"...consumers outnumbering content would only contribute to decentralizing this chain even further."
I completely agree. There are reasons we don't, and it's not incompetence or stupidity. That increase in value of Hive threatens the oligarchy, because Hive is a pure plutocracy, and there are stakeholders that could buy all of Hive with change between the cushions in their couch. Oligarchs are centralization. Decentralization is not a feature for them. It's the enemy of their personal stakes.
Boils down to basic math. If you attract 50 new content creators to the news and information scene but do not attract any new voters from the outside to support that work, they all struggle. And the 50 before them must share the available support with the 50 that came after. Now you got 100 earning less, and blaming everyone else but themselves.
It's not up to the people that don't enjoy that stuff to support it. It's up to the people creating it to get their own damn support. Simple. That's no different than any other platform. There's no conspiracy preventing anyone from doing that.
Damn. Like I said, it's frustrating. Why market Hive when you have thousands of content creators for example offering thousands of unique opportunities to attract interest in the platform through their offerings. Communities also offer unique opportunities and there are several. Games. Products and services. An endless and growing list of unique opportunities to attract interest, without even mentioning Hive. All that potential ignored because paying an influencer to smile and say Hive is supposed to somehow help? Or maybe spend some money on ads for people to skip and ignore? I don't get it. That's like trying to sell a house by pointing at it's foundation and explaining it.
We shed more than 1M accounts after 2017, not because there wasn't incentive to be here, but because there were larger incentives to not be here, in the form of flags. Markets are not infinite. Folks that came here and got driven away learned their lesson, and they found other places to be, and dragged their supporters with them. Some of them have pretty big audiences that will follow them where they go.
The original problem remains, even if you don't see it. RT is flagged mercilessly here. por500bolos is too (not an outside influencer, though), and I see it all the time. We could do everything right to onboard ppl, spend all sorts of money on it, but if they get flagged off, they're pissed off and not coming back.
That's the primary problem onboarding faces: user retention, and that's the reason Hive has the worst user retention in the industry: opinion flags.
Don't forget bidbots and rubbish "trending" content. That was an eyesore. Also majority of those accounts were created but never engaged. Some own several hundred accounts. And I never saw a post with something like 10000 organic upvotes and consistently booming comment sections. I was here. I saw accounts selling reblogs to people claiming they had a large following but all 30k followers were fake. There's a lot of fine print when it comes to those "1M accounts" and a lot of people here know that.
There must come a time when people move on from the past and work towards a future. I could write several paragraphs about how pissed off I was about things back in the day. It doesn't matter now. Plenty of opportunities to start fresh.
Organic support and an influx of actual consumers willing to support their interests rather than signing on to be content creators in the land void of consumers; that hasn't happened. People create content for a paying audience. That hardly exists here. That's more likely to push people out the door since majority have not experienced being heavily downvoted and pushed out.
I realize this is something you and I will butt heads on. And I think if some forms of content attract negative energy naturally here, they will naturally struggle of course. Meanwhile there's still plenty of opportunities that attract positive energy consistently, naturally. Universal laws and all that. Some do better than others. I'll continue to focus on those opportunities. For instance these days I actually enjoy coming here just to check out the music. Some of those artists are doing a really good job and I want to support them as best I can. If something more comes out of it, good. If not, well, I tried. Whatever. Life goes on.
Still good talking to you. Initial point stands. Paying people with large markets doesn't attract actual markets. And if they want to make excuses as to why their content struggles to be viewed here, they're free to do so. But that still doesn't bring in their audience or paying supporters to their work. History shows they get paid and choose not to bring an audience. I think that could change but I wouldn't pay for a promise.
That's only my opinion. People are free to disagree and pay whatever they want. I won't stop them or even encourage anyone to bring their audience once they arrive. Whatever happens, happens. For now I need to stop thinking about this.
I deeply appreciate your insistence on drumming your point home, and the manner in which you've done it. I strongly agree with every point you've made, and am glad you've made them. You are absolutely correct, and curation rewards have failed to create that audience Hive lacks. I cannot thank you enough for your persistence, factuality, and elegant demonstration of reason.
That's not what I'm saying. Rewarding the consumer. Allowing their support levels to grow and no real cost. Everything about that is genius but it's never celebrated or "sold". It's not that they've failed. Those rewards have never been given the opportunity to shine. Calling them "curation" rewards doesn't even make sense in my mind. These days millions of people are spending money on content creators. This approach is a far better deal. But it's difficult for people to wrap their heads around that. It is how one converts thousands of supporters into that one boring whale vote they seem to drool over. Except this time they have an audience instead of just one audience member. That's how one creates a decentralized revenue stream. Depending on one whale is centralized; could go away at any moment. And the perks come standard. Smart but poorly executed + nobody ever tries to onboard paying supporters in order to prove how well it works. Perks aren't even mentioned, by anyone, ever, to anyone outside. They're rarely even trying to attract views.
Anyway. Time for me to put this down. Just wanted to clear that up.