundred years, the word has been added to to include action taken to ensure information deemed 'immoral' or 'wrong' is removed from circulation too.
Strategies for censorship have included:
- Book burning. (see the Nazi regime in World War 2 - and others).
- Arresting/execution of authors (see numerous regimes around the world - especially communist ones).
- Deliberate misinformation campaigns to discredit authors (see Julian Assange and the false cases brought against him which ultimately also led to his arrest).
- Digital deplatforming (see Alex Jones and numerous others who are unable to post on the world's largest social networks without having their content removed). See also the absurd level of soft and hard censorship found on Facebook, Youtube and other networks for a wide variety of reasons.
Digital Control & Deplatforming
For a variety of reasons, social networking websites can block or remove content and even profiles created by the public using their systems. In some cases they may be breaking laws by not doing so and be liable for prosecution by state operatives. In other cases they simply choose of their own volition to take action to stifle communication.
One of the best known examples in recent years has been American Radio and TV host Alex Jones. His 'Infowars' channel attracts a very large audience and he generally focuses on political topics that demonstrate or imply that massive scale abuses of power are taking place globally in the corporate and government structures.
Understandably, someone covering this kind of topic is going to attract a lot of attention from people wanting to silence him. Whether you love or hate Alex Jones it is provable that a significant enough proportion of what he has said over the years is accurate enough that he has legitimately exposed major crimes in governments in numerous parts of the world.
Since the court cases that surrounded his coverage of the Sandy Hook school shooting and others in the US, he has been forcibly removed from Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and probably other platforms too. He alleged that the Sandy Hook shootings were a psychological operation and essentially 'fake' - set up by state operatives to justify gun control in the US and other policies that the public would typically reject, but might accept in their emotionally charged state following the shootings.
A recent court case found against him and further empowered the censorship of him online by big tech organisations.
The fine points of law surrounding such removal of someone from a system that depends on free discourse in order to attract users is interesting and detailed. For years there has been debate globally about the role of social networks and how their functions fit in to existing legislation regarding communications and free speech rights. It is a long and complicated topic, but the gist is that they have tended to operate under protection from prosecution if their users break the law in their posts, because they - the social networks - are not editing the content, they simply republish it.
Once an organisation starts to edit content they are closer to a news agency and are liable legally for the content they allow to remain on their site. Social networks have then tried to posture in every way possible as if they are not editors and only take action to remove content when it breaks laws. However, leaked documents from Google and other tech companies makes abundantly clear that they have fully intended to censor the web for years - beyond their official position on the topic.
Google privately stated that they perceive that people cannot be trusted with Freedom! They literally state this in the document I previously linked here! Now this would not be such a problem if they were just a private company that makes envelopes or delivers fruit.. But they are one of the world's largest communication companies that carries the vast proportion of human communications globally.
The argument that such businesses can censor whoever they want (censor is the word that they themselves have used) is legitimate in some senses, since we can simply use other service providers. However, this is not the whole story. What happens when someone they disagree with leaves their network in order to avoid their censorship, but then needs to communicate with others on their network and cannot. This essentially means that anyone who Google disagrees with gets 'siloed' into a corner of the internet that is hard to be heard from. Google knows this and this makes Google a huge tool in the arsenal of anyone seeking to control the free flow of information.
Similarly, the other large social networking organisations hold the same kind of power. There is a reason why the Communist Chinese government only allows authorised (controlled) social networks in China - it is to make sure that they themselves can control the thinking of the population within certain limitations that they choose. If the government commits terrible crimes against humanity, as it has always done from time to time, you can bet their social networks won't allow discussion of it.
So here we have one of the key topics of our age. How to ensure that the free flow of information is maintained in a way that keeps us all safe. Capitalist ideology and the way of the world today often claims that competition will solve the problem. A free market will, we are told, ensure that freedom is allowed. Here too, though, there are problems.
The more centralised a system becomes, the more possible it is for the controlling entities to thwart freedom. The economic systems of the world are absolutely centralised at this point - as has been highlighted numerous times. The same 3 financial organisations own controlling shares in virtually all major corporations - meaning that the 'free market' is mostly only an illusion at this point.
So it is no surprise then that the major social networks work together behind the scenes to share information about user profiles that they have censored - trying to ensure that all networks work to censor them too. This is exactly what we have seen in numerous high profile cases, where all of the major western networks have deplatformed people on the same day.
This is NOT a free market or a free market of ideas. Arguably it points to monopolistic intent and collusion which may be illegal. Indeed, there are numerous anti trust cases active and pending against silicon valley networks, not least of which the one by @jpbliberty to defend Hive against Facebook and Google's censorship of projects by banning advertising (breaching anti trust laws in the process).
With such centralisation of power, the argument that people can just stop using the services of these companies if they don't like their censorship is somewhat short sighted. While true on the surface, without viable alternatives, this argument only holds so much water. Entire industries are based upon social networks today - including significant aspects of the multi billion dollar marketing industry - so large numbers of people literally cannot stop using these platforms without being forced to change job!
Thankfully, there are numerous smaller networks that have been created to try to combat the centralised control of information that has no doubt itself been arguably responsible for a lot of harm to humanity. When individuals determine themselves to be arbiters of truth and inhibit information flow, there is pretty much always a harmful outcome as a result. The censorship of scientists and Doctors during the COVID19 events by silicon valley has arguably been one such example of this.
Proponents of the censorship will say that they are correct and are saving lives, while those being censored will say the opposite. The well explored theory of free speech demonstrates easily that the only valid answer is to allow free speech, prohibit censorship and empower each individual to make up their own mind based on seeing all of the evidence. This is absolutely NOT what many silicon valley entities respect or allow - they instead dictate to the population what is true and claim hero status as a result while heavily denying the necessary debate and fine points that contradict their self aggrandisement.
Implication of Control of Information On Hive
So we come to Hive. Hive exists almost solely because it's previous incarnation, Steem, became a shadow of it's former self after a takeover by likely communist party backed Justin Sun. He immediately began using the technology to directly censor posts he disagreed with. His actions are a personification of tyrannical dictatorship and unwise, even childish, disrespect for the rights of others.
Hive was seen as the last hope for truly decentralised social networking online by many. It is this vision that has ensured that many people continue to invest their valuable time and resources into trying to grow it and make it a success.
Arguably, it is the consensus based censorship resistance that makes Hive attractive to use. While people can be paid out for posting content on Hive powered sites, they can still earn more by sticking to the rules on Youtube, for example, and earning advertising revenue. So by definition, Hive's value proposition is within it's resistance to censorship and this has never been any different.
Therefore, maintaining a censorship free environment is an absolute requirement of the success of Hive. Hive with censorship would effectively be Twitter with crypto stuck on top. Since Twitter is literally building their own version of this, a censored Hive would quickly disappear into obscurity and be forgotten.
Therefore, understanding and operating carefully regarding free speech is mission critical for everyone wanting Hive to succeed - whether they personally care about the controversial topics of the day or not.
This is where things get a bit messy.
Technically, the Hive blockchain is not censored, you can always go to the raw blocks that make up the blockchain and view any and all posts that have been made to it. However, this is not how anyone actually uses Hive. In reality, we use social networking and blogging websites to view Hive posts and these CAN censor content themselves if they want to. By this I mean 'hard censor' as in totally remove the posts.
Steemit.com has/had a DCMA takedown list which includes specific posts that it will not publish in order to avoid copyright violations and legal problems. This makes sense since their own operation is threatened if they are constantly in court fighting cases as a result of the content being posted by the public. While social networking sites are technically covered as a carrier of information and not liable if they don't edit the content, this does not stop all court cases.
Hive includes similar and each website operator has the ability to block certain posts if they choose to. In general I have not seen this being a problem, so kudos to the Hive website operators. That being said, there is a blacklist operated at the Hivemind level which adds another layer of blocking of content. It is for each individual to check their own content to find out if it is being blocked and to try to take action if that is the case. However, while Hive is technically decentralised, to get your content unblocked would probably involve having to speak to one of a very small number of private individuals and asking them to remove you from the blacklist!
Such centralisation of information control on a platform that is ultimately staking it's own growth on it actually being decentralised is a huge weakness in the business and growth model. The majority of people will not encounter this as being a problem unless those who manage the blacklists start to become politically motivated in their actions or perhaps become financially corrupted by big money interests keen to manage their reputuation online.
Remember, that such nefarious actions for control of information are key strategies in the large criminal organisations of the planet. The communist parties of the world have collectively murdered more people in the last 100 years than have died from all of the pandemics during that time combined. They have absolutely no problem with committing crimes or acting unethically to further their agenda. So it should surprise no-one when Justin Sun took the actions that he did in order to stop the flow of information on Steem. Is it a coincidence that he took this action just at the start of COVID19 and that he himself is from Wuhan, China? I had never heard of Wuhan at that time and yet I found myself having to deal with two major threats from the same City in the same week! There are no accidents.
So, we have established that Hive can be censored at the blacklist level but that this seems to not be a huge problem for people at present. There is, however, the more obvious form of information control on Hive known as 'downvoting'.
The Effect of Downvoting on Hive & Information Freedom
Throughout the entire history of both Steem and Hive, people have used downvoting as a way to remove rewards from posts and thus to limit the reach they have on the network. Steem was originally designed as an experiment and certain logic was included along with the downvotes to try to achieve certain goals of fairness and to reduce junk content.
Originally, downvoting was considered something to do only in emergencies and frowned upon by many people. It was not to be used for differences of opinion and only to be used to prevent spam or fraud. However, this is no longer apparently a rule on Hive and plenty of people, some with large stakes, openly downvote anyone who they disagree with for no real reason other than disagreement.
The argument we hear is that this is not censorship and is simply a disagreement over the distribution of the reward pool. Since all stakeholders have a vested interest in where the reward pool goes, they say it is a legitimate use of downvoting to try to shape the distribution of rewards as they see fit. "If you don't like it, get more stake and do the same yourself!".
The reason for saying this is not censorship is that the posts remain visible in most Hive powered websites, but let's look back to the meaning of the word 'Censor'.
Censoring is not only about the absolute removal of information. In fact, it primarily refers to the judging of information as moral or immoral (or right/wrong) and then taking action based on that. Censoring could also include simply making a public statement against the material and intending that others deliberately avoid the material on your say so. The intent here is key and the intent of censorship is to limit the eyeballs that see the content in question.
When we downvote, we do not only remove reward pool payouts, we also limit the visibility of the posts on the network. This is achieved by removal of posts from trending lists and eventually by forcing authors into constantly having their posts hidden - still readable, but much less visible and likely to get much less attention.
So downvoting, by the full definition of both the word 'censor' and it's spirit IS a form of attempt at censorship. Downvoting reduces the flow of information. Now this is made more complicated by the fact that it is the upvoting of others which increases the visibility of posts, so without those upvotes the information would also be somewhat hidden as compared to posts which have received upvotes. This though, is the entire point of 'proof of brain', the algorithm that Hive is based on.
The idea of Proof of Brain is that the community subjectively values ideas so that the subjectively 'best' ideas are rewarded. So the posts at the top of trending are theoretically those which the community's stake holders most value.
In this context, downvoting might not seem too unreasonable and is simply part of the process of the community's stakeholders having their say on what they subjectively value. There is a problem here though, in that Hive has a key selling point of being uncensored!
The original Steem whitepaper explains that negative behaviour by stakeholders with regards voting is disparaged by the potential cost to them financially if their actions ruin the entire network. The idea being that people will not be entirely anti social because it will hurt their investment if people leave in droves as a result. Despite this being technically true, it does not stop heavily ego driven and anti-social people from trying to do anti social things and finding out the hard way that they are mistaken. A case in point being Justin Sun, who did exactly this and now holds Steem tokens that are worth substantially less than Hive.
So we have a constant point of contention within the design of Hive that relies on a community spirit to ensure things move forward harmoniously. Anyone substantially deviating from this risks their own investment. However, differences of opinion and people's different experiences can sometimes mean that points of controversy can amount to a lack of harmony. When not kept in check these issues can escalate and lead to existential threat to the whole network, thus we need to be aware of them and take care.
A network that relies on a unique selling point of being uncensored, needs to be run wisely. Since the restriction of reach to content can be perceived to be censorship and since the entire proof of brain mechanism is based upon increasing or restricting the reach of content, this issue can quickly become more of an issue than might first be obvious.
The best example we have of this playing out at high stakes level is Justin Sun and it led to an entire fork being created. This can and may happen again an unlimited number of times if others attempt to do similarly to Hive as he did to Steem. The response here from wouldbe censors might be "Well, if someone tries a hostile takeover of Hive, I will be rich because the price will shoot up" and therein lies a huge problem. There is actually financial incentive to try to stir up controversy through downvoting on Hive!
The only viable solution to such downvoting for those who are serious about freedom of speech is to acquire enough stake to outvote the downvoters. They know this and they know that such acquisition drives up the price of Hive, so they are in a win-win situation when viewed from a somewhat selfish perspective. They gain through the downvotes by pulling rewards away from others and towards everyone else (themselves included) and they also potentially gain by pressuring others to buy more stake, pushing the price of Hive up in the process.
From this perspective it makes no sense at all to NOT downvote. It is a financial nobrainer that if you want to maximise your rewards, you MUST downvote as much as possible! This, though, denies the psychological fallout of such actions. A free speech network that is perceived to be downvote heavy and that can easily squeeze out smaller accounts who rely on their blogging income to free up their time sufficiently to enable them to produce quality content - will flush itself down the toilet.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, this is a complex topic that goes beyond technology and into the heart of human interaction. People will likely always disagree and Hive's voting system is just a more recent way of trying to witness this playing out in public using maths and logic.
Harmony in society is dependent on people feeling good and this includes them being felt and heard - treated as equals in important ways. People need to be able to communicate in order to feel their needs can be met on the societal level and if they are unable to do this, they will feel stressed. This may ultimately even harm their health and lead them to take ever more desperate measures to survive.
For these reasons, freedom of information on social networks is actually a very serious topic and not something to carelessly joke about from your wealthy seat at the banquet table. If you claim to care about others and to serve the community, then you need to get real and acknowledge the results of your actions as they ripple out beyond your immediate sphere of perception.
The truth does indeed set us free and it is for all people to diligently study the truth of our situation, including the meaning of words and the true effects that result from our actions.
When it comes to the growth and health of the Hive ecosystem, every action has effects which may go beyond those we perceive. Whether we ourselves perceive it or not, large scale and targeted downvoting based on ideology casts a very negative light on Hive in the wider world. A world where Hive and Steem are typically thought of as scams by default by people who haven't taken the time to do any real research.
Effective marketing needs to address this issue sincerely and with an open mind - otherwise opportunities will be lost, just as Justin Sun is finding out!
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!
Get paid to mine your imagination for the benefit of the entire NFT world:
NFTSymposium.io.
Thank you for making this great post on important topic, and welcome to the club! The targeting of scientific, fact-based info disruptive to the dogmatic Covid-1984 narrative is really been turned up lately, targeting more content/creators, and far more zeroing out of content than in times past.
It is clearly coordinated, by a cabal of users, the vote patterns and answers given when approached make that clear, in my opinion anyway. I think layer 2 is the only viable solution, counter upvotes to the downvotes is powerless against hundreds worth in downvotes and the type of coordination we are seeing to zero out posts. Although I still appreciate @freezepeach for trying to help and offer solutions. You get it, removing content from trending is censorship. Systematically removing rewards on targeted users based on ideological difference of view is not much different than losing job for refusing to take experimental jab. Same cult, same worldview, same tactics, same goals, same results, and in both cases being hailed as ‘freedom’! It is a war against those who will not convert to this cult, and they will use every tool at their disposal, online and offline.
Keep up the good work and exposing the lies, silencing us is what they want to achieve, let’s not let that happen.
Well done @ura-soul you have really said a lot.
I believe that if a post didn't interest a curator in a way he/she deems fit, the best way is to avoid such post entirely instead of downvoting it because you disagree or dislike it.
Even though upvote and downvoting exists as a way to balance the activities here on hive I still think we should do that in a reasonable way and not to abuse such previleges.
Talking of the fact that trending post are posts which community stakeholders value more, there are many contents which do not even worth the curation it's getting and there are others that worth it but is not valued - I think something is missing here and we all need to address it.
There is a huge gap in perception between people on this planet in many important ways. This is a large part of what we see in the voting patterns on Hive. My suggestion is for like minded people to come together more to provide supportive environments for those of like mind.
Your suggestions is good, but how do we tackle it considering the amount of hivers here.
One option is to create 'layer 2' tokens on Hive, such as the 'proof of brain' token or the splinterlands tokens - which will enable only holders of the tokens to participate in the rewards pool for that token and the community can have it's own website too. Other than that, there is always a more brute force approach of activating the wider hive community to just use the downvote/upvote tools in the standard hive system to make sure voting is not abused.
✌️
A deep topic worthy of more discussion.
"Reward Censorship" is a new concept to me and I can see parallels with it in the workforce in real life.
I've moved over to bastyon (previously Pocketnet). With the help of a virtual friend I sold some HIVE in exchange for pocketcoin to get me started and to take from Hive as they were taking from me. I'll still post on Pob but feel the whole place is now jaded. I'm powering down my hive tokens and will either stake it all on Pob or move funds to other blockchains. Odysee is a nice one too.
Odysee is nice too.
Well said.
I'm not sure this can be proven one way or the other.
Yeah... I don't always agree with you or anyone for that matter, but I wish we had more people sort of like you who take the time to go into these details in an honest and critical manner. This subject deserves a lot more attention and I appreciate you for adding to the conversation! :)
You can dedicate your focus into deeply understanding the causes of your own experiences, which requires significant opening up of what was previously unconscious in you. Eventually it will become more and more apparent that causality is traceable and always involves intentions and decisions that have had the capacity to manifest what had previously been labelled as 'accidents'. We can prove it to ourselves and it is fairly simple to apply in the context of physics equations.
Thankyou! Everyone has their own experiences, conclusions and desires - so we all interpret things a bit differently, but neutrality can be achieved enough to see things in an unbiased and open minded way in most cases.
I enjoyed your article and am thankful that you took the time to write it.
There are certainly problems with the voting system. I use the phrase "voting system" because it's difficult to only focus on downvoting as there are certainly problems with upvoting as well. I don't believe you can have one without the other. I have yet to read an article that compares problems in both areas. It's always, "downvoting is bad" and "it is a form of censorship". I don't see articles about problems with upvoting.
In my activities with the POB tribe, I don't downvote without justification. Also, given opportunity to correct an issue, I'll remove the DV if the author makes a correction. Plagiarism, in most cases, can be easily rectified by the author.
Other platforms, like Blurt, don't use downvotes. However, what they use in its place isn't as transparent as Hive. It could be me, but I just haven't found it yet. Their privacy policy isn't specific about how they operate in this area.
Voting is a topic that will never stop being debated.
To avoid spam, Blurt charges a transaction fee calculated by a constant plus a rate according to the size of the transaction. If you want to post, it will cost you. Those that always post garbage run out of Blurt or have to constantly buy more Blurt to continue.
I just found your post via the reblog of @hashtag-booster (for hive affiliate Intercommunities
Finally, quality content which should allow some curators to reflect on their votes.
By reading several posts, I started to analyze the why of certain negative votes. One of the causes is the one that you had clearly identified (rivalry or disagreement between people (not necessarily content)).
However, I have also noticed that some curators destroy and strongly discourage new ones. For example
I invite for example @hivewatchers / @spaminator / @adm to reread your post and reflect on some of their actions that sometimes hurt the motivation of young beginners. Personally, I have nothing against these curators who love to vote negatively (they are free to do so). I only ask them to weigh their psycho-socio-economic impact?
In your post, I am 95% in agreement with your ideas and I defend the same values. However, you target the Communists, by generalizing on a case (abusive generalization, in my opinion). So you take a stand (it's your right). But your style of writing and your notoriety influence people to think negatively against the Communists. By analyzing the origins and primary objectives of this philosophy before it became politicized, this school of thought is built on social mutual aid and community and equitable sharing of gains. I understand that it is difficult to conceive of communism and decentralization, but it is possible !!!.
So yes (95%) for your admirable arguments against negative votes, and no (5%) against your positions against a community.
(For information, I am not a communist, nor a capitalist)
.
Bravo again @ura-soul for this admirable post
Is it possible that you could offer a solution for plagiarism and spam farming rewards without the use of downvotes please.
Thanks for your comments. I am aware that the originally stated ideology of communism is in mutual aid, but in 100% of the examples I am aware of, the actual real world implementation of communism has led to immense suffering and evil. This does not mean that humans should not help each other, obviously - but it does mean that the use of the word 'communism', no matter what it's original intentions, ultimately relate more to evil people doing evil things than to much else.
Voluntarism is an ideology which encapsulates the benefits of working together without any form of coercion or authoritarianism being possible - I would always suggest people start there, rather than trying to get systems working which are proven to have been responsible for more human pain than just about any other.
Thanks for the upvote
I had the opportunity to live with communists outright. And I endure and live the constraints and pressure of politicians (capitalists) who hide behind communist organizations. I have often got angry with their system. But on the other hand, people who considered me communists sometimes blocked me at customs (at the borders) simply because I spoke Russian and Chinese (after perestroika [peʁɛstʁɔjka]). What I learned is to stop discriminating and enlighten people with other visions. I am therefore of your opinion for an evolution of mentalities. That's why I liked your post because some curators believing themselves to be powerful use their downvotes pretending that they are for mutual aid, while they sow demotivation. Which can seriously harm the HIVE community.
This man, ura soul, is a true blessing for Hive and the world really. He has only shown how facts, data and being open to discussion can happen and does exist in this dysfunctional plutocratic world that is our reality on and off Hive. I am glad he wasn't all the way censored yet with this post. Before I got tired of everything on hive with the whales supporting this centralized vaccine push in such a extreme way. I started getting sick and really had to shift gears to blockchain gaming and high aprs. I have been so much happier in ways but seeing my fellow peeps starting to speak up against the downvotes I feel compelled to stick up for logic and reason.
Heartily agree. Censorship or not, rewards deprivation or not.. there should be as little demotivation pushed down onto the content and communication on this platforms by whales for reasons of solely personal bias.
Don't worry about that. We already think negatively about communists.
The video above, in my opinion, does a great job highlighting how Hive only furthered the sickening of individualism and dividing of communities through social media by intermingling it with a inflationary financial system that mirrors the real life debt based system that compromises peoples morals in a way to mold and craft the group into a bland group of virtue signaling pacifists that are lead by power hungry annalists as some kind of sick game of control, wealth preservation and dominance.
All of this can be avoided if we just turned Hive into a wallet only and encouraged community development on the second layer so as to allow for better utilization of Hive in that regards and allow for more development into blockchain gaming, cross chain utilization for assets and smart contracts and better exchange listings than just a Korean exchange and non USA approved binnace.
Just my opinion but no one in the blockchain space is excited about social media aside from tipping BTC on twitter and Facebook coins.
Hive has a real opportunity to capitalize on NFTS, smart contracts and blockchain gaming but is being overshadowed by weird first layer social media that sends a confusing message of the whales being pro authoritarians and centralized governments while advertising the chain as decentralized. The plutocracy and walled gardened nature of Hive is holding it back currently.
Let's wall off Hive and make it a wallet only and stop this weird cluttered wallet full of unneeded content. Let communities form already in a organic fashion on the second layer.
Its been a while since I said hi but yeah I had to say something as it is getting as stupid and tiresome as Facebook.
That's a great video, yes, thanks for sharing. I get where you are coming from regarding the rewards pools, but at the same time I actually enjoy the mechanism as it is one of the only ways people can be directly financially rewarded for their creative thinking and problem solving attempts without needing to go through a lengthy process or contracting with an entity.
I see hive as a microcosm of the macrocosmic world and an excellent place to evolve our own thinking and use of social psychology - as it provides a framework for people to interact within and where common problems arise between people in a way that is both publicly observed and to some extent measurable. If people have intent to heal and balance then this can be a very good thing.. However, it does require people to have the time and security needed to focus in this way and many people are struggling too much financially to do this at present.
Ultimately, our collective problems require us to heal, balance and evolve so no technology can solve our problems. However, a social networking space that can empower people to engage financially does open up space to achieve something unusual if it is channelled in a healthy direction.
I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's possible to create a layer 2 community on Hive that has no reward pool and is as you are suggesting - maybe a worker proposal can fund it as an experiment.
There are a lot of different people on Hive, it's a mirror of society on a smaller scale, I can't go write something about graphene oxide and the fifth column on someone's post that "just took the 2nd jab and feel fine", the same way I don't try to convince the people I am queuing with at the supermarket about Agenda 2030.
There is also a reason I deleted my YT channel and other conspiracy outlets, are you ready for what's to come Ura? Cause you know who they gonna go after first, the messengers, and are we really safe talking to each other here, on a blockchain where all info are available, on display?
So, me personally, I don't know if people like @maxigan or @thecorbettreport are welcome here, I see them being downvoted all the time, check for example This. It worries me a little.
I never see your posts getting downvoted, which tells me it isn't about censorship once again, it's all about politics.
Maybe it's also about the way you are argumenting, without being disrespectful, but I can't help but thinking of what's to come next.
If you look at my recent posts you'll see all of the covid ones were zeroed - removing maybe 600 hive. Attempts to discuss the issue were met only with aggression really.
OMFG! I've just seen that. Well I certainly feel stupid now, seeing that you are victim of the same fate. Take it as a compliment, you've made it!
Are they following a downvoting trail? I see some weird similar downvoting percentage (37.83%) by different users. Well this isn't reassuring at all, it means we need to see hive as a working environment, and not a place for free speech.
Damn that's messed up, note to self keep calm and don't mention the vaxx I haven't got, or beliefs about the vid...
Sorry dude that's just shit. Glad to see you posting the facts on censorship, realistically if I don't like someones opinion I just don't read it.
Never really been one for downvotes. Just cause I don't like it doesn't mean it's not a valid opinion.
Let me also tell ya, I recognize some names in the downvoting trail, and they aren't for either masks or the jabs, so I don't understand.
Some are people who upvoted me on the same post and then downvoted as part of a trail.
I am contacting some, you should do the same.
It's happening to me all the time now, too, and I bet many of the trail followers do not approve. Abuse of an 'upvote' trail if you ask me. In times past a few trail followers removed themselves upon finding their stake was being used to downvote content they supported (mine)... but the downvotes by this account are becoming much more prolific these days, along with other accounts, it certainly seems coordinated by several parties involved.
https://peakd.com/hive-122315/@jasonliberty/the-war-on-truth-and-freedom-removing-content-from-trending-is-censorship-and-curangel-curation-trail-used-to-zero-out-popular-
This is fucked up.
This burned a hole in my seat while reading. You really set the record straight. I loved the linguistics part. I mean etymology of course. Reminds me a bit of Chomsky and Pinker. Arguable a social class system in a dPoS consensus favors majority stakeholder in creating their narratives? Effectively shaping moulds with all these silly posting challenges to win hive, which i am also a part of sometimes. Don't get me wrong. I love the community here and i think we are all so awesome because we really make it happen. With that i mean a truly tolerant, liberal, free speech platform with little or almost no censorship? This is why i appreciate people who really write what their feel regardless of what anyone thinks. Because then i can truly relate to them if it resonates with me. I mean why would i want anyone to fit into a mould? They all come out the same way at the other end? It would be a lie if the majority isn't somewhat compelled to be admired by whales and adhere the content they publish to their liking? The hierarchy set aside, i don't want to sound arrogant, but not everyone that made a sh** ton of cheese is necessarily a smart person. POB. Apart from monetary motivations / value incentives, isn't it clear and obvious that so many of us have alterier motives that aren't related to temporary gratification?
Thank you so much for taking time to reply. You are highly appreciated and such a valuable soul to our community. Really admire your efforts and prize how eloquently you write.
No problem, You are welcome. Thanks for being you too :)
In a sense, yes, though that is not an advertised feature of proof of brain. The image of proof of brain being only a demonstration of 'good' ideas all done in 'good' faith is a bit naive.
Absolutely, yes, this is essential to a healthy society.
That is definitely in some people's minds, but I think it's not really necessary as long as writers align their thinking partially towards community topics and helping the community thrive. If people address this aspect of Hive and do it well then they will naturally draw the attention of larger stakeholders.
Yes, we do, and that's all a key part of being who we are - it's what makes a social space thrive!
Very detailed post. got halfway through & need to gather my thoughts before reading the rest.
I felt the cancel culture part of Hive during my first posts. And this has been recently confirmed seeing the last few of your posts being flooded with downvotes🤮🤮🤮 I didn't think Hive would give me the same feeling of Facebook or Fascistebook as we enjoy saying. Downvotes should be limited and one should be able to block serial stocking downvoters just like they block the gangstalking down below. This makes me very sad and is making me lose faith in Hive😔
All of the post rewards come from a pool that is ultimately generated by the stake that everyone on the blockchain holds. This means that the larger stakeholders technically generate more of the rewards that are paid out to everyone via their own investment - with the exception of top witnesses who get paid a lot of hive just for running a relatively simple server. This is essentially the justification for the downvote capacity we all have - the more stake you have, the more you risk and the more ability you have to influence the policing of the network. This isn't well explained to most people though and definitely not something that new users expect.
The main cause of free downvoting being introduced was to combat spam and the selling of upvotes on the network which makes the experience significantly better - so while downvoting is not perfect, it did solve other annoying problems.
Maybe there is another solution that will work better, it's definitely good to keep running that conversation!
My comment had nothing to do with my earnings. I find it totally normal that newbies get little rewards the time that they find their way through and start staking, delagating, witnessing etc. My comment of getting that fb feeling comes from my own experience of being born and bred American then moving away for half of my life and living where people still have a "life" which is not on the net. Then seeing my cousins as well as old friends back home retrograde back into the immaturity of high school because fb is a popularity contest that gives popular people the power to crush the not-so-popular and control what they might not be able to control in real life. I see that refound immaturity here and that is what I find very sad. I can't stand control freaks which is better iterated in French who use the word "maniaque". This word comes from the word manic which is used to describe the manic phase in bipolar disorder. Maniaque all by itself means a clean freak. A control freak is a maniaque de contrôle. French women are control freaks but more in real life because they've never had much power. In the U.S. people have become internet maniaques because they no longer have the social life they had before the internet 30 plus years ago. And downvoting is part of that tendancy.
consider updating your witness votes
Thanks, I am expecting to have a meeting with Guilty Parties in the near future, so will wait to speak with him.
thanks for taking a look.
anyx is also a point of concern.
Make it a zoom call and let me get in on it. You're up against a real Gaslighter with that Criminal. I've read this entire book you've written here and agree that there is a VERY Shady Element here on HIVE... Look no further than your GuiltyPartyASS here and you will see quite a bit of evidence that this person thinks HIVE is THEIRS and they're gonna tell YOU what you can do with it.
What an absolute TOOL.
Most of the other arguments are kind of void when you take into account how blatant autovoting is ongoing and not handled with care. You could say everyone not on big autovotes is getting censored with your example.
To then take the meaning of censor from some older definition instead of the one people are facing in this day and age all over web2 feels like you're just trying really hard to make your points feel more important.
I'd argue a lot of people are more willing to check out a post if there's downvotes on it and especially the comments to see if anything was said about it. On top of it all most of your examples rely on people only checking trending/hot and ignoring their own feed of the people that may be getting downvoted they themselves chose to follow. I don't know about others but I barely check trending.
Anyway, that being said this isn't real censorship. As you mentioned yourself people can band together and vote it up past the downvotes, there's barely any in existence anyway and a small fraction is being used. Who knows even if the 25% is written in stone or will be changed later to reflect on how much it is being used/needed. By banding together even smaller users can overcome the downvotes, sure they'd take a penalty for it, sure they could tip the author if they really want his content to continue being posted - assuming the demonetization from downvotes demotivates them from posting but that can also go the other way. Someone may disagree with other people and their thoughts so much that they may dip into their upvote mana to downvote as well and also be penalized from inflation like the people countering the downvotes.
I haven't seen many actual malicious downvotes happening ever since Steem, there I spent a lot of time and potential rewards manually countering said downvotes and I think at this point in time we're way better distributed and have many more options such as L2 to most of the time ignore the downvotes or easily counter them.
That would make some sense except that this is a stake weighted platform by design and the people placing the autovotes have done so voluntarily based on their choice to support the authors. In effect they are saying that they trust the 'brain' of the author to create the content they want to support. Sometimes they might remove the autovotes if the person changes. I understand what you are saying but the nature of proof of brain is not inherently invalidated by auto upvoting - though I agree that full manual curation would be a significant improvement.
I have been finishing a huge book for years which is on the topic of English language. When seen in the context of the bigger picture, it is very clear that understanding the origins of words makes a huge difference to our understanding of ourselves and why things are as they are. The deeper intentions behind words are often lost and many important truths about human interaction can be picked up by finding the underlying essence of words. Etymology is even a specific field in Yoga and others schools for this reason - it's an ancient spiritual understanding that word roots are important for individual and societal balance. If I 'judge' that your words are unethical 'in real life', I might not censor you in that I can't stop you speaking, but I might make sure you miss out on opportunities in your life in ways that I have power over - this is a form of covert censorship and power limitation that is in some cases even more effective than deleting your tweets. It's all censorship and the underlying etymology of the word makes this clear.
If they see the post then they might do, but the main mechanism we have currently for making posts visible is upvoting. One way around this would be to stop downvotes from having an effect on the trending pages, but to still remove post rewards.
I look at both. When I first started I was only checking trending as I didn't follow anyone and wanted to get a sense of the type of community involved on Steem. The majority of my post is as much about marketing as anything else. Perception is key and the trending page is the prime focus for potential new users and investors. I know for 100% sure that most of the people I have pointed to Hive or Steem have rejected it for exactly the reasons I am highlighting - they look at trending, ask why things are so weird and skewed, laugh and go somewhere else!
I'm not sure which 25% you are referring to here.
It comes down to what you personally define to be malicious. I'd say that consistently zeroing most of someone's posts, even when they cover completely different topics to those you have stated you have a problem with, would be considered malicious by most people. That's what is happening to my posts at present, plus others. Attempts to discuss the issues or mediate were met with aggression, superiority and avoidance.
Or just following people and checking your feed?
that is only possible for a small percentage of the users of hive that already follow a given profile. these people have already expressed interest the profile and so are following the posts. In general, we have to somehow discover the profiles that we want to follow and the way that is baked in to proof of brain is to do that through the posts percolating to the top of trending/hot via upvotes. Accounts which have the most stake inherently get more follows because people want their votes, so making network reach dependent mostly on follows is a decision that most hurts the smallest accounts and most benefits the largest.
There's also this thing called communities where people could actively look in new/hot/trending for posts of a niche they're interested in, that is if you wouldn't post in a general content community such as proof of brain that pretty much just nullifies the point of communities.
Yes, communities can be useful - I generally crosspost in my own ones, starting in proof of brain as I get strong interest and support from that community. Busy community trending pages will still bury zeroed posts though.
Your post is being maliciously downvoted? Come on.
It comes down to how you define malicious downvoting. If downvoting is being done on the basis of the content of the post, then surely it wouldn't be done on posts which are quite different. If the downvoter does so repeatedly and not only doesn't explain but does as much as possible to avoid properly explaining, I'd call that as malicious as downvoting can be.
Or they just disagree with the rewards and constant autovotes? Shouldn't you also expect comments by the big autovoters similar to how you're expecting comments on downvotes? I'm pretty sure smooth isn't a malicious downvoter from the downvotes I've seen him cast over the year.
I'm not referring to smooth, I'm referring to the chain of 60+ downvoters that have zeroed most of my posts in the last week. I've spoken to some of them and they have removed the downvotes and were surprised to find their accounts being used in this way.
I follow a couple of upvote chains which select who they follow based on the opinion of the people running them. It is a delegation of responsibility based on trust and shared goals - just as when stake is delegated. I don't expect people who delegate me to also comment or even pay attention to what I use the stake for and I don't expect recipients of my delegation to do as I say either.
Upvotes are inherently a statement of agreement about the content of a post and a desire to see it gain attention. Downvotes are 'maybe' the opposite, but maybe not. If I know that I have constant upvotes coming in then I know I can take time out of my working week to make quality posts. If that is removed at some point randomly then I can't. It's a simple courtesy to explain why you decided to downvote in a major way that can actually affect and influence someone's working day. It seems to me that the more money people have, the less they consider these things. The least they can do is not hide behind a thin veneer of 'service to others'!
So it all comes down to rewards then, you'd post if the autovotes continue to land but if they're removed you wouldn't. Somehow you think that's the same as your content/account/ideas being deleted and blocked from the platform completely which is an actual real problem on web2.
It's weird cause when I was being downvoted by 50m+ korean steempower for months for standing up to downvoting overrewarded garbage the first thing that came to mind wasn't that I was being censored. People could still see my posts, interact with them, etc. Of course some weren't as loud due to fear of also being targeted but I wouldn't say that's censorship either way, at least not the kind that's haunting web2 right now where it's a real problem. We might have to find another word for it cause this one doesn't do it justice imo.
So now that the post on downvoting has been downvoted to zero - along with all my other posts, again with no comment or explanation by the downvoters.. I guess this still doesn't count as malicious downvoting because.. reasons. I have a question - what IS malicious downvoting? Does it exist?
Bro, it's Chaos at this point... Get you some sps, and buy some vouchers... its not too late! jk but seriously though its chaos bro. You do understand that Ned was a really progressive liberal, BFFs with Anthony Bourdain and all. No surprise the small circle of legacy holders from steem and now on hive are not jiving with your stuff well maybe the poker players are that found steem and btc useful hopping borders in europe to play poker but still let us know what you find in terms of an alt way to do crypto with content. I loved what you had to say about threespeak and I might vote for their proposal after all.
Taking down from trending page everything about fake pandemic and fake vaccine is a shadow banning (a form of censorship)
On that trending note, these posts about the pandemic have been on trending in forever, I'm sure enough people have followed these content creators by now to be able to see them in their feeds or scroll a community related to it or tags. It's absurd how little anyone here cares about them to drop a comment every once in a while, yet we're supposed to let them take a big pie from the rewardspool while they barely give a damn about Hive to at least link back here from their other socials.
Do you want Hive to have 20 posts about covid with 0 engagement on trending constantly? That's a way worse look than people downvoting them (often late after the trending attention has been had) for disagreement of rewards.
I mean at this point I'm starting to find it ridiculous how people are even trying to defend those let alone touch on the censorship subject.
And the fact that the 0 engagement is not exclusive on these posts makes this worse look even more worse. People just/only have to look around. There are many posts with 0 engagement. I often see posts with 1-5 bot comments, but 0 human comments. It is in the statistics that nowadays the average number of comments per posts on the Hive blockchain is 3, but most of those are bot comments. I guess that it is fair to see that the most part of the Hive community is censoring (or soft-shadowbanning) itself by not caring about other people's posts.
And why should people feel bad about not caring for things that fall outside the scope of their interests? Should people be compelled to give a fuck about topics they aren't into just to show others from outside the platform say we got a functional community?
If you attract users that fall under the unpopular opinionated crowd, you're going to get a crowd where the mainstream users won't give a damn about their content because that's not their cup of tea.
The problem is the fact that almost everything "fall outside the scope of their interests". And it is enough to look around a bit to see this. There are many users without any real interaction.
I do not say that. But taking a look at the current state of things, I can say that around 90% of the users cannot create contents, which would be interests others, so we (this platform in general) currently do not really have a functional community. There are a few successful people with plenty of interaction, but that is all.
I don't see it as a problem if there's lack of interaction. Authors need to earn their audience first and if their content doesn't trigger a reaction, then they need to work on a new gimmick. Who are you going to blame? 30 people that passed by your post without saying anything because they had poor taste of content? or yourself because not a single one was convinced you're worth the trouble commenting to. The latter is within my control and it's the battle I picked while most concern themselves with everyone else's fault for not seeing the genius of the post.
This I can fully agree on. Most are just content consumers pretending to be creators. I'm also slacking off from content creation and just do shitposting nowadays.
I didn't think of it this way, the engagement aspect of it. I personally don’t comment on it because of blockchain permanence. I don’t want shit to come back and bite me in a few months or years, regardless of what I say. I’ve made enough mistakes, don’t need to make more lol
I do think it’s important to have posts with lots of comments on the trending page though! I’m sad when I don’t see any engagement on it.
That's literally not shadowbanning, mate. Shadowbanning is when you're posting into the void and no one can see it, literally no one except for you yourself and Twitter on their servers or whatever garbage you're posting on. Everyone else on there cannot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banning
So if you're partially blocked just ask for an RC delegation once that's possible! :)
lol or take the booster (shot)!
Downvotes could maybe be compared to tweaking the algorithm on youtube/twitter to not show you certain content from certain users as much, it's funny that you guys compare downvotes to censorship while people barely talk about getting soft-shadowbans such as the algo never recommending your content to interested consumers.
downvotes/upvotes affect the GLOBAL algorithm, not just your own. tweaking an algorithm for your own benefit is not the same thing. the nature of the algorithm on hive is not the same as the web2.0 sites in that there is generally less management and more purity of the trending list than on FB et., which use AI to heavily manage what you see. This is a good thing about Hive.
I do talk about shadowbanning on Youtube and Facebook etc. - I've spoken about it publicly for 15 years. I have video of Facebook deleting my comments in realtime and of Youtube not showing my comments to others (proven by access through Tor).
It is the shadowbanning on the controlled, anti-human web2.0 sites that is most of the reason why I am here and also whole heartedly support the massive court case that is ongoing against them at present. I have covered all of this extensively on Hive previously.
This post lost its credibility quick.
Originally, downvoting was considered something to do only in emergencies
I presume people follow that account because it has a large wallet.
these are the accounts that newsflash is following, only 17
i just figured out that if i re-post articles i like, from accounts that hivewatchers and newsflash like, they will be downvoted by steemcleaners
oh i see. why would a reblog from you in particular result in a downvote? does steemcleaners downvote everything you reblog?
everything i post, even comments
it looks like newsflash removed their downvote and decided to give you an upvote instead !!
hehe, yes, I saw that - very good!
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.
!luv
Thanks very much for your show of support matey !
INTERCOMMUNITY - HIVE - AFFILIATE team.
and at the same time, youtube continuously bombards us with adverts for SCAM FAKE PRODUCTS like this,
@ura-soul
I Highly regard your work.
This was also a well put together article about the HIVE "Community"
https://hive.blog/hive-174122/@ecoinstant/there-is-no-hive-community
Thank you for posting and HIVE!ON
I've started posting on web 2.0 on a blog (paid subscriptions)...Now in double figures (just).
It's not as fun as being on social media - but then again, it hasn't been fun for the last 8 months or so, so no loss.
DPoS and it's mechanisms are old, not new - it's digital feudalism.
You have to depend on favors and hope for no negative eye from your large stakeholder 'overlords'.
The cabal enrich themselves while giving the appearance of 'community'.
Downvotes profit them directly.
Collusion, discrimination, and vindictive behavior by the man children that run this place, will ensure it's demise ('woke mob technocracy'?...what could possibly go wrong?lolol) ...Martin Luther King is rolling in his grave, I'm sure.
Seeing the abhorrent treatment of so many accounts on here has only motivated me to spread the word - and reality - of what DPoS/hive, is.
Rather than discuss anything, (because they know they sit on a castle built on sand?)...they try to suppress via financial terrorism.(I'm sure they would erase accounts if they could, but their own technology won't allow for it).
People from outside of this ecosystem are watching events closely, I can assure you of that.
They might be good coders, but have a severe lack of social skills/understanding of human psychology.
Or are intentionally driving the model as is, for ideological purposes - ie the global technocracy model. - Klaus Schwabs 'stakeholder capitalism' ( communism)
Well, it's washed and repurposed for the modern "digital" age as there was no digital way back when ;) Stakeholder capitalism where the plutocratic rich rule everything and get the most say in what happens... because MONEY. DPoS and the Great Reset/4IR for the win right? :P
Nah, a significant portion (majority?) of the population doesn't give two shits about that. Games and entertainment, having fun, etc are what matter. All you need is Splinterlands to make Hive more valuable.
I am part way through reading The Great Reset.. It's painfully over mentalisation of reality so far and I feel it is deliberately 'nice' at the beginning and gets a lot worse, so I imagine it is going to get even more painful to finish reading!
History shows that without sustained, real empathy (something of a rarity in humans) those with the biggest bank accounts always take actions that lead to pyramid systems of control and generally take obvious actions to try to cover up their intentions.
Nah, a significant portion (majority?) of the population doesn't give two shits about that. Games and entertainment, having fun, etc are what matter. All you need is Splinterlands to make Hive more valuable.
That model only applies when time is in abundance - decadence - and that will be coming to end shortly...
Cultural zeitgeist will be changing - and along with it - unproductive time.
Bread and circuses ;) Time tested and works. It's not going anywhere even in hard times, it will be even more desirable in dreadful times for more escapism than now :P UBI is going to enable all this to continue a lot more easily in the ever increasing darkening days. What's your web2.0 site? Drop a link.
When reality hits - hard- I think not, tbh.
(and I'm an optimist!)
I'm keeping it totally separate from any accounts associated with this cesspit - for now, at least.
Different name, different everything.
(no offence to you matey, I can assure you).
Most roads lead to Rome! Thanks for your comments. Ultimately a decentralised community is driven by whoever takes the most action to drive it - so while it's understandable to want to complain, at the same time people can always take matters into their own hands.
whoever controls the code controls the behavior
politics is simply an argument about enforcement mechanism
In a sense but it ALL relies on the consent of the governed. In other words, the intimidating form of government and policy enforcement is powered by the denials of billions of people.
faith in the twentysomething-psychopaths dressed in black and carrying guns to protect us from the other twentysomething-psychopaths dressed in black and carrying guns
it's digital feudalism.
Here here! 😎🥓👍 @logiczombie sandbox.
Absolutely, yes, it already is to some extent.
<><
@ura-soul, you've been given LUV from @networkallstar.
Check the LUV in your H-E wallet. (9/10)