The main excuse for malicious down-voting is "Over-Rewarded Content..." What about the account making $10k+ PER DAY in spam comments?

in LeoFinance3 years ago

What the heck are you talking about Kenny - nobody makes over $10,000 per day on the same copy & pasted comment over and over!


Well, that would be nice if it was true...

But it's not.

This is something that was really just brought to my attention by the new HiveAlive front-end that @ura-soul built, which includes an untrending report.

I wasn't surprised to see who most of the biggest down-voters, or down-voted were... except for the one at the very top of the "down-voted" list...

@hbd.funder - Down-voted for over $1000 in the last 7 days, when I first looked.

How was that even possible?

I never see posts from this account, certainly not up at the top of trending or anything...

Well, turns out that it's quite easy:


Every day, this account makes 10 of the same one-line comment.

Then, those comments are all auto-voted by some of the biggest whales on Hive...



Now, the idea is that this is all a "good thing" because 100% of the funds go to the @hbdstabilizer...

Well that sounds like something good, right? Helping to stabilize the price of HBD?

Seems like the sort of thing we could simply use a DHF proposal for though, doesn't it?

Oh, right...

There's already a proposal for over $75,000 PER DAY to pay for the stabilizer.

I guess that isn't enough?

Good thing up-voting posts & comments isn't supposed to have anything to do with content creation or the mythical "Proof of Brain" right?


So...

What's the main benefit of using comments and mass up-voting them this way?

From what I can see there are a couple of main benefits being derived for the people doing this.

The first, "legitimate" reason, is to simple get more funds going to the stabilizer... but they just keep raising what the proposal on that pays out.

The second, most important (from what I can tell), is that it allows these large stake-holders to use all their voting power, without ever giving anything to anyone else. Look at the voting done by @blocktrades - it's almost 100% these spam comments. And BT earns upwards of 100 Hive in curation rewards for every one of those auto-votes.

The third reason is actually something of a subsidiary of the first one. The thing about the "DHF" (Hive's DAO) is that it, like the top 20 witnesses, is decided purely by the biggest stakeholders... Blocktrades being up near the top of that list, along with Smooth (who runs the stabilizer...)

That means that this project to "help the community" is actually just creating two massive streams of inflation-based income (the proposal and the comments), creating a massive feedback loop to ensure that these folks maintain their relative stake.


Just remember this when you see some of these millionaire keyboard warriors zeroing out actual content creators and down-voting all the independent journalists using Hive, all under the excuse of "over-rewarded."


It's quite clear, just as happens in any game of Monopoly/Capitalism - those with the "capital" will do everything they can to keep it to themselves, only decentralizing that "stake" to the extent that it is absolutely required to prevent full-blown revolution of the serfs.


Doing My Part

I will be using 100% of the @tribesteemup account's down-voting power on these comments, indefinitely.

It can only knock about $70 off of each one of those comments, but that's $70 that can potentially get into the pockets of more than just the same couple of people.

Sort:  

And BT earns upwards of 100 Hive in curation rewards for every one of those auto-votes.

I vote for the stabilizer because these funds ultimately go to the DHF so that the chain can build up enough of a war chest to support more development. I believe the future of Hive depends on increasing the amount of development that is done, and the blocktrades development team, as strong as it is, can only contribute so much.

As @smooth has pointed out, I make the same curation rewards regardless of which posts I vote for (as long as those posts aren't actively downvoted, of course). If you check my curation rewards on something like hivestats.io, you'll actually find that my curation rewards tend to be a little lower than the optimal return. I haven't really bothered to analyze why.

You're trying to argue that voting this way somehow builds (or at least maintains) my percentage of the stake, but that's not how it works: my stake erodes via the inflation regardless of whether it goes to the DHF account or to any other account. This is basic math. If you believe you can demonstrate otherwise, please show your work.

TLDR; I vote this way not to maximize my personal stake percentage (this doesn't do that), but because I believe it is the most beneficial thing for the long term viability of the network right now. It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that it is the work being done by devs that is bringing new users to the network.

I vote for the stabilizer because these funds ultimately go to the DHF so that the chain can build up enough of a war chest to support more development. I believe the future of Hive depends on increasing the amount of development that is done, and the blocktrades development team, as strong as it is, can only contribute so much.

These seem like valid reasons to support the project.

As @smooth has pointed out, I make the same curation rewards regardless of which posts I vote for (as long as those posts aren't actively downvoted, of course). If you check my curation rewards on something like hivestats.io, you'll actually find that my curation rewards tend to be a little lower than the optimal return. I haven't really bothered to analyze why.

My point here wasn't anything to do with higher or lower curation rewards - but the fact that curating usually spreads stake out - by giving it to the authors. In this case, you and OCDB and the others are able to maintain the same curation rewards for yourself, without giving a penny to anyone else. That's the definition of centralizing.

You're trying to argue that voting this way somehow builds (or at least maintains) my percentage of the stake, but that's not how it works: my stake erodes via the inflation regardless of whether it goes to the DHF account or to any other account. This is basic math. If you believe you can demonstrate otherwise, please show your work.

I just addressed part of this directly above - your relative stake is being protected, by not giving author rewards to users, and even moreso by instead sending all of that to the "DHF," which you pretty much single-handedly control at this point.

TLDR; I vote this way not to maximize my personal stake percentage (this doesn't do that), but because I believe it is the most beneficial thing for the long term viability of the network right now. It doesn't take a lot of effort to see that it is the work being done by devs that is bringing new users to the network.

I'm not claiming to know your intentions, I don't know you at all.

The point of my post was to shine some light on the utter hilarity of curangel & ocdb zeroing out posts, negging out people's reputations, and always chanting about how they're doing it to "protect the rewards pool" and limit "over-rewarded content."

The fact is, Nothing changed from Steem to Hive, except that StInc & Ned were replaced by you and your team.

Still just an oligarchy, pretending to be decentralized, and actively driving away all the content side of things at this point (which seems much better for your stake and the blockchain anyway)

curating usually spreads stake out - by giving it to the authors

DHF give funds to developers, marketers, some sort of charity thing I'm not familiar with, etc. which also spreads stake out, to the extent that they don't sell it (which is equally true of post payouts).

In this case, you and OCDB and the others are able to maintain the same curation rewards for yourself, without giving a penny to anyone else. That's the definition of centralizing.

Really shows how clueless you are. @blocktrades has been voting for the spanish community up until some time ago and only had about 50% VP for @hbdstabilizer, now he's still supporting the Haveyoubeenthere community.

@ocdb only throws a few votes on hbd.funder because price went up a lot while new content creators and content hasn't increased that much and we don't want to just give authors unrealistic high rewards as mentioned in this comment that was placed before this idiotic post insinuating bullshit like usual.

But hey, anything goes as long as it fits your narrative I guess.

your relative stake is being protected, by not giving author rewards to users, and even more so by instead sending all of that to the "DHF," which you pretty much single-handedly control at this point.

just because he has a big say on which proposals the DHF funds go to doesn't mean they're going to him nor does it mean proposals couldn't get funded without his vote.

Really shows how clueless you are. @blocktrades has been voting for the spanish community up until some time ago and only had about 50% VP for @hbdstabilizer, now he's still supporting the Haveyoubeenthere community.

@ocdb only throws a few votes on hbd.funder because price went up a lot while new content creators and content hasn't increased that much and we don't want to just give authors unrealistic high rewards as mentioned in this comment that was placed before this idiotic post insinuating bullshit like usual.

I never made any claims about how much of OCDB's votes were being used here (though it's MANY thousands of $s per week.)

As for BT, I was just looking at his recent voting activity, which is mostly these spam comments - and I said such.

just because he has a big say on which proposals the DHF funds go to doesn't mean they're going to him

Never made that claim anywhere, don't believe I even implied it anywhere.

nor does it mean proposals couldn't get funded without his vote.

Are there any proposals that are funded, that do not have his support?

Have there ever been?

(Curious - guessing the answer is no, at least not since the counter-proposal was put in)

I never made any claims about how much of OCDB's votes were being used here

In this case, you and OCDB and the others are able to maintain the same curation rewards for yourself, without giving a penny to anyone else.

Are you okay?

Replying to this - in case Hive's threading starts breaking down here.

There's no contradiction there, those are two different contexts.

You get your full curation rewards for every hbdfunder comment you upvote.

I didn't say it's the only thing you upvote.

Are there any proposals that are funded, that do not have his support?

Yes @peakd never had the vote of @blocktrades and many other whales but it was the most voted proposal ever to exist (number of voters) and got funded for a large portion of its run (not all of it) but most of it.

Maybe expand on content you vote?
From the outside looking in, It just looks like a circle jerk. Must cost a fortune on tissue. Judging by the amount it brings back.

Remember. These things were not implemented by consensus, It was decided in a closed room and only put out once there was an assurance of who would be able to make use of it. Just look at who gets funded,

The same for the thousands of HBD paid out to perform tasks that were left wayside once payment made.

The problem is. If anyone brings anything like this to the attention of a population, There is no debate about it or discussion. There is no, Can we resolve this.

The one who made the statement gets attacked. One side is just too defensive to have a discussion. Or is it they do not want open discussion because of what may be revealed.

Defence and justification of something does not make it right.

There is no debate about it or discussion.

These seems to be plenty of discussion, just no agreement.

Agreement won't be found. There is a lack of understanding on many things.

Discussion is needed. It is useless though without understanding.

even moreso by instead sending all of that to the "DHF," which you pretty much single-handedly control at this point.

I don't have a fraction of the stake that was owned by Steemit and Ned, and you can do some basic math and see that I don't have control over the DHF. No one does, the stake is too spread out in Hive.

I have voted for proposals that didn't get funded and there are several proposals right now that I'm not voting for that are funded. You could have spent 5 minutes checking the votes on the currently approved proposals and figured this out.

In fact, the one proposal I did create, to fund the work we did to setup the imagehoster during Hive's launch, didn't get fully funded. It took 3 days to get enough votes, so we didn't receive 3K of the 53K we asked for, IIRC).

I don't have a fraction of the stake that was owned by Steemit and Ned

Sorry, that's not what I was trying to say there (or really compare you to Ned - that was just all bad, my apologies.)

My point was that you and your team are (afaik) doing the vast majority of the actual Hive (not L2/sidechain) development, correct?


If I'm not mistaken, there are currently 5 (out of 14) funded proposals that you aren't supporting, and 100% of the non-funded proposals you aren't supporting.

It looks like your vote is more than 50% of the return proposal's support as well.

The funded proposals have a high ~43M HP voting for them, and you vote with 15M.

That's more than a third of the peak (don't know what % of the total) HP that votes on proposals.

TCMD votes with a little over 5M (so he's down closer to 11% of the peak), and there's a few folks with 1-3 million.

Not trying to attack you specifically/personally, you just happen to have the biggest voting stake around for this stuff, and if we're talking about centralization of stake at the moment.

Obviously, just as in the case of witnesses, getting more people to vote with their stake (never mind staking more), and be more active about adjusting their votes, is one of the big changes that can be made.

My point was that you and your team are (afaik) doing the vast majority of the actual Hive (not L2/sidechain) development, correct?

We do the majority of the work on hived currently, but @howo also contributes. But that is mostly a meaningless metric, IMO. The major focus of our work on hived has been to move future develop primarily to layer 2, with layer 1 acting as efficient and secure base layer. In fact, the Blocktrades team members are already spending more time on layer 2 work now (e.g HAF and HAF-based apps) than they do on layer 1 work.

If I'm not mistaken, there are currently 5 (out of 14) funded proposals that you aren't supporting, and 100% of the non-funded proposals you aren't supporting.

As a snapshot in time, that is correct, but I've supported several proposals that didn't get funded or lost funding. They just expired, as proposals tend to do if they don't get funded. If you looked at other voters on the proposals, I suspect you'll see statistics similar to mine.

That's more than a third of the peak (don't know what % of the total) HP that votes on proposals.

But the total HP (148M currently) is a much more important number, not the current amount of active voters (at least to the extent that the HP isn't dead stake, and there is plenty of evidence that very little HP stake is dead).

Just because HP holders aren't voting currently, doesn't mean they can't start voting at any time they disagree with the current status of funded and unfunded proposals. That is a more realistic limit on my voting power and if I abused it, that is how it would be restrained.

Don't believe me? Then look at how much "non-voting" stake suddenly starting voting during the Justin Sun debacle on Steem.

When people are generally happy with the status quo, they often don't vote as much, because they don't have a strong opinion on many issues being voted on, and they trust the opinions of those who are more actively engaged and experienced on the topics being voted on. IMO, that's a very logical way to act: I leave decisions to others at my company who are more aware of the ins-and-outs of particular issues all the time.

But when voters become unhappy, then you see voters become more active (assuming voting isn't being suppressed artificially by threats of physical violence and/or imprisonment, as you see in some countries nowadays).

And the lesson of the Steem voting war brings home another point: the voting stake of importance is not just currently vested Hive. In the case of strong disagreement like we saw during the voting war, liquid stake matters too, because it can also be converted to voting stake in a relatively short time (30 days nowadays).

god damn...

The fact is, Nothing changed from Steem to Hive, except that StInc & Ned were replaced by you and your team.

It looks like somebody hasn't been paying attention.

But BTW, complaining about someone else’s upvoting or downvoting is utterly pointless. People can upvote or downvote for ANY reason. Their stake, their choice. It’s not rocket science.

Interesting isn't it, that when I start downvoting these copypasted comments, suddenly it's treated as an attack on the DHF and on Hive and on Blocktrades - and not just a "disagreement about rewards"

The term is rules for thee, but not for me.

Coincidently,
Who gets their projects funded by the DHF.

The amount of vests needed to get funding is very unlikely to get past the threshold. So all the build up in the DHF and the literal cartel of votes ensures only one thing. Those with the power will keep it by funding their own projects through a common fund.

It is an exact duplication of government corruption, Where taxes are used to support a friends company.

By design or not, that is what is there.

I don't have any projects funded by the DHF. At the beginning of Hive, I planned to eventually use proposals to fund the work my team did, but in the meantime I made so much money in crypto investments that it didn't seem necessary economically, so I decided to treat it as a personal donation to Hive instead.

None of what I said is personal. I think you know that.

I don't think you need any assistance to get a project going that you want going.

I see things though looking up. I speak about them from a looking up point of view and how things appear to be. What I say is often took as against for some reason. IF you look closer. It has always been constructive feedback.

This sentence.
it didn't seem necessary economically. (or part of.) I would like to use back to you sometime.

PS I see much more detail than is known. TheHive. (aka Huckleberrie. HKLBRE token)

None of what I said is personal. I think you know that.

Yes, I didn't take it personally, just pointing out that I don't derive any personal profit from DHF proposals. While I know you've been around long enough to know that, there are a lot of new people that may read this discussion and not know that, so I often write for them as well as the person I'm directly replying to.

And while I think your view of the DHF is overly pessimistic, I do understand your point that people are more likely to fund proposals by people they know (which are also more likely to be friends, at least of a collegial sort, even if not typically close in-real-life friends).

But I've voted for proposals of people I've never met, or even interacted with, in the cases where their proposal seemed potentially beneficial. Nonetheless, it is also true that most of such proposals didn't get funded, despite my vote, and that is likely in part to due to the fact that the proposers didn't have enough interactions with other stakeholders to generate sufficient trust.

Speaking from experience, I can say you generally need to have a lot of those same types of interactions with venture capitalists to get funding from them. It's the exception, not the rule, when someone gets funded without stakeholders taking some time to get to know them and judge their mettle.

DHF proposals tend to have a higher bar to get funded, as opposed to ICOs, where people chase tokens with only the slightest regard for who the team behind the project is simply because of FOMO. On the whole, I think the DHF is a more efficient mechanism as far as achieving productive work, and with the limited funding available to Hive, I think that is necessary.

I don't think you need any assistance to get a project going that you want going.

That wasn't always true, but it is true now, at least in terms of financing (finding the right skill sets can still be a challenge though).

2 last things while I have some of your attention on this post.

Banking through Blocktrades. Being able to deposit FIAT to Blocktrades Exchange from a bank account. Account in my case would be Ireland.

DHF seems to be central to development right now.
Alternative means of support for such things is something I feel strongly should be looked at. That would inherently give value to both HBD for stability and the value of HIVE keeping afloat.

Banking through Blocktrades. Being able to deposit FIAT to Blocktrades Exchange from a bank account. Account in my case would be Ireland.

I've actually been working on developing a Euro-based emoney business of this type for a couple of years now (although it is a different company than BlockTrades for domicile and regulatory requirements, and BlockTrades will be one of its customers).

The software for the site is in alpha test right now, with all its current customers being just employees and related companies like BlockTrades, but I plan to open it up to Hive users who want Euro accounts connected to SEPA system within the first half of this year at the latest, and hopefully by the end of Q1.

DHF seems to be central to development right now. Alternative means of support for such things is something I feel strongly should be looked at.

Easier development of layer 2 apps and support for layer 2 tokens can serve as an alternative source for development funding. Splinterlands, for example, never raised money via the DHF.

I'm trying to create an environment with HAF and the follow-up smart contract processing engine where it is easier to reproduce that kind of development model: a model where apps are incentivized to be developed for future rewards from their operation and where these apps provide most of the functionality that Hive users are looking for.

hbdstabilizer and hbd.funder are supported because all of the rewards are returned and generate a direct profit for Hive stakeholders, generating demand to remove HIVE from the market (dalz quantified this at about 1 million USD a while ago, probably higher now) as well as increasing the stabilization of HBD, which has enormous potential to create value for Hive as @dalz, @taskmaster4450 myself and others have written about numerous times.

Generating a profit for Hive and removing HIVE from the market not only creates value for Hive stakeholders but also, to the extent it increases the HIVE price, increases the pool of rewards being paid out. @hbdstabilizer and @hbd.funder easily more than pay for themselves.

They don't even stop and wonder how 12% savings interests make sense if HBD wasn't stabilized.

wow! And Kenny the Sherlock Holmes found this out

wait, who wants CIA!

At this point it just looks like they're grabbing onto any opportunity to attempt to make themselves look better while shilling their new token they've created, it'd almost be funny if it wasn't this sad.

And funny that it is a "hive-engine" token and there are 1000s other tokens :)

I can create a hive engine token in 5 min :)

But, they also created a front-end that shows downvoted posts on trending! You can't say they didn't put their heart and soul into it!

But, they also created a front-end that shows downvoted posts on trending!

"They"?

That would be one person: @ura-soul

Are you going on some crazy conspiracy theories again? Is ura really just berniesanders and Dan and Ned and me all put together?

Is everyone on Hive the same person, except you?

Kenny,
You don't have enough HP to DV. :)

You should have stayed with your regular posts. You were earning good money. Now you get into this and see where we have arrived.

Your call, man.

I enjoy the game. And I enjoy hive a lot.

You should have stayed with your regular posts.

These are my "regular" posts - Everything I've written & video'd over the years has always been whatever was alive for me at the time, whatever I was excited about or researching.

You were earning good money.

If you'd ever read anything I wrote, or watched any of my videos, you'd know that money is the last thing I'm concerned with; as you can clearly see from my 5+ year history on the chain, I post less the more my posts are making - because money is a disincentive for me.

Now you get into this and see where we have arrived.

This is the most fun I've had on Hive/Steem in many years.

I'm no longer worried about putting out regular content, or content at all.

I'm no longer spending hours every day answering questions and on-boarding people to Hive, playing along with the fantasy that this place is even remotely decentralized.

I keep giving the totalitarians like yourself opportunity after opportunity to show people what you're really like, and y'all keep digging your hole deeper and deeper.

Your call, man.

Yep, and I'm going to keep posting little bits and pieces, to help show people who are new or haven't dug in much, just how centralized and controlled this platform is, until the moment that it stops being enjoyable to do so.

I'm not involved in creating anything on Hive-Engine, or the HiveAlive site.

Nice job having a fake conversation that doesn't have anything at all to do with the post.

I have no clue what you are talking about here. There is a new token on the way, which I have briefly mentioned when people accused me/us of doing nothing to try to improve the situation for content creators who are counter MSM narratives. However, no-one even mentioned it in this or any other relevant threads and I haven't seen anyone shilling it. I think your accusation here easily applies to you more than anyone else here.

Huh? I heard there's some token in the works to be traded for pob or something, sorry I don't care enough to check what exactly you're up to. What token may I be shilling? POSH which I've only spent my own money into to drive more traffic to our front-ends? You know, something you guys haven't managed to do in 5 years?

I wasn't saying that you are shilling a token. I was referring to:

At this point it just looks like they're grabbing onto any opportunity to attempt to make themselves look better

The VYB token is nothing to do with the people of informationwar, it's a project run by @trostparadox. I am happy to promote it and boost the chances of the success of the experiment, that's all.

FYI, most of the people I know in the informationwar space have brought quite a lot of people to Steem/Hive over the years - myself included. How many of them are left? In my case, probably none - why? They tell me themselves that it is due to the cost/benefit | risk/reward ratio not being high enough for them. I work with some of the best known people in Europe on this topic outside of Hive, but they gave up on Hive quite quickly. Given that the main 'truther' whales on Hive (I don't like the term 'truther' as it has an absurd negative connotation that seems to have been introduced by people who reject truth for their own reasons) are the ones driving BY FAR the most traffic to Hive (via Hive Engine and Splinterlands) it is quite bizarre to hear you make such false claims here.

Where are those people, mate? All of the content I've seen has close to 0 interactions, literal newcomers get more traction than whatever you lot have been rewarding over the years. I'm not even going to mention how close to none of you have any stake left so not only didn't you bring in any people that chose to stay but they all fucked off as well with the value they most of the time got unfairly seeing as close to no one cared about their content.

Hive is an investment, the risk to reward ratio is in speculation and many who aren't morons see that and don't think short term and have done well for themselves. If literal immutability of text isn't worth their time since that's the main reason they cry over getting banned in random places then I doubt showering them with rewards no matter what value they may actually bring is going to do Hive any good and it shows it hasn't after years of "uninterrupted(lack of downvotes)" unfair rewarding.

A comment was left on the whitepaper post. I perceived this as "VYB is boring, I can't be bothered to read about it", which is fine, although the transaction of attention was made and interpretation of the comment could go other ways.

https://www.proofofbrain.io/proofofbrain/@acidyo/re-vybvyb-r319xd

I heard there's some token in the works to be traded for pob or something

Maybe he was going on about another token that will synergise with the POB/VYB token, I'm sure there are a few. Not sure which token though, I'm only aware of VYB being available for direct POB exchange.

ps. rowan is a legend.

@acidyo muted me many moons ago (which is a shame as his input about curation could be valuable, if he unmutes I'll reach out), replying to your comment and theorising feels like a good opportunity to rebuild a bridge.

Hopefully, layer 2 can continue to create opportunities for discussion like we can see here in this post thread. We can identify the pitfalls and hazards more easily when more experienced Steem/Hive accounts weigh in.


All the best for the year ahead @ura-soul, best wishes!


while shilling their new token they've created

Haven't created any tokens... you're just publishing things you know to be lies, again.

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those blasted kids and their dog!

It's too bad that I can't spam upvote this comment.

Rough day today. Your joke brightened it up a bit more. Have a great day friend.

It's sad I had to scroll down this much to read this gem.

I'm a happy ending. It is kind of funny though knowing some went through all that work to create an app to highlight who's downvoted, only to discover those they'd been painting as villains are the most downvoted. I knew that without the app though... LOL

I don't see a single one of the downvoters we've been talking about on that list. Just me, ura, luke, josh, nainaz, lucylin, tdv... (the ones I already knew about), some other random folks (like the $700 correction on OCDB's insane over-vote), and the one hbd.funder project - which the Oligarchy has filled the comments with reasons why that's "not them"

I don't see a single one of you on the list

"You"? Who's 'you' in this context? And if this whole situation in your mind is 'us vs them', what makes you think I'm one of 'them'?

What is it you're accusing me of?

Lets get this right, you're a whale, complaining about other whales? You spend tens of thousands of dollars on Splinterlands, most of what you earn you use Reward.App to cash out immediately until recently, and are on almost permanent powerdown and control curation accounts with over one million in HP then you complain about other whales being capitalists!
I cant figure out why you're so jealous or greedy. As I said to others, YOU didn't create this vehicle that gives us , especially you, so much for doing so little.
Now because others are using their stake, (in a proof of stake system in which you voluntarily participate) you're moaning. If its purely about getting your content out there to an audience, there are many outlets for you to choose from but yet you wouldn't move to one of them as you wouldn't earn such a huge amount of money as you do.

This whole battle is not about censorship, that's a red herring, as is this post. No, its about CASH and you having rewards removed Principals are great until moneys involved yeah?

Go do your thing in peace and accept the PoS and voluntary nature of this blockchain or don't...

PS. I dropped my huge 3c downvote on you because I don't like BS and hypocrisy.
PPS Where are your principals when the little fish get downvoted?

Loading...

The main thing I want to point out, amongst all the other things you got wrong, is you have the wrong attitude on powerdowns.

IF you are for more decentralization you would advocate whales power down and sell so that the resources are spread out.

Might you be confused on the concept and thats why you would criticize Kenny for powering down and selling?

Optimal conditions for decentralized proof of stake:

Does not need whales to function, ever.

Does not want whales, ever.

Wants staked resources spread out to as many people as possible to further decentralize.

Wants whales and early holders of large stake to sell so their large power hold over the entire chain as is eventually gone(75/25 rewards actually did that). Whales are a centralizing force, that control large amounts of power, all whales with excess staked resources are a potential threat vector to decentralization(block trades can unilaterally unvote top witnesses and drop them from top 20 right now, assuming nobody else counters with voting for said witnesses).

I wont touch the other parts, just find it curious people want whales to be forever leaders, for some reason you "seem" to believe might = right and like a small amount of whales having power to assert their views.

Does not need whales to function, ever.

Yes and no. I sold a large part of the stake I once had, and then bought more using outside investment in the past couple of years. The current value of post rewards paid out is about $30 million per year. Without people buying in, with an inflationary system where people earn rewards that are often sold to cash out, the value of HIVE (and reward payouts) would crash, and no one would be happy.

Yes it is conceivably possible, without whales, to have a large number of small investors, say a million new investors per year each putting in $30 each, but I don't see that Hive or Steem has ever been successful in attracting that level of participation.

Would you be open to sell more? In your view on who is still a whale, what does Hive look like in 5 years?

I want to see a ton of smaller accounts with power using thier votes instead of 1 person with a lot of stake.

Vitalik has a great critique on DPOS and how POS is way better. I'm in the POS camp mostly, ethereum POS will be a huge step towards system wide decentralization at the whale or minnow level

I will probably sell again at some point. Right now I feel it is massively undevalued.

In any case, there is plenty of HIVE and HBD (which can be converted into HIVE) being sold from inflation/rewards every day. There is no shortage of HIVE to buy for new would-be stakeholders.

Wants whales and early holders of large stake to sell so their large power hold over the entire chain as is eventually gone(75/25 rewards actually did that).

The only thing that it incentivized was self-votes and actually accelerated a lot of concentration of power for those who didn't sell. I guess short-term memories about Haejin and Traf is a thing.

I wont touch the other parts, just find it curious people want whales to be forever leaders

If you want to get rid of your share in governance, then feel free to do so. Don't tell other people that they should give up theirs because you can't help but throwing yours out for a mess of pottage.

People don't necessarily want them for leaders, but you certainly don't help your position by throwing away your power while they opt to not do so.

Optimal conditions for decentralized proof of stake:

Is when people prefer to hold than selling. Obviously, there's no incentive for the "average" Hiver to hold HP, thus they sell.

Bigger chains like ADA have over 70% of the circulating supply locked up in people's wallets whereas it's much less so on Hive. Ask yourself why.

The only thing that it incentivized was self-votes and actually accelerated a lot of concentration of power for those who didn't sell. I guess short-term memories about Haejin and Traf is a thing.

75/25 bled out many whales overtime whereas 50/50 doesn't. Make an excel spreadsheet and compare it and you will see each year under 75 25 whales get diluted, 50 50 only does if they sell
There were a few examples of that that free downvotes already take care of now so, specific edge cases like haejin have been mostly dealt with now.

There is no defined technical spec you can point to that requires 20 people to hold over 50 percent of HP for Hive to function.

If you want to get rid of your share in governance, then feel free to do so. Don't tell other people that they should give up theirs because you can't help but throwing yours out for a mess of pottage.

People don't necessarily want them for leaders, but you certainly don't help your position by throwing away your power while they opt to not do so.

I do sometimes do that so I decentralize the chain further by allowing my small portion of liquid hive to be used by a new person powering up.

I can and will write what I want to, and advocate for what I want to. I'm not saying "tell" whales did x, I'm saying advocate they do. That's what witnesses and whales are, politicians wielding varying degrees of power, I'm sure you can appreciate people getting thier viice heard to thier representatives right? Who I vote as witness represents me after all, and who I dont vite for also does due to the power dynamics of hive governance.

Hive would be more decentralized without whales, we escaped Justin Sun but we clearly didnt learn our lesson if we r defending whales

Loading...

Whales are not 'leaders' they are influential in managing the platform and that's a huge difference. They do not directly effect my behaviour.

As for my mentioning his powerdown, you're right. He can do whatever he wishes with his stake but its hypocritical to then turn round and criticise others for doing whatever they wish with theirs.

I try to come with an attitude of gratitude for what I have been given as opposed to whinging about what I don't have or even worse, jealous of what others have. Unless you wrote the code, you're always a guest at someone else's party and if you don't like the music, you either ask for some new tunes or you go find another party.

Whales are not 'leaders' they are influential in managing the platform and that's a huge difference. They do not directly effect my behaviour.

Whales who vote for witnesses are "forever leaders" as long as they have their stake, they are King Makers and that is actually more powerful in many ways than being a "leader" which is why I called it "forever leaders". They make the Kings that others have to follow(block chain rules/upgrades/updates/etc).

you're always a guest at someone else's party and if you don't like the music, you either ask for some new tunes or you go find another party.

Exactly, while here I will advocate for a far better model, POS Ethereum will change the entire way people see decentralization, Justin Sun could not have done what he did on Steem, on Etheruem POS his stunt he pulled would have lost him all of his stake automatically.

Screenshot_20211227-212449_Firefox.jpg

Sounds way more centralized than on Hive, mate. It's pure POS, so the rich will literally just get richer. Here 15% goes to HP holders and 10% to witnesses while the majority goes to authors and curators, do you think the orcas and whales we have here today who most likely didn't buy in or use hardware to mine would exist on ETH? Not saying whales who hold their HP don't grow nicely alongside everyone else but anyone has a chance here earning their way up. Look at aggroed, marky, tarazkp, etc. Hell even I didn't buy any stake until after the 2018 bull run. None of that would've been possible on any other chain, going POS won't help that so it's really annoying when people bring these propositions in their arguments against Hive when there's literally no other blockchain out there offering the same opportunities to "non-whales".

Loading...

Stop using logical arguments for a decentralization and a wealth distribution project .

"..you're not the kind of droids that the large hive accounts are looking for..."

Small clubs who ethos is 'mooooar' , only want very obedient and non thinking droids - got it?

I am quite aware of that, however, the people reading my exchanges with others is who I am looking to convince of the merits of my arguments(not the particular person I am arguing with).

....this is my reasoning to, with mostly all the comments I make....

And by the way, I got confirmation from v4vapid that Deepdives is a go for Jan 2022.

@regenette why are you downvoting me? I see you are friendly towards lucylin, so am I...And also sympathetic with his issues and have upvoted him many times.

@lucylin any idea why hes dving me?

Didn't we have that kind of shit happening on steemit before or something similar? Wasn't smooth a part of that idea?

They called it : The Experiment and I was downvoted for my little rewards I earned.

I am kind of glad I kept myself distant to this platform and just observed....

Nice writeup Kenny! Some might not like It but for me it is very informative

The experiment was making the reward payouts more linear by downvoting when a lot of votes were piled onto one payout. At the time reward payouts were quadratic (twice as many votes earned four times the reward).

Over the time the rewards themselves became linear effectively codifying the experiment into the blockchain itself.

It's a small club and we arent in it.

Thats what I started to understand and left the 'Scene' even though I am thankful from day one to be a part of the community. I joined in the 2nd month of steemit's existence and I am still grateful for this adventure but I am disappointed how centralized the life on most blockchains actually is dear @smooth Thanks for your time to explain your intentions you guys had those days and now again.It was a rude and impolite way IMO.
I am an Idealist and have hopes, maybe I will start writing again to share my thoughts with the purpose to motivate and inspire good people here. As I mentioned before, I rather only observe for now where 'IT' will go this time. Many will leave....

'Waking up and really smelling the coffee', can be a painful process, matey....

Luckily, I'm a big fan of the feeling of disillusionment. Not many things so uncomfortable, and so important.

....still a pisser though....

I've disagreed with the hbd stabilizer from day one and I hadn't even taken into account the curation rewards those supporting put into their own pockets. The Oligarchy is strong on Hive.

Fellow peers, just realize an Oligarchy cannot become decentralized...

I sort of remember it being announced, but didn't pay much attention... then again, I'm pretty sure the proposal was only in the hundreds per day, as recently as a few months ago.

I also don't know exactly when the comment-voting side of it began, or if it has always been at this scale. Easy enough to find out of course.

The intital hbdstabilizer budget was 100 HBD per hour from the DAO, or about $2400 per day. Seeing both quantifiable and subjective success with that budget (as well as all of the funds being returned, plus profit), stakeholders have repeatedly voted to increase the budget.

I just saw the post in trending about it and said what the hell is this. We do need a stable coin if we want an effective way for users and businesses buy, sell and trade, but there has to be a better way. As is, it seems to mostly benefit the same group who holds us back from reaching any type of meaningful decentralization.

I did weigh in on that post, but it was mostly the groupies wanting big votes praising it. Now those votes are just being recycled for self gain and those groupies are seeing none of it...

lol, it's funny and the same time an eye-sore. I get downvotes for 'over reward' on 40$ payout and now this. Stabilize HBD? what does that even mean, lol. It's all fun and games right now. Too bad.

If I understand this right, and please anyone feel free to correct me if I am wrong on this by explaining, but all of these top voters have some of the best curation% APR I have seen on the platform.

Is this how they are achieving that?

For the people who are upvoting comments to fund the hbdstabilzer, what is the purpose of this? Why doesn't the HBD stablizer just request 86k HBD/day instead of 76k HBD/day so that nobody has to upvote those comments, and then the voting power from these curation groups can then go to actual content creators?

Am I missing something here?

You can see the curation APR of anyone by going here and changing the @name

https://hivestats.io/@blocktrades

EDIT: The above comments seem to conclude that the reason there is a 12% APR on HBD holdings is due to the stablizer.

image.png

That is not something I have kept up with, but I do see in my wallet it says it is 12% if I have the savings in HBD.

I am still unsure about what reason specifically is needed for upvoting comments vs just asking for more in the HBD payout via the DHF. To me, it seems like asking for more in the DHF would pass the proposal on the vote so I don't understand why comments are being voted on.

Is this how they are achieving that?

YES!

Interesting and makes sense although i don't understand everything it could involve, possibly also moves rep up ? if more money was needed it could just be increased, agreed.

I supported this proposal in the beggining as a way to stabilize the HBD, there is a big part of the comunity that will / would support this idea because of having a backed dollar coin which was listed since steemit, but there was no code to support it, there was an account there doing this experiment before the fork, because it was created with a low supply it's weird.

How would it work ? I don't know, most fiat pegged coins out there have way more supply which makes it more logic for the coin to be worth less and control or mantain the 1$ value, the backed dollar coin from steemit and hive has a lower supply than the native coin, i agree that this "stabilizer" doesn't seem a good solution long term, but it's out of my reach to sugest anything and i don't know if there are solutions being worked on.

This argument of overrewarding, like by what criteria ? India, USA, Europe, Russia, China ? And what about the matrix of withdrawl, is the user withdrawing every month or did he became a millionaire by holding, and why or what is bad ? There doesn't seem to be a criteria defined. Mostly it seems attacks on independent journalism and tought.

PS: Just to sum up that basically the coin will rocket up if there is no "stabilizer", just like SBD is now.

PS2: That is an amazing project hivealive and it brings truth to light

Everyone who uses their voting power (10 votes per day) earns the same curation rewards, except for being downvoted or late votes (after 24 hours).

This didn't used to be the case, but now all you get for curation rewards is a mostly-fixed ROI for participating in using your stake to direct where rewards go rather than being completely passive.

Why not just ask for 10k more per day in funding proposal instead of getting 10k from upvoted comments tho?

Because voting for the stabilizer is also a way to fund the DHF itself more (unlike a proposal).

So lets say that the proposal was getting 67k daily and is getting like 10k daily from upvotes on comments.

Is there a reason for why the proposal can't ask for 77k? I am assuming there is some sort of hard cap that one account can ask for maybe, or that the voters decided 67k is enough and others still want to continue so they upvote comments?

The only hard cap on the DHF is that only 1% of the total amount can be spent daily, so a proposal could ask for 77K HBD/day right now. But such a proposal would be functionally different from voting on the comments: a proposal that funds the stabilizer would only increase the DHF funds to the extent that the stabilizer makes a profit (because the base amount from the proposal is just recycled back to the DHF and only the profit gets added). Voting on the comments increases the amount of DHF funds much more directly.

I realized the above might not be clear enough, so I've added some example numbers. Let's assume that the hbdstabilizer is profiting at 0.1% per day right now (this is just a hypothetical number for the sake of an example, profits for hbdstabilizer vary a lot depending on HBD market pricing and I don't know what the current profit percentage is). An extra 10K per day as a proposal would then add 10K HBD * .1% = 10 HBD profit to the DHF. Compare this to 10K HBD added via voting on the hbdstabilizer comments, and you can see it's a dramatic difference (1000x more).

Thanks for the response. I missed all of the posts explaining these things

The DHF has a limited amount of funds (which voting for the comments increase, as @blocktrades told you).

There is a cap on the total DHF budget. As I indicated in my other comment, the stabilizer has consistently maxed it out. The comment rewards are in addition, to supplement DHF funds, not instead.

Why not just ask for 10k more per day in funding proposal instead of getting 10k from upvoted comments tho?

My guess = because that doesn't have 50% curation rewards.

As stated elsewhere, it doesn't matter what someone votes for in terms of curation, as long as it isn't being heavily downvoted. Curation rewards are just for participation. Once you factor in someone's stake, their curation rewards are largely fixed, as long as they bother to vote.

If you don't like this, you'll need more downvoting so curation rewards actually reflect voting in accordance with stakeholder consensus on the best use for rewards. I'm all in favor of that, as you know.

And as I've stated in response many times, and nobody has addressed, the big difference is that by voting on content, stake is decentralized because half goes to the authors, while in this case y'all are able to maintain your 50% curation, AND keep the rest by sending it all to the "fund," where just a couple accounts (the ones upvoting these spam comments) decide how it's rewarded.

It's just self-voting with extra steps.

That's not correct.

First, it isn't true that only a few accounts decide where DHF funds go. If you look at the level of voting necessary to fund something, it is far more than a few accounts. It takes 29 million HP to fund anything, and the largest account is 15 million and it drops off quickly from there. There has never been a DHF proposal approved by only a few accounts and there likely never will. It is always a broad swath of stakeholders voting.

Second if you look at the where the DHF funds are going none of them support the or even benefit the largest stakeholders, with the possible exception of one that is supporting the SPK network (I'm not an expert on what this does and I don't vote for it). They're all supporting developers, community projects, or platform resources (such as Keychain or HiveSQL) in a very clear way. Notably, the largest voter (@blocktrades) probably also spends the most supporting the platform (including much of the core development, and running the servers), and hasn't even gotten funding from the DHF for it.

In no way is any of this self-voting. The necessity of DHF proposals to clear the hurdle of the return proposal makes self voting MUCH harder and less likely (and much, much less frequent in practice), compared to the post voting where self-voting or circle voting or vote trading is trivial, and only sometimes (rarely in practice) inhibited by downvotes.

I essentially agree with this. I don't know how deliberate this outcome is and I don't think @blocktrades exactly needs more cash to the extent that they would shut down opportunities for developers - HOWEVER, at least based on historic outcomes, I haven't ever even planned to launch a proposal in Hive because the main gatekeepers to which proposals get funded seem to be operating in a centralised/cliquey way. Perhaps I am wrong and we are only ever seeing a snapshot of a situation via posts online. This is part of why regular video chats are so essential and so missing on Hive - from what I've seen. It's very easy to fill in the gaps with our imagination and reach wrong conclusions when all we see of some people is a few paragraphs of text.

In any case, I don't think having the author rewards pool returned to the proposals pool in a way that bypasses witness consensus is in the spirit of how Hive is designed. Granted, stakeholders have the ability to do that, but it definitely does seem off.

The DHF is very limited. We're already close to maxed out on the DHF budget for hdbstabilizer (we were literally maxed out 100% for months until recently but now a few hundred below and could use another proposal, which I will do when I get a chance).

I've read many of the comments. I'm thankful for all the back and forth. It creates transparency, taking this past from a five alarm fire to, "oh, that's what's going on." Thank you for speaking up and out... to everyone, really. It helps flush everything out.

Here 👆 herE

IMG_20211230_115822.png

HIVE!D

I was called a "Thief" by one of these Hypocrites. I'm going to see how he addresses me in the open.

I was called a fraud for months while waiting for them to support that info with real facts. I have hurt many egos. I have disclosed classified info. Who cared?

Why downvote my comment on @informationwar when I'm asking questions?

Please fill me in on what I am asking. I genuinely dont understand this

....asking lefties for logical thought process is an exercise in futility, matey.

Write it down here... Make it concice... Copy/Paste if you like... Plagairize too if need be. This is business software!

Screenshot_20211225-153038~2.png

While I think your're misguided, and not too bright - I'll defend your right to say whatever the fuck you like - without any acts of oppression and control via downvoting.

....you also have skills that I do not posses, and I wanted to collaborate on something with you re hive - hence the twitter messages - but you're intellectual insecurity prevented you from civility , and thus stopped the idea ever being perused, which was a shame.
'Levels of competence' are great things to be aware of (within yourself).
Then you find real power (rather than floundering around in places where competence levels are mismatched).

Happy Christmas, you old commie !

.........and then you go and downvote this comment ! lmao....do you still not see the very point I was making? ..you couldn't make this up... lololol


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.


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.

Kind of wish Twitter had dislikes already.

Blah


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.

 3 years ago  Reveal Comment

Really interesting. I will save this for later reading, it will take a while for sure, but I'm really interested in this.

I'm taking my time to figure out who all hive bc works before putting my material, time and efforts on it, this, maybe, can help. Thank you, @kennyskitchen.

Kenny, I would appreciate it if you would talk to me about your down-voting plan first.

You can be right and wrong at the same time. It’s not a matter of truth or power, it’s a matter of consciousness and coincidences.

Btw. congratulations, these comment sections are biblical.

Very eye-opening. The blockchain doesn't lie.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

Thanks for sharing! Did not even know this was happening. Going to look into it.

Read this a couple days later than block trades and everyone spoke up, read every comment and i came to realice why i love hive. Trans-fucking-parency. Had a great time reading every response, every word said here.

Why i wanted to comment that, someone has to point it out, that you got partial answers on every subjet, that everyone walked inn and spoke their lines, noone tried to act like a fool or lie, how many times have you seen someone in power actually DO THAT? These big rollers and votes could push it out with the hp, but they dint, they talked it, and that is what amazes me in Hive.

Big hug to the community, this kind of engagement is what makes me actually read post on the platform.

Why i wanted to comment that, someone has to point it out, that you got partial answers on every subjet, that everyone walked inn and spoke their lines, noone tried to act like a fool or lie, how many times have you seen someone in power actually DO THAT?

Ya, it turns out when you start going after their pocketbooks (by downvoting the hbdfunder comments for over $1000, and making a post about it) they suddenly want to talk calmly, after months of BT and others ignoring what's going on, and the whales paying attention mostly publishing libel, zero-ing out every post talking about it (like they did with this one), and ignoring most every question asked.


These big rollers and votes could push it out with the hp, but they dint, they talked it, and that is what amazes me in Hive.

What? They zero'd out the post, removing all rewards and dropping it to the bottom of all the algorithms so I spent 20 Hive to promote it, which is why people saw it.

2021-12-30 10_51_57-Kenny Palurintano - @kennyskitchen _ PeakD — Mozilla Firefox.png


My next two posts will most likely be just collections from the comments of my last few (since there's over 900 comments).

One post of the most beautiful, thought-provoking, and on-point comments that have been left (since most people will never dig through hundreds of comments to find this gold.)

And, one post of all the cliff-hanger questions, where these folks will talk BS in circles until you pin down that last comment that just has a couple specific questions they've been avoiding... They never reply to those ones. Weird, huh?

We need to fix vyb website, it dint show me hive at all, i dint even know that you got 0 out, if i knew i would have write something totally different :S

Well show us those specific questions :)

What's the problem with the VYB website?

You gotta open, refresh then click the ammoun to be able to see if someone got 0 hive. Im used to proofofbrain.blog that shows you all tokens and hive, Or ecency, or peak, or cine new frontend. And so on, so on. Basically is not a "problem" as a mystake in coding, is that it took me to see it on peak to notice that he got 0 hives on that great post :)

Congratulations @kennyskitchen! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):

You got more than 7500 replies.
Your next target is to reach 7750 replies.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP

Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:

PUD - PUH - PUM - It's all about to Power Up!
Christmas Challenge - 1000 Hive Power Delegation Winner
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!

The level of incompetence in this post and the comments of support is mindboggling.

Thanks for adding nothing to the conversation, but making sure the Hive Oligarchy know you're defending them.

Lols... Did you disagree with my views?
I think the comment is pretty on point.

I'm trying to take it all in myself. I don't have the experience of governance-knowledge that you may have. Could you clarify a bit please on the level of incompetence?

Surely, you can't say that it's not a valuable post though?

Your comment makes me wonder how you personally view Proof of Brain & Crowd Wisdom (the mechanics/concept, not the tribe).

Check out smooth's daily curation rewards. lol.

I don't care, it's his stake, but it's eye opening.

:)

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

My curation rewards aren't any different from any other stakeholder who uses their voting power, relative to stake. Since the last few hard forks, curation rewards were made linear, except to the extent of downvotes or voting late (after 24 hours). It no longer adjusts in any meaningful or complex way to small differences in curation "performance" and has been turned into a participation reward for using your stake to direct rewards. Most stakeholders supported this (though, to be clear, I was a bit skeptical).

I like the change in curation rewards, less gaming, less frustration more reason to hold stake and curate. I think it was good.

Exactly, it's all just the rules of "proof of stake" - but to say the goal of the down-voting happening is to "protect the rewards pool" and make it (like the stabilizer) sound like some grand gift to the community - while raking it in.

I'm just providing evidence and a bit of snarky commentary, I leave everything else to the reader :-)

The goal of downvoting is not to "protect the reward pool". it is to direct the reward pool elsewhere, when the downvoter doesn't agree that payout is a good use of reward pool funds. The reward pool payouts are the same regardless, it is always paid out, the important question is where.

Smooth, thank you for taking the time to be professional and explain. I have been away for a while so please be patient with me as I do some catching up. I'm interested in your feedback. I have been tipped off and really looking at this since this post.

Just like mostly everyone: I hope we can do a little better. I see the down-vote costs you your voting power and it is sometimes causing the other loosing party a great deal of stress which eventually makes its way full circle and turns into a debate. The whole process takes time away from all parties involved. Can we strike a balance that will save everyone time, energy, and value?

Lets consider that we could all benefit by reminding ourselves that we all have ideas for investments that are not easily communicated and require a great deal of research. It seems simple to me: have some boundaries. We could be carrot driven and let the market rewards work things out. Save the stick for fraud, child exploitation, theft or a crime in society. The rational is: Don’t underestimate how much we don’t know about what the other side is doing.

To really know someone’s intention, or even the truth from a lye, we need to spend some time investigating it and even then we will never get it right completely. Ultimately some might even opt for a system of discovery and justice; so it gets complicated fast. In my opinion, respecting boundaries will get us by in the mean time and working together will give us more solid solutions in the long term. It is just going to take some time and really it helps to keep an open mind to what we don’t know especially if we have other goals and don’t have the time to really research the intentions of the members in another group.

I don't agree with the framing of downvotes as a "stick". Downvotes and upvotes are voting where stakeholders want the rewards to go. Where stakeholders agree, the rewards flow, where stakeholders don't, the rewards don't. Sometimes, as with all decision making processes, this can be a bit messy and some people will sometimes get upset when the outcomes don't match what they would most prefer. This is unavoidable when there is any sort of collaborative decision making, but any stresses shouldn't be extreme in most cases, or alternately, adults generally learn not to be overly stressed when they don't always get their way.

Also, as voting is a method of identifying and reaching agreement, we don't need to determine or suggest any labeling of intention. A downvote does not imply bad intention, only disagreement. A lack of downvote may indicate agreement, or perhaps just neutrality. Any of these is okay, people are entitled to have different opinions or similar opinions or no opinion.

Best to you James, glad you decided to stop by after all this time.

Thanks for the welcome back! I get what your saying about stress. I live by this idea: how much stress we take on is ultimately our choice. More to my point, this maxim reminds me of the complexities, risk, and costs of development and also applies to the complexities of sorting out truth from lies in the presents of free speech:

No one is bound to give information about things he is ignorant of, but every one is bound to know that which he gives information about.

I don't expect anyone to get that right all the time. It is easy to loose track of assumptions and, how do you know what you don't know? I'm still catching myself on something even after I really started watching my own mind with distrust. I think this maxim is on topic here and sets a healthy boundary and encourages learning when one is ready to learn: Also, here I'm taking responsibility and I welcome the competition to do better.

He who contracts, knows, or ought to know, the quality of the person with whom he contracts, otherwise he is not excusable.

So I'm having good interactions with Dan N and Kenny and all this has been very interesting..

'protect the reward pool' is a PR friendly version of 'direct the reward pool elsewhere'. the gist of the stated intent by the biggest downvoters is generally in alignment with the idea of 'protecting the reward pool' or alternatively 'looking out for the little guy' - whereas what many people are pointing out here seems just as likely or more likely, given the self interest of investors, that the downvoting is self interest motivated.

Much of this ongoing discussion seems to involve different people accusing each other of being self interested, which is both valid and also a bit weak considering that Hive is an investment vehicle, of sorts. In my perception there is a real gap, though, between the perception of people who invest in Hive mainly as a way of supporting free speech on the internet and people who invest just to make money. It is unusual to have an investment opportunity that so directly effects social interactions on a daily basis - in some ways it isn't healthy, but on the other hand the alternatives are often far less healthy.

We COULD actually cultivate health and social cohesion through the voting on Hive and that is part of what I found so exciting about Steem early on - it is an opportunity for people to understand harmony and interpersonal relations in a way that spurs personal/societal growth. However, inevitably, the imbalance of the world will emerge here too - currently perhaps easiest identified by the whales who arbitrarily choose to nuke entire accounts without explanation or community support.