I'm perplexed that none of these low value make-up nor elementary school level crafts trending posts don't get downvoted to remove at least half of their earnings. They increased exponentially to spam level, because they've become an easy way to game the rewards.
That being said, the Abundance.Tribe and formerly NaturalMedicine are two communities who are responsible for a good amount of retention on Hive. While I understand where Acidyo is coming from I don't agree that this conversation hurts Hive.
On the contrary, free speech requires you accept the speech you disagree with or are even appalled by. The problem is autovoting, which has destroyed interaction, because it took the need to scroll and read content to assess the quality out of the equation.
This splinters the platform and separates everyone further into tribes. Because of this, no one sees what happens outside their own. They stay in these tribes, partly for the interaction, but mostly for rewards. Proof of this was the attempt by acidyo to push others into the more niche communities, yet users keep using his, because they feel there's better discovery for 'THEM' there.
Same with Gems. I've watched users use NaturalMedicine and Abundance.Tribe earning more than they deserve, but end up posting to Gems for the larger votes on lower quality content. I believe this happens, because we are inherently selfish. On top of that, too many are overlooking the real problem; high stakes not curating quality content.
Part of it is fear of retribution. Another part is complacency, because votes are limited. I think cleaning up the trending feed as a whole is a better solution than targeting a minuscule topic range. Allowing the seemingly negative or even damaging topics to live alongside the positive is necessary to show free speech does exist here.
This whole thing that only the positive should shine through is not realistic nor representative of the real world. I think the Abundance.Tribe is guilty of this as well. I forget which pillar it is or the exact words, but requiring nonconfrontational speech is not healthy nor free speech.
My words are my responsibility, but your reaction is yours. I had a problem with this one pillar since day one, but figured I'd see how far you guys considered it as necessary. It turns out it's pretty important to enough of you that have power it became a problem for me and it hinders free speech by putting the blame of another's reaction on the messenger, rather than where the blame truly lies. This is in opposition to common sense, responsibility and Anarchist philosophy itself.
That being said, I hope you stay kenny, because if it isn't about rewards, then the downvotes won't matter and you'll carry on and keep the conversation going. I look forward to your suggestions. I myself think changing how staking works here is the only solution, but it seems most don't want to lose that power they bought in many cases. Power should never be for sale...
P.S.- if it isn't about rewards, you should have never mentioned that you worry about those who use this as their sole income. This isn't supposed to be a welfare system, UBI nor the only way to earn an income. First off that's socialism, which is in opposition to Anarchy. Second it stifles the growth of those receiving it without question. While they may be creating quality content, they aren't earning new skills to get them by when/if these earnings are affected... This was never meant to be nor should be anyone's sole income.
That's all DPoS is.
100% upvote, DPOS is power for sale.
Nailed it.
Justin Sun came in and paid for power, boom he took control and has the power.
Someone could do the same to Hive.
It is ongoing on Hive, as it was on Steem. @ned no longer is part of that oligarchy, and Sun Yuchen may not be, but an oligarchy wields power on Hive, just as it did on Steem.
Stake Holder Economics have Pros and Cons. Alpha is who can ally himself in smart ways, that's how it's done between Chimps in the jungle and also on DPoS Blockchains by humans.
Don’t expect anything else, srsl don’t.
You might be surprised to know that Hive tokens are a form of speech. Speech censored could include our tokens, if we're not quite robust about protecting our speech.
I consider my tokens the least important form of speech, perhaps because I pay far more attention to my words than I do my tokens.
But here, or elsewhere, I'll not be ruled by force. Pandering to power is not sovereignty, and I will expect better, because if we don't do better than that Hive will never have the ability to distribute the means of production it was meant to, and something else that can will replace it, because the market will act to secure independent means of wealth whenever possible, and the technology to make it possible exists.
If Hive has tricked us into thinking we could get it here, and we can't, Hive is doomed to failure, and something else is going to eat the market it could have had.
That's not wrong, but #HIVE is also one of the best ecosystems to start this 'new' rather layer2 system.
Whenever you think this is the ONE - you've basically already lost the plot. It's amazing to me how people can watch "The Matrix" and don't see the ultimate lesson behind it. Every system will eat itself from inside, it's just a matter of time. We need to embrace change and invest in what will disrupt us eventually.
That's why I'm here. I want Hive to succeed, and that's why I advocate for the underlying value that creates value in our tokens. That value is our speech. Speech isn't only blogs, and plenty of other means of speaking have arisen on Hive, but it is the original mechanism, and remains particularly well suited to nuance and delivering robust and substantive information.
There's nothing wrong with adding value, but change can eliminate value too. That would be tragic IMHO.
So yes I think you are right, but your fast with your conclusion may be too fast.
I see the value in Dpos if implemented right. Stake is valuable and there should be perks for hodling, but it doesn't need to give one more power than another in governance, for example. I don't think it needs to be done away with, but think it could use a restructuring.
The problem is, those who get to make the decision to do so are unlikely to give up that power. None of the forks(alternatives using the exact first layer) have addressed this, so I don't see them as an answer to much.
It's pretty simple really. If you want to remove stakeholder votes from rewards, then remove stakeholders as the ones paying the rewards from inflation. Create a new system with rewards paid for and controlled by a subcommunity with different allocation rules, or rewards coming from ad revenue and allocated in some other way, or something else.
I don't think it is necessary for DPoS to involve rewards at all. The social posting and rewarding system just happens to be an app that was built on the chain, but it's not the only way, and not part of DPoS itself.
I think only people who secure the network should even be rewarded with Hive. 2nd layer solutions that are out now easily can reward people in specific tokens for a community.
Fine with me. The social app is basically an app. It happened to be built into the blockchain, but from a software design or blockchain consensus point of view there really isn't any reason for it. The model of "smart contract" used in Bitshares (predecessor of Steem, predecessor of Hive) was code included in the core blockchain consensus code itself, but the world has moved on and that's not really seen as ideal at this point. The social app should probably be second layer, yes.
So stakeholders are paying inflation that they have not earned or received yet, but post author and voter rewards aren't theirs until the receive them?
Rules for thee but not for me.
Stakeholders are paying for inflation every single block no matter what they do, because they are the ones being inflated. If you show up looking for rewards with low or no stake, inflation doesn't cost you anything. And that's perfectly okay, the system is designed to potentially reward you, and maybe you will get some rewards, but you're not entitled to them nor entitled to much of a say over who gets them.
Stakeholders can't avoid being inflated (well, at least not without a hard fork), but they can and do have a say (in proportion to their stake, i.e. contribution to the cost of inflation) over what that inflation is used for.
That means, if I understand it correctly, that those who are squinting at their payouts here are stupid enough to believe what it says on the box? Well, insofar as I myself trust the advertising that is made for a product, I haven't learned very much in life, have I?
However, shouldn't it then rain downvotes for postings that do marketing and have catchwords on their packaging that suggest something on the social app that can't really be adhered to there, because the actors suggest to the curious customer that he can find a livelihood here? In any case, I see the upvotes fluttering in everywhere in praise of these "unimagined possibilities". Consequently, you should basically take the wind out of the sails of such postings too, because they suggest something that goes against the purely rational principle of block building.
If you took away the social app altogether, what would be left? A pure cryptocurrency that wants to experience being traded and financial transactions without banks as intermediaries in between? But where is Hive traded? Not on binance and kraken, as far as I know. As we are experiencing, anonymous transactions are not tolerated or crypto trading platforms are pulling out of it, or am I seeing this wrong? I am not a pro at all of this.
A cynic might say that it is these hopefuls who take the advertising for granted and spread enthusiasm that basically ensure that their own illusion is maintained. The emotionless calculating stakeholder who is in charge here can be quite happy with that, can't he?
If I understand Hive as a casino (which I think, comes closest to what it is), where I play with chips, wouldn't it be the case that I also want to exchange these chips at some point?
Why then all the fuss about social engagement, as read above? Why the mantra of "holding"? Why is it that individual bloggers are expected to engage in their comment sections? Things are being mixed up here that seem to contradict each other.
The jester would probably laugh and say, "Well, we never said you couldn't make a living on Hive, however, we don't rule out that possibility either."
That's basically a form of promise without a promise. It can be done, of course, and we see it being done. Looking at it that way, one could interject that those who believe the advertisements are also the ones doing the advertising. Advertising is always tied to the emotional sensations people experience through it. To that extent, I could dismiss it as romantic nonsense. But still give my thumbs up - lol
You just can't say that too loudly, because then you'd probably be stoned from all sides, both by the hopeful bloggers and by those who are in charge here, because it just doesn't play well, does it?
I don't worry in that respect, I do not put my woe and well to this place, for the better wisdom. With my acquired stake I can, as they say, do what I want, can't I?
I'm not sure what you're talking about. Where does it say you are entitled to rewards on any particular post?
True
I think we are in the wrong business, making posts about food recipes, travel posts, and photo challenge posts seems to be the way to go. If we were truly about getting rewards all of us would be doing what gets upvoted on trending instead of writing political posts.
Ahem,... eerm..... I think you forgot to include "makeup posts" in that sentence!
Yeah! definitely we serious wizards are indeed in the wrong business to be seriously rewarded.
That's a very fair point. 😁
I agree and I do when I notice them. Usually by only a portion because I don't think I should be the only one making these adjustments. Sometimes others do too, just not that often.
It is the nature of the system that downvotes aren't incentivized in any way, so for the most part nobody is going to put a lot of time into it. If we happen to see stuff, we might downvote it, otherwise not.
Except that they shift those rewards that are being removed right up to the top-earning posts, correct?
Or is that just an untrue thing that lots of people on here say? I haven't seen a technical breakdown of that, and can't read the code myself - but I've seen many folks explain it this way, and never seen anyone correcting them.
No, they don't. They reduce the eventual payout of the one post which results in more remaining in the pool. That larger pool then results in marginally higher payouts of other posts.
Ah. Thank you for clarifying that.
To dive deeper then...
If we say (just for me to understand) that the top 100 posts have a 80% of the rewards that have been voted out at that time, those 100 posts would also get 80% of the rewards removed from the down-voted post?
Feel free to shoot me a link or tell me to go find it if this is already laid out very clearly somewhere.
It doesn't change the distribution of other rewards, it mostly just increases all of them by a certain percentage. So if the top 100 got 80% before, the top 100 would get 80% after. Both top 100 and outside the top 100 would increase by X% (X% is very small for any single downvote of course, let's say 0.01% hypothetically).
You could have just said yes.
The correct answer is more subtle. If you're downvoting a post in the top 100 (almost always what I downvote since I don't spend a lot of time looking for downvote candidates), you are actually reducing the share of reward going to the top 100.
The Reward Pool is a somewhat static piece which gets distributed across all votes of a period of time. You can't expand or reduce it by voting habits.
Correct, by the voting habits (specifically of whales) do decide where those rewards get allocated.
For example, if they downvote a $300 post to $0 - that $300 is added back into the rewards pool, where it will mostly be awarded to the top posts at the time.
All Rewards are mostly distributed to the top post at any given time, independent from downvoting habits.
I disagree with most voting habits on-chain too, but that's a totally different story for a small fish like me. I don't even get how you ended up as a target.
Sounds fair and it's nice to see I'm not the only one bothered by this.
This kind of behavior earns my respect and won't likely scare many people off chain. That's wielding power responsibly. If it weren't for one or two people getting off on their ability to singlehandedly destroy a post (often for arbitrary reasons), I don't think downvotes would be a big problem. As it is though, one or two bullies have the potential to scare a lot of users away, and more users means more projects will want to build on Hive and more investment with it.
We have downvotes as a check on abusive upvotes, wouldn't it make sense to have some kind of check on abusive downvotes?
Also, It sounds like you don't like having rewards for content on the first layer. Is that a popular opinion among the devs and other large stakeholders you talk to? If so then why wasn't it removed earlier to avoid confusion?
They're not equivalent. Upvotes earn rewards and generate payouts, downvotes don't. The sort of abuses are different and while downvote abuse may be annoying to an individual, it isn't systemic. The 25% limit on downvotes (essentially 2.5 full power downvotes per day) means that there are always many payouts escaping downvotes (or at least not being downvoted very much), no matter how much havoc someone wants to cause.
It is somewhat mixed but very few actually think it is working well, or has ever worked well going on six years.
In part because it is a significant task and there have been other priorities, including building out software infrastructure that would make second layer solutions more powerful and accessible. There isn't much support for removing it without better support for alternatives.