The Hive community is second to none and the Hive blockchain may be the most decentralized chain out there...That doesn’t mean it’s without problems. We are learning as we go.
One issue that is making it's way into my attention a lot these days, an issue I've avoided for a long time is the issue of downvotes for reward disputes.
I know this topic has been debated a lot before but I’d like to look at it from the perspective of power rather than payout and how it’s executed rather than whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I also want to focus on a specific example that is potentially going to effect a few hundred people who @kennyskitchen has supported here and how we can avoid scaring people off the chain.
The biggest reason I avoid this issue is that I worry that even bring it up too much might scare new users or incite anger among people who haven’t invested the time to understand both sides. It’s easy to demonize people with power. Too easy. It’s true that power does corrupt more often than not but we are a small ecosystem with a lot of smart and decent people and so I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt whenever possible, except when I have reason not to.
Creating a system of governance is just about the hardest thing you can do, and we all come with our biases so I urge everyone to as stay cool headed and patient about these kinds of debates. Even if you are downvoted, try to stay calm and let us hear your perspective rather than rage quitting. At the same time, please be try to understand how one might rage quit or become negative about Hive after being downvoted by someone with a much larger stake. It’s not a nice feeling and for most people would shock and confuse us, and cause us to question how decentralized power really is here.
For all it’s problems, I prefer Hive to anything else out there. I still believe in both the tech and the community which is why I risk putting my neck out there or being totally ignored to make a post like this
For those who weren’t here two or three years ago…
Downvotes may seem like an unnecessary and unpleasant feature that most of us want to stay as far away from as possible. If you were here back then though, you know how much they benefited the platform. Along with the decision to move to 50% curation, we managed to de-incentivize all kinds of abuse, from self-voting, to plagiarism, to pay-for-vote schemes to shitty curation to a terrible trending page to awful rewards distribution.
These problems were all fixed (for the most part) thanks to changes to the rewards algorithm and the introduction of downvotes AND the active effort of the community and it’s largest stakeholders to create a better ecosystem. Whatever motivates each individual, whether it was a deep love of the community, a desire to create a better world, or a desire to protect ones own assets, we solved these problems together through lots of difficult discussions and trial and error. There were many casualties, people and projects who left the chain and some of them may have been justified and some of them were irreplaceable.
Once again, creating a better governance system is a difficult task.
No system will ever be perfect. All we can do is strive to be better and better and so we need to have these hard discussions sometimes. I don’t enjoy them.
The current issue
There are some people (including some of the largest stakeholders) who think that “disagreement of rewards” is a fair reason to downvote. Depending on your role on the platform and how you interact with it, this can seem like common sense or a stakeholders attempt to dominate the chain.
Depending on the motivations and methods, both of these could potentially be true.
It makes sense that people want to use their stake
- to make sure shitty posts don’t go trending
- to counter excessive autovotes or random votes that ignore content quality
- to discourage posts or topics that they see as harmful to the chain
- to deter users from being shitty community members or self voters.
- To prevent anyone from taking too much of the reward pool, especially when we don't think they deserve it.
The problem is that in many cases, this is a very subjective judgement.
So do we just agree that everyone can downvote as they please and that's that? That seems to be the current consensus and one that I disagree with. After all, if "My stake, I can do what I want with it" was enough, there would be no need for downvotes. We created downvotes to solve a problem with incentives, and so it makes sense that we will need future adjustments to incentive structures.
Being downvoted by someone with more stake than you also highlights power disparities more than upvotes do because it inevitably feels much more like an attack.
The people doing the downvoting may not think of it as an attack or as a display or power, but that's how it will be perceived by anyone who has struggled to get heard or seen on chain. As for power disparity, this is a very complex issue because without sufficient incentives to stake Hive, the selling pressure will be perpetually higher than the buying pressure and this deflates the price of Hive to worthlessness.
It's easy to complain about whales and how unfair things are (I used to!), but whales often understand the chain better than minnows, are involved in continued developments and are often the people that work hardest to keep Hive valuable as an investment, whether they buy Hive or they just stake it.
We are doing our best to be decentralized but we are still a far way from it. That's ok. This is not easy. We have essentially created a little society. That's an incredible feat and the fact that we have this many people and this much development is amazing. It will take time and a lot more trial and error to get it right and sometimes disagreements will arise, and we will have to learn from our mistakes.
I don't want to make anyone feel like whales are waiting in the shadows ready to downvote you. That's not the case. Usually.
In 5 years I have never been downvoted by a whale (and I hope that this post doesn't change that). I have found most of the people arguing against downvotes to be whiney and unable to compromise or discuss things, which is why I believe the community doesn't come to their rescue when they are downvoted. I understand though, it’s easy to get that way when you perceive someone stronger than you as attacking you (whether or not it’s an attack is one of the issues that we need to hear more from both sides on).
There are some topics and communities that seem to attract more downvoting than others, and some people who are more likely to get downvoted than others....
Recently @kennyskitchen and @ura-soul as well as others in the “Truther” community have been getting 100% downvotes from @acidyo @curangel and @azircon and are not too happy about it. @smooth also downvotes posts that complain about rewards.
Some others like @josediccus and who is non-aggressive as far as politics and hive issues has received downvotes as well as Natural Medicine community for "trending too often" and "not being transparent enough". While that reason is fine for me, I wonder if it would have been downvoted if it was a community run by a larger stakeholder.
See, I'm not even going to argue here that any of these downvotes were wrong. I pay way too little attention to what posts and what users receive how much of the reward pool, who self votes, and who interacts and contributes to speak on that.
That's why I have never downvoted unless I see blatant abuse or spam.
The main points I want to make are
#1 1-3 users/projects being able to decide what ends up on the trending page and what gets 0 upvotes does not reflect the ideal of "decentralization"
This is true of upvotes as well as downvotes, but while a "unfair" upvote is easier to ignore, a 100% downvote from a whale on your post or a friends post is a lot harder to ignore. It feels like an attack and makes us feel powerless.
I believe that eventually we need to find a way to distribute voting power further. I do not know what form it will take. A complex reputation system? Faster voting decay on certain kinds of voting behavior? Different rules for upvoting/downvoting? I do not know. This will take the whole community to come up with a solution. We don't want to de-incentivize people from trying to build a big stake here, and there is the issue of multiple/anonymous accounts (which is not something we really want to give up) so this is a tricky balancing act.
#2 Until we find a way to further decentralize power , we need to encourage a softer approach to downvoting, otherwise the community risks a continued leakage of users and support.
Decentralization won’t come from just technology. It will come from our effort to create it. Just because you have a $300 downvote doesn't mean you have to use it. If you disagree with the rewards it's one thing to knock of 20% of the current rewards. It's another to nuke it to 0. It's also a dirty trick if you leave it alone until the last minute only to downvote it right before payout.
I know that if I earned $200 on a post (first of all I'd be thrilled) I'd feel much differently about one user giving me a 15% downvote equal to $40 than them giving 100% downvote and cancelling out any and all potential rewards.
#3 We don't want to feel like voicing our opinions could result in having all the support we have worked on for years being erased in a moment.
I am nervous that even just writing this could cause me to lose support or even worse, make me a target. I don't think it will, but it's still a scary thought. I don't plan on selling most of my stake any time soon, but it's a safety net that makes me sleep easier, and I like to be able to support other users so the thought of becoming someone's enemy here makes it hard to speak honestly sometimes.
We may have a censorship resistant chain but we want to feel like it’s fair and welcoming too. If it feels fair most people will stay, whether it’s for money or to get our voice out there.
I also don't see the logic in demonizing someone for caring about their payout when it can influence their ability to survive in the world AND also their ability to influence the chain.
Remember many people don't have the resources to invest money, all they can invest is time and energy, and just because you don't see the value they bring, doesn't mean they don't bring value.
Perhaps in the end the best solution will be merely more support for anti-downvoting groups.
It's ok to disagree, but we should try to be more understanding of each other regardless of our position. That's how we learn.
Both Kenny and Acid have done an incredible job at distributing the rewards pool far and wide here, so this kind of thing makes me really sad. While everyone knows Acid, most people don't know that Kenny has onboarded countless people and has encouraged millions in investment for Hive and has supported a wide variety of users, not only hard-core truthers.
I won't even argue with the decision to downvote him. All I can say is It might be less about what you do and more about how you do it. Take your ego out of it. Be prepared for an angry person on the other side of the downvote and sympathize with that. Do your best not to scare them off chain. You may not care about them, but what if 100 people follow them? What if a great project ends up leaving the chain because of what they perceive as unfair power dynamics.
We want this place to be better than what came before.
If we are going to have “downvote because disagreement of rewards”, any whale engaging in it needs to do so with full awareness that throwing their weight around with downvotes could potentially scare people off the chain and hurt their investment. The same way people no longer self-upvote to the same extent, we need to incentivize and encourage a culture here where people aren’t trigger happy with the downvotes. Otherwise we all lose.
I think we can come up with a solution that can satisfy both sides of this debate, even if it won't satisfy every single individual but we need to be willing to respect each other a little more and point fingers a little less.
We need to consider out all viewpoints and look outside of our circles to come up with the best approach to keep this a healthy ecosystem and a good investment.
I’m putting my neck out here because I trust our large stakeholders will see that if they don’t tread a little more carefully with downvoting in this fashion (and eventually come up with a code based solution), they’ll likely scare off all but their own circle and turn their investment to shit. And cause I think a bunch of them are decent people who could understand (if they try) the frustrations of those of us who don’t have the money to invest enough to become whales.
Please prove me right.
Check peakd for full article
▶️ 3Speak
My 2 cents........
After 4 years I made trending. I was voted on by @ranchorelaxo. I was so excited to finally make trending AND it was also the highest-paid post I ever had.....over 100.00.
I was then warned by a friend that I would probably be downvoted and why......
and sure enough, @newsflash downvoted me. My post was still trending and It still was the highest-paid post I ever had.
I look at votes this way. They are a gift. You can spend your time blogging on another website and make nothing and have no one read what you wrote......... OR you can be on Hive, know that your post payout IS after 7 days......... so do not get too attached to that number until it is paid out.
I HAVE written open letters to whales that I thought were downvoting unfairly. I listened to their stories and most had merit as to why they were doing what they were.
So my advice is to get the downvoters together and listen to what each has to say instead of making assumptions..........
Great and interesting post!! Keep up the good work!
Thanks for tagging me @josediccus
Wow, a normal and genuinely healthy reaction to downvotes. Thank you, @snook. Now these are people I'd help counter on excessive downvotes over time as mentioned in my previous comment.
You are very welcome!
I find them to be reasonable as well but also extremely quick to be dismissive. I generally don’t get triggered easily anymore which is probably how I’ve managed to stay out of trouble . But I can completely empathize with people who get upset to see one persons downvote cancelled out all the gifts they’ve received, and I really don’t like how easily they are dismissed for being a little upset about it. It certainly feels like some people are immune to downvotes while others are not and there just a few who decide this. I try not to get involved but Kenny has helped out so many people. I do think he’s being too emotional about it but I want to come to his defense.
This dismissive attitude is the single issue I have with acid as I think he’s one of the strongest pillars of the community and a super solid guy from everything I know of him.
I really do not think @acidyo has been dismissive about any of these downvotes. I see him all over on posts trying to have conversations about why he is doing what he is. Whether I agree with him or not. that is not the point here...
so to say he has been dismissive I have to disagree.
After reading his comment below I understand. I forget he’s having this conversation constantly. I just didn’t like some of the accusations he made against two people in particular but I don’t think I can imagine having to deal with the things he deals with either. It’s probably easy to stereotype people based on their emotional reactions
Correct!!
In my defense it's been ongoing for months, things many don't see is that some of these people's supporters are the lowest of lowest scum who go around chasing your comments to leave some nasty things such as irl death threats and other nice stuff!
Some in this instance may indeed be just one experience - we don't know. You use a lot of generalizations. You may well have had a bad experience here or there but understand this is not a good method to blanket the rest of the people you consider to be 'truthers'.
You will find people on here who will be brash and honest - those are the people you can trust more.
When people start to suck your arse just because you've got cash or influence - be very careful.
Generally a lot of people in this world that make it to a position of influence have major insecurities - they have justified their insecurities by attaining a level of power and control over their reality in order to make sure they don't experience pain again.
We need to come down from the towers we have put ourselves in and face the trauma that affects the remainder of our experience in this world.
Urgh I get it now. You must be tired as fuck. I will try not to bother you about this anymore. Just be careful about stereotyping whiny babies based on your past experiences with the worst of them. It’s a grind out there.
Sometimes I wish we were more like friends but I know I’m too hippie woo woo for you 😢. I’m really moved by your patience to explain to me after you explain to so many other people. Thanks bro. ❤️
You know what else is annoying, while I'm here?
People who disagree with my downvotes or opinions and take it out on my witness, I mean it's fine in a way, but what it does is that the others just sit silently and do or say absolutely nothing while getting no backlash from it. There's some top 20 witnesses which if you look at their personal accounts you'd think Justin Sun murdered them during the Steem fork and they've handed the accounts over to someone who only knows how to power down and sell. It's quite annoying that on top of attempting to protect the reward pool you also get some crazies going around proxying other people's witness votes in the name of "freedom", "liberty" and "anti-censorship" and get you unvotes for being here active and trying to turn this into a better and fairer place. People should really reconsider how they vote for their witnesses, sure main thing is to produce blocks and not be bought out by bad actors but come on, show a little more willingness to do more than just that.
Well I’ll think about how to promote your witness a little more. We need witnesses who are willing to discuss and defend their positions rather than be dismissive.
Yeah I agree, and I can be a baby too. I have no problem accepting when I've been wrong and apologize, though, something others rather die than do. Like when I lumped @truthforce in with some others the other day.
I'm a pretty stand up guy when it comes to it, stand up as in joking around and funny a lot. I love comedy stuff and gaming.
If you ever want to play something sometime hit me up, i posted some game clips on another comment to you the other day. I'm top tier in many FPS games :)
I think it's really hard to have text conversations back and forth online, it's a lot easier to game with someone and talk. I think if me and you had an audio chat we would both see we agree with eachother in a lot of ways.
Me too, he's been doing great work on the chain and sincerely I personally know that with the OCD onboarding initiative
Ah! come on @acidyo, let's be clear here for a moment.
In my opinion you can downvote whatevah you want with your own stake. But from the very instant you are using other people's stake (as so many times you have accused others of doing the same) to more effectively please your whims to the point of "zeroing" the potential rewards of others through the use of OCDB, OCD and whatnot. You immediately become the target of those death threats and ill will from your victims. Simply, because from that same moment you've already penetrated and entered into the dangerous territories of the thug life.
So, no wonder that many of the lowest of lowest scum (as you call em) will be so willing to kick your little downvoter ass as hard as they can virtually or IRL. Just think about it!
You're totally correct there, it's something that's actually healthy, however if we work to still communicate to people people wouldn't see it as censorship or anything.
All in all, i'll never complain, I use to urge people via discord to still see it as as the way to keep the place running. Overtime when it communicated effectively. Those with the interest of the chain at heart would adhere and accept it.
Probably one of the most grounded and best inputs I read on the issue.
I agree!!
The problem, like I have bleated about many times before, all comes down to auto votes. If people used votes to upvote what they'd actually read, then no one could have any complaints.
Due to auto votes, many people play to the gallery and just churn out anything to get that daily or twice daily vote. The principals behind auto voting is sound, the application, due to 'human nature' is terrible.
At the end of the day, like it or not, this is a stake based community and I choose to accept that fact by my being here although there are many things I wish were a little different.
You mentioned @acidyo and @smooth. No one complains when they hand out big upvotes which in the case of @acidyo particularly are manually curated, every time and I can't think of anyone that hasn't at some point benefitted from his OCDB but get a big downvote and all hell breaks loose. Reward distribution matters because it encourages new people to join and have realistic expectations.
There isn't really an answer except that if you don't like something, then move to a place more in line with your personal beliefs, except no one will do that as it's doubtful they'd be rewarded as they are here!
Finally. at the end of the day, many people need to remember that it's thanks to a handful of people that Hive even exists and instead of whinging and feeling abused because of a downvote, try changing their pathetic, entitled attitudes into a position of gratitude for what they've had!
Hi, I disagree with your idea here for reasons that were demonstrated in my post on this subject. I specifically asked my upvoters to comment as to whether they manually upvote or not. Many of the larger ones came forward to say that they manually curate and manually upvote - reading my posts and upvoting them because they like them. This fact was completely denied by the downvoters because it was inconvenient to their narrative. So, no, auto upvoting is not the cause of the issue - it is often just a convenient cover for other reasons that aren't expressed by the downvoters as they know they would lose face if they did actually state them publicly.
In your specific case, I'll take your word for that but in the huge majority of auto voted accounts with huge rewards they absolutely don't get read. I could give you an example right now where someone with huge auto vote on each post actually reposts mixed in old content and because no one ever looks at his posts, no one ever noticed or if they did, didn't care as they were reaping huge curation rewards.
The use of votes is simple and based upon PoS upon which this blockchain is founded. You understand balance, so surely upvotes and downvotes provide Hive with balance?
You cannot have proof of stake without both and a personal choice of how to use that stake. Whether you agree with their use of stake or not is unimportant as you also have the same choices as they do.
I know in your case, I believe they are downvoting more to do with content than reward which I wouldn't generally agree with but again, that's me and although I have a right to express an opinion, I have no right to demand how anyone uses their stake.
I am sure there are a lot of accounts that use auto upvotes (or even manual upvotes) to farm the reward pool and I agree it is a problem for Hive. I also agree that it is probably a problem that requires human involvement and that downvotes are the main tool currently available to resolve this on Layer 1. However, obviously this leaves us the massive grey area and potential shitshow where power is focused into the hands of a few people to 'police' this issue, yet without them really having had to pass any tests or demonstrate any capacity at all for understanding, ability to research or to be even handed. In real life, police have some semblance of oversight and if they really go too far they get arrested or even killed in retribution. On the blockchain, none of this happens due to the design of it all - so all we are left with is what we have - a mixture of ill will, annoyance and strategies to fragment - combined with posturing of greatness and of 'serving the community'.
The bottom line is that the more complicated a topic is or the further it deviates from 'convenient narratives' that are commonly heald by people - the more they are likely to experience cognitive dissonance and want to shut down the information. This is universal in humanity and is a huge problem. Courts are designed to try to address this in 'the real world', by having all of the evidence brought forward and to try to reach an objective outcome. Again, we don't have that on Hive - we just have a handful of people shaping the narrative as they see fit. This is neither something that facilitates Hive's 'censorship resistance' selling point, nor proof of brain.. Well, it is proof of the existence of a brain, but not necessarily proof of any excellence, as is the entire point of the POB experiment.
Balance is accurately defined as 'no part or aspect overpowers any other'. So Hive does go further than a lot of networks to achieve that - and that is great. However, POS also involves inherent imbalance in the shape of everyone having different resources available to buy more stake. In the case of the current downvoters, most of the downvoting is coming from two top 20 witnesses who receive contstant large payments from the blockchain, almost regardless of what they actually do on Hive ... And also an employee of the Oil industry - one of the largest abusers of the environment known to man - also known to be heavily involved in massive corruption and illegal wars. While you can argue that the maths of POS are balanced, clearly the inputs in the form of access to resources is not balanced and not based in POB either particularly. This is just a result of how the world is and without radically redesigning the Hive layer 1 reward pool, the only way to create real balance where individuals don't feel overpowered is for every person to use real empathy and social skills to interact and create harmony. So far, the downvoters have to varying degrees, done the complete opposite - with some of them preferring to try to be seen as a wild west gun slinger than someone who has understanding of balance.
Under the current system on Layer 1, you are correct in terms of actual legal 'rights'. It would have been nice to think that people with large stake would have sufficient social grace and awareness of business, economics and marketing to make more balanced decisions. In any case, we will let the market decide by opening up Layer 2 solutions and letting the stake go where it's owners want it to. I am excited to see what happens to Hive in coming months as this plays out.
Just cause you asked them in one post and knowing you all are connected through Discords etc doesn't mean they've mainly been manually curating. You literally tagged them all as well, naturally many will come out and say it was manual to help you and your narrative out. Considering the lack of engagement in general most of these authors the same curators vote it's hard to imagine it's all manual votes after having read the posts but not taken an extra minute to leave a comment which they literally are incentivized to do since comment voting exists as well.
Autovoting is a big reason to farmy content, lazy curation on same authors constantly and overrewarding because the votes are often the same no matter what the content because they don't read them. You can't dispute this fact. You also can't keep trying to defend it as "they just want to support them because x/y when most these authors do is just cross-post their content and the voters close to never tip or use recurring payments to want to actually support and the content to continue to occur out of sheer interest of consuming it on Hive. It's just blanket statements for wanting said upvotes to continue to get a big chunk of the reward pool for a niche that is very small on the internet in general and only now is gaining more traction due to all this covid misinformation, monetization and fearmongering from spinning articles and posts from reddit and other places in your own words just to make money. Naturally this is your main reason for doing it, knowing jamesc and xeldal are supporters of such content and expecting to maximize their influence on the rewardpool without any disagreement in the way and when that happens you all lash out as proven time and time again.
I don’t really understand why I need to explain (as I’ve tried to acid) why people get more upset about downvotes. It feels more like an attack and it’s a very strong reminder of how little power smaller stake holders have. It’s also scary to think that all your rewards can be erased by a single person when you worked so hard to gather support.
As for autovotes, I don't see them as much of a problem when they aren't excessive, as some of them are. Same way I feel about downvotes.
I’m very appreciative to all the people who help keep this place running. I haven’t demonized anyone here. I just think that there is a better solution than just “people can do what they want with their stake”.
Downvotes came about as a solution to people abusing that kind of mentality, so we swayed far in one direction and now we are swaying in the other. There is probably some way to make this much more comfortable and fair. At the very least I want just want to encourage more communication and understanding when people are unhappy about it.
That's not what we're saying, if excessive downvotes are used on content others deem worthy of some rewards people should step in and counter it, even if it means a cost on their ROI. I've seen that happen as well and I've taken part in it, especially on retaliative downvotes and personal ones due to disagreement of something other than rewards. I also understand that big downvotes can cause a lot of drama and controversy and I'm personally more for smaller ones that disincentivize autovoting and overrewarding both the author and curators but the sad part is that most of these content creators turn against Hive and most things they've said in the past faster than I can make my mind if I want to step in and counter some of those downvotes. You'd think that after years of being rewarded it would take a while for them to accept that some big downvotes are occuring but it's not that bad as each and every post isn't that important to get rewarded considering they've been rewarded for hundreds of not thousands of posts before, but I guess it's all about the rewards so they don't have the patience to wait it out even a week to see what would happen if they just ignored it and moved on with their posting. Instead they instantly turn against Hive and how things work here and go all drama and "how hive will fail", "i'm going to tell everyone how bad Hive is", "censorship" and stupid shit like that. It's embarrassing. So yes, I'd rather add my downvotes on top of such authors than attempt to help adjust some of their rewards upwards after such childish actions.
This is the best I've seen you say it.
Childish actions. Yeah. They are sometimes. 90% of adults are still children, us included I think 😛
I totally agree with everything you say here man. And I almost feel bad pulling you in to have this debate again. I know you deal with a lot of bullshit and bust your ass for this chain. I only hope you can understand where they are coming from when they get angry and you can stay calm and sympathetic yourself. It's a lot to ask but great power requires great responsibility and all that.
If all the downvotes were always this reasonable and patient about these disagreements i doubt this would be an issue. When I see the 100% downvotes that come in a few minutes before payout I can only feel it's a malicious move and that's one of the things that prompted me to write about this. That and the fact that eventually I want to see more of an effort to create mechanisms to decentralize influence a little bit more than where it is already.
I'm already really impressed with the progress we've made up until now and you were right a few times when I was wrong (I'll always remember I fought you on 50/50 curation and it ended up having a positive effect)
Thanks for responding and I feel like I understand where you are coming from a better now. I really feel much better after reading that. I wish the downvoted could feel that but I think their suspicion of larger stakeholders doesn't allow them to. Oh well.
You probably mean in the last day as a few minutes before payout they would have no effect. I don't agree with downvoting on the very last day but then again not too early either as then they love calling it censorship from trending or whatever. Truth is downvotes aren't incentivized at all and only come with an unending amount of drama if you attempt to explain them and other retaliation and bad things so it's not like you sit there waiting for the best time to strike, more like you take some time to find those posts you feel could use less rewards and happen upon an author once a week or once a month so you just hit whatever overrewarded posts they may have then. There may be people who place them on autodownvotes at a certain time which isn't that bad either unless someone beats you to it and you end up taking too much. There's been a few times I've downvoted certain posts and another downvote landed on it after turning the rewards to 0 so I've had to unvote but it's hard to notice these things so we could use better tools for it. There's been some talks about incentivizing downvotes with some sort of rewards but that's going to be difficult as receivers of downvotes will look for any reason to call them foul, even now they like to say it's so you get more curation or post rewards even though they're spread literally with the whole platform and maybe at max make a 0.001 hive difference on your returns.
Let's see if some people come up with some better solutions, I've been a proponent of people experimenting with this on l2 but not too impressed with most l2 tokens to date. Most seem like moneygrabs where you have to buy in or the owners receive a ridiculous share early on.. as if they didn't learn anything from Steemit...
I definitely jumped the gun when I first looked into the social side of Hive. I saw someone fighting for free speech against the "oligarchy", I was on it! After learning more, I understand now that this was a knee-jerk reaction. I've found all kinds of efforts on here that I didn't realize existed and they are run by the "oligarchy." I will be ending my proxy and redistributing my votes based on who is doing the most for Hive as I did originally before jumping on a proxy.
A lot of people just don’t know what they are doing or how any of this stuff works. I was like that for two years. I think There are even second layers that are just thinking “it’s easy, why not?” I mean I almost considered it for cross culture but I don’t have the time or energy to manage that and I think most of my team doesn’t have the particular skills or know how for it.
Also in general, There is a lot of mistrust for large stakeholders and people feel like it’s so hard to get into certain peoples good graces. DPoS is a complicated power dynamic. It’s sometimes difficult for poor and rich people to be friends in society. It’s even harder when the rich people can give you a piece of the inflation with a vote. All kinds of strangeness. I’m not complaining. I love this place. But it’s new and imperfect. We are still figuring it out.
Sure but many of these have been around for years, it's not like I'm judging newcomers for overreacting to downvotes. Not that many get downvoted either, it's a very tiny percentage but they are loud as fuck for obvious reasons.
Excellent point!
In my opinion, autovotes are the most flammable issue which fuels with more ferocity these polarized and hated debates between willy-nilly downvotes and over rewarding blind upvotes.
Blind autovotes even behave in such a pernicious way that even authentic quality content creators and great authors refrain from posting more often than they could simply because they are well aware that they are targets, recipients and beneficiaries of blind autovoters with high HP and consequently they penalize themselves for it. Since they actually wouldn't want to be seen or accused as abusers of that automated singular privilege.
And therefore, it is their true followers, their fans, the consumers of their interesting, entertaining, captivating and unique content and the rest of the community within the ecosystem who miss out the opportunity of enjoying their peculiar contributions more often.
@nathan007 btw I really like acid's response below. It's the best response I've seen from him on this debate although I'm sure he's made it before because I know he talks about this a lot. If other downvotes had this attitude I don't think there'd be many issues on this topic.
There are a lot of misunderstandings around the issue so I think we just all need to be aware and on the lookout for misunderstandings and try to fix them. Everyone.
Thanks for the reply btw
@selfhelp4trolls They are both very genuine guys, let 'em sort it. Their levels of debate and intelligence are far above my paygrade!
It is a really difficult thing to find consensus on, but the big SP auto voters who only care about curation rewards and who don't actually 'create' anything are the overriding issue, of that I truly believe and that's where the focus ought to be.
It's very, very good that so many people care however :-)
Truth is, I like downvotes, it checks the system, but it should be spread Invariably and not emotionally and only to target a few, I never made a post because that might be whiny on my part and I will never do that. Hive is the best for me, I just feel we can have to set standards, be communicative about downvotes so that it wouldn't be salty. I've been here for a while and not even downvotes will let me be, I would have been appreciative if I was told "hey Jose, post just once a week we don't like how you trend and we don't agree"
Sincerly I would do that. I'm a community person. Every cent I held on steem was sold to buy Hive. That was 12k steem. And I still have it powered up.
@nathanmars and @snook are some of the oldest friends I have and they can testify that im not malicious. Infact while People sold everything they owned to go into Splinterlands, I never touched my hive to do so, not even at $3
So history with the chain should also play an Important role in downvotes, it's good to be communicative about it.
Im just a college student who's here, long-term. No milking, nothing, just believing and being on the chain.
As for others, I believe they should be warned if they're milking, if they continue maliciously then the DV can come.
Dvs are better and healthier if its spread all around.
As for me getting downvoted multiple times by curangel, I accept it, I won't argue or whine. Its the system, I believe in it.
@tipu curate
Downvotes and downvoters should make you change how you do things on Hive. It should just be about the post in question and excessive rewards, imo. Of course if you yourself feel you're getting overrewarded for certain things it would be a big + if you started forfeiting part of the rewards through beneficiaries before downvotes occurred. It's quite sad that close to no people to this who trend constantly and have for years been rewarded well on Hive and have held stake to be rewarded expontentially more from price movements but keep on attempting to maximize in any way they can. It's a little bit greedy imo. I'm not trying to say this is directed at you but in general I wish more people would be more down to earth and accept realistic rewards by forfeiting some to hive.fund or other nonprofit projects through beneficiaries so curators or autovoters don't get penalized through max reward limits or decline payouts.
But yeah, don't change how often you post on Hive or how you use it based on downvotes but also think about all the time you may have been overrewarded and that some may not instantly jump in to counter your first big downvotes based on that since they want to see the effect of the downvotes and if it means lower upvotes in the near future for more realistic rewards due to them. Reactions from downvoted people also tells readers and those who may be interested to counter a lot, your statement here in the comments says a lot more about you than the people I've been reading the past few weeks who've been targeted with big downvotes so thank you for that.
Yrah, thank you for the response, the truth is, I'm never deserved of anything, I will never feel that way.
That's why I always post only once, so i'll never abuse any previlege, infact. When the DVs came I was like okay, thats good, time to move on. Its the way the chain should be.
However, i'll try to limit the reward on my post, its relatively been cut down but i'll still go the extra mile. Truth is, i'll never knowingly do anything to hurt the chain, its why I never circle jerk or even power down for any price.
Thanks for taking the time.
also just noticed i said should when I meant shouldn't in the first sentence. Sorry if that confused things.
You are correct @josediccus :D
Morning :D
Oh I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you with the tag 😁
You didn't loll
I was catching up and reading the fairy stories for my contest :D #snookschallenge1 You should check some of them out. People are being really creative with them!
Oh goodness, i'll definitely check them out, didn't know how I actually missed them, would drop in to curate and engage as well. 😁😁😁😁😁
Yeahhhhhhhhhhh, Thank You!!
Please do tag me next time, I might pop in with rewards and curation for the prospective winners @snook
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 65/85) Liquid rewards.
I agree with this statement the most. I hope you don't mind me tagging you here. I think a better solution for those who downvotes is to try to onboard more investors who upvote in a way they agree with.
I find downvotes to be a really uninviting thing even though they've never effected me personally and I do totally understand why people want to do it that way. i just want to inside that point that I quoted from you.
Everybody can get a second chance. Not everybody, however, is able to say I'm sorry, my bad, I'll do better.
Yeah, it's the same issue I find with most debates. People get emotional and think the other side is bad when they are just reacting
And the dark side of ownership mindset is that some people take it as personal attack when the network is being harmed, so without apologize they don't stop being harsh. Issue eskalates, and at the end we have hopeless, harmed individuals determined to destroy once-called-home.
Just being aware of this dynamics might help a lot on the both sides.
Just keep your emotions away from the money. Always.
Very well said
Please don't scare us the new comers away,we want our voice heard too,our post being read too. I want to be a great writer like you and I count on HIVE and its COMMUNITY for support and perfect upbringing.
Thank you
Don't worry please! Just share what excites you and make friends and you'll have a good time here.
Well, I knew from the title alone this was going to be a can of worms. You've raised some good points, and now the comments are obviously where the action is happening. I have some reading to do......
Sure it is, but a lot has happened this week with regards to it so I couldn't stay silent on it, especially when I knew one person who might be able to make a bigger impact would notice.
We got to learn each day and improve on our existence on the day. That s very necessary. Thanks for this today sir.
Great perspectives. Unfortunately I have established to myself that the people that may have the ability to change things in this area are actually not very good at listening.
They keep repeating that these are downvote squabbles about rewards and that people should just get over it - while ignoring all the well qualified arguments presented to them - possibly with rose-coloured spectactles due to a rising value on their cheque book.
I see the same patterns in Hive or Steem as I do in the process of gentrification in a hip town or city around the world.
As long as money is king there will be no change.
Yes, but at a certain point they are going to realize that this is a hole in the ship. Some of them anyway. All it takes is one or two of the right people to say “hey guys、 enough”. Not necessarily a whale either. It’s could be someone who has everyone’s respect for their onboarding effort or a dev who doesn’t have as much stake.
I don’t see hive that way. Not yet anyway. Gentrification may come but that will be a different generation of whales. It's a year or three away.
Steemit was an utter shit show. It was way worse than this and we loved it because it was something different. It got better because eventually people see that building a healthy ecosystem requires certain sacrifices.
They need someone from in their circles to make the case that this is going to scare people away from hive and the worse it gets, the sooner that case will be made.
I hate that they let it go on for so long first though. A lot of it is due to ideological dogma I think. People get really attached to their philosophies. Those without power argue them, and those with power just ignore us little people.
But this will get better, I promise. I’ve seen it too many times at this chain. I’m just trying to make sure they don’t scare away my friends before that happens.
I like your attitude.
Either way, we will keep living. And with a social media style outlet or not - life goes on!
I'm grateful for the lessons learned through this platform but will happily move onto something I deem more fit for purpose if and when the time comes.
I'm excited to be involved with the evolution of chain code - in that just by having a vision and having ideas and a perspective - those that do know code and do that side of things understand that ethics and code nowadays go hand in hand.
I like having this voice that gets heard.
When I don't get heard and I don't get a voice and my perspectives no matter how valid are not heard - then simply I leave.
I prefer to speak to the cows. Cows are fucking great.
I am the same as you, although there are so many awesome people here that even if the big guys don't listen to me, I stay. And sooooometimes they do listen to me. Cows are fun. I think. HAven't spent enough time talking to them, although I had a date with a cow once.
Thanks man...I know I had you followed on my old account, let me fix this...
This a really stupid reason to donwvote someone.
In other communities like LeoFinance there are some users that are always in trending and I dont see they being donwvoted for anyone. 🤐
Yeah. Well I can understand if someone doesn’t want to see the same person in trending every day but this reasoning is always really inconsistent because it always targets certain individuals and not others based on one persons opinion. If it was more consistent regardless of the user I might be less critical of it.
I'm still a newbie even if I've been tagged as "graduated". Hehe.
However, I've spent almost three months here and have seen multiple post about downvoting or people getting downvoted that it scares me. Where my heart nearly left my chest was when it happened to a friend here on Hive.
While i don't know anything major about Hive yet, I reckoned that there's a reason for everything. And just like you said, you're putting your neck on the line with a post like this. I wish I have the balls to do it but sadly I don't.
The reaction i see here especially in the comments is contrary to the ones I witnessed. Those ones involved threats to make life a living hell for the downvoters or calling out the downvoters as to why they did it.
Pardon me, I laughed my head off. Maybe i was insensitive but seriously? Threats? Wouldn't work that way.
Call me a coward but I don't see myself calling out downvoters just because they downvoted my post. Maybe I'll try reaching out to them, just like some of the commenters said.
Also, the thing you said about time and energy, it's so true. Hive is pure investment based and I am guilty for getting excited over rewards but with a lingering fear of downvotes because I have read too many angry articles. I have received private messages too not just from one person. And i keep saying they should reach out because I don't know anything and truth of the matter, I don't.
Thanks for putting your neck out there. Funny how I envisioned your neck on a tray with a butchers knife above your head. Great work buddy.
I don’t think you are a coward. You will likely care about this place more and more and after 5 years of making amazing friendships, earning enough to change your life, and also making a huge investment to buy hive, you’ll be willing to put your neck out too.
Please don’t worry about this too much. I think most of us who do not seek confrontation or try to abuse the reward pool do not really see downvotes, and if they do it’s only once or twice. There seems to be a bully or two but chances are they won’t notice you or bother you too bad. If they do, stay calm and patient and talk to some people and you can likely gain some support that way. If you panic and complain, that’s when they start being cruel.
Most of the people here are decent, regardless of their status here.
Please don’t imagine my neck out there like that! I do not want to be diced and eaten! 😝😝😝
Well, just to add to the ocean of opinions, this is my personal view on downvotes:
While an upvote generally symbolizes "great post", "good content", or simply "I like it", a downvote can have many different reasons behind it, from plagiarism, hate, milk-crap, to other, less obvious reasons. Even though the only downvotes I got were from bots with close to no mana, I still could not help wondering WHY.
I believe what is much more important than punishing a user with a downvote, is to let them - and everyone else - know the reason for the downvote. Maybe flags of various types could be useful: one for shit-posts trying to milk system rewards. Others for plagiarized content, yet others for spreading hate, etc. In my view, being too successful is a horrible reason for downvoting, but if someone wants to pass them out, so be it. Just please let us know the reason. That way it would also tell the community about this downvoter, and each individual user could decide if and how they agree.
BTW, thank you for posting about this very important issue, and starting this conversation!
Idk man, kinda feels like I have to explain my upvotes too. Like, some of the upvotes I hand out aren't good post or nice job, I just feel sorry for the user to have a sucky content and nobody likes but they did their best. Nobody questions the reason for an upvote because its positive. But when you got some stake to piss on other people doing their best, upvotes can just be as toxic as downvotes. Want to see grown ass men draw crayons on fictional characters then get tipu! The same amount of $ earned by an artist who has more mastery on their craft side by side on a mini trending? I tell you, there's no fairness in having favorites and it's manifested in upvotes too.
Well, I don't know... I just pictured that grown ass man with his crayons, trying hard to color within the lines. 🤣 Ridiculous as it sounds, I still can't feel bad for him, even if he gets bigger rewards as others (or even me) who put tons of work into a post. On the other hand, seeing only one downvote (worth 0.000nothing) by a bot on my otherwise well received post, it actually hurts.
I don't feel bad for the guy, I just think it's an eye sore to stand near or above posts that show better outputs as it just sends a message on what the platform wants to value, or just the community. But those situations are mostly from curators that have ties to the author rather than an organic tip from strangers. If people lost money each time they upvote, we would see less voting activity unless its a self vote.
It's not permissible to just downvote a post because you don't like a content? But it's ok to upvote because you like the content? Idk, blurt seems to be a wonderland for having no downvotes and their trending has a lot of trash content.
Well, let's put it this way: you're always free to use your downvote, since it's yours. I never do, as I realize its effects can be taken quite seriously (as I know I would take them). But ultimately it's up to you what you do with yours. Still, I would recommend you to give an explanation for your downvote, because not knowing how I deserved it would bother me more than the loss of rewards.
Yes! Very well said. Also there is the inevitable fact that we will observe to see if these rules apply to everyone or not and sometimes they do not.
For the time being, I think acidyo and a few others understand these problems and are eager to address them. It’s not always easy though because everyone disagrees on how to go about doing things. It really is a mini society. Nothing less
And I did not even come close to starting this conversation. 😝😝😝 I am very late to it. I was just throwing in my two cents to try and build some understanding between acid and Kenny who were two beacons of hope for me when Steem had far more problems than Hive does does today.
Mini society i true. So let's hope this problem can be straightened out, because one of the worst things I have seen over the years on this chain, is losing some dedicated members of this mini society. And that's a loss for all of us, so we should try to prevent it as best as possible.
I don't know how it feels and I don't want to know. I think if this happens to me, I may give up on Hive for a while, to return later.
Posting a lot and trending, does it bring about down-votes?
My onboarder gave me a few rules to not get down-voted and I've been treading on eggshells.
I don't even get upvotes and rewards for efforts.. getting a downvote may kill the little motivation I have left.
Please read acidyo's comment above. I think he gives a really good explanation of how he downvotes and why and a really good counter argument to my post.
As of right now I can only think of two people who I've seen downvote maliciously and they generally target very specific content so I think you are safe. If it happens to you stay cam and explain to the community and we will try to rally support for you.
Don't worry ❤️
Thank you @selfhelp4trolls 😊
i am new here and reading this and the replies enlightens me in someway.
Don’t worry about it too much. It’s hard enough to get some of their attention, let alone to get on their bad side and as you can see from acidyo’s comments, there are a lot of reasonable people who are just trying to figure this whole thing out. Most people at this community just appreciate it as a community or a way to monetize. They don’t realize that it’s a mini society and what a monuments task it is to design that. So if you see something you don’t like, don’t worry too much, it’s evolved so much already and will continue to evolve. There are many many good people here who care about this place.
Welcome!!
Gratly done boss
From experience, no one listens when you hand out 0.001$ downvotes to get them to notice and get their act together. They will continually plagiarize because the upvotes they get are more than what you can take. Now when zeroed by a bigger user, they start to rethink their approach and maybe apologize?
I’m not talking for downvotes for plagiarism. Just talking about people who downvote original content because they think the rewards are too high.
That's a broad subject to cover. If someone like Elon Musk ever post "Hi" and it gets hundreds of $, that's still original content but I have no idea whether it's really something I would be inclined to downvote for the lack of effort. It would certainly piss off those users who try to get attention with sheer effort on their posts for months.
I have a few people I downvote regardless of how nice their content is but that's for personal reason like idk, maybe getting threatened to be doxxed, name trashed off the platform, and involving other people as collateral damage just cause they got involved with me. Of course on chain people are going to only see me with a bigger stake being mean to people with lesser stake and not ask how much of a douche the person is off platform.
But they do make ok original content. I just like downvoting it anyway cause I'm a rebel giving unjustified downvotes for people I don't like and be a saint to giving upvotes to people I like.
I keep saying that Hive is like the wild west and those with the power can use it as they like. That said, the whales have an interest in the platform doing well, so they would be foolish to keep driving people away. Those who feel they were unfairly downvoted can shout about it, but I don't think it's as bad as they make out.
You can't say any reason for downvoting is invalid really as it's up to the individual. I actually think upvote abuse could be more of a problem and those who look out for it will take action to try and get a better share of rewards. If you get a 'rancho' vote then someone may decide that is distorting the distribution. I have seen posts with those votes get a big downvote, but usually it was not taking all of their rewards away.
I've had some retaliation for acting against abuse, but it's part of the deal and others have supported me. Working with the community rather than against it helps. Most of my voting is done manually, but I do receive a lot of automatic votes. I appreciate the support, but I also want real engagement with my posts.
We should be able to point out the issues with Hive, and I have before.
I suppose Steve what you might need to consider is a situation where you are the receiver of this soft censorship.
Imagine that you came to place of free expression where people said we can talk about all the types of guitars we like and we can respect all music.
Then you find that they only like Taylors and they generally favour Modern Pop while consistently downvoting Jazz and blues?
You happen play blues.
You came in here gung ho and every time you make a fuss about it, you are told to stop being so selfish.
It's called gas lighting.
There is real shit going on that is contrary to what Hive is meant to represent.
The reason that many people came on here, invested their time and their money.
Thus the exodus.
I hope you can see my point.
I suppose Steve what you might need to consider is a situation where you are the receiver of this soft censorship.
Imagine that you came to place of free expression where people said we can talk about all the types of guitars we like and we can respect all music.
Then you find that they only like Taylors and they generally favour Modern Pop while consistently downvoting Jazz and blues?
You happen play blues.
You came in here gung ho and every time you make a fuss about it, you are told to stop being so selfish.
It's called gas lighting.
There is real shit going on that is contrary to what Hive is meant to represent.
The reason that many people came on here, invested their time and their money.
Thus the exodus.
I hope you can see my point.
EDIT: add to this scenario that, blues and jazz has been censored all on all other platforms around the world and there are very limited places where you can express it, find like minds and be appreciated.
I'm not sure anyone feels that strongly about music on Hive, but I sort of get your point. I have had all my rewards wiped out before, but others supported me and I got over it. Some people have had one big downvote to cancel out a rancho vote and they cry about it forever, whilst making far more than they lost on later posts.
I can't keep track of all the feuds and rivalries on Hive, but I have seen people persist with fighting and name-calling that is not going to help their case. If you antagonise someone they may opt to remove your rewards. They are only human.
Hive is imperfect, but it's worth defending. I do feel for good people who feel they are unfairly treated, but there is little I can do. Meanwhile I have been supporting loads of people and they seem to appreciate it.
If you are going to post about controversial topics then you are free to do that on Hive, but some may think it's BS and not worthy of rewards. Anyone could create a front end that ignores downvotes and displays everything if you want to avoid 'censorship'.
Is there really an 'exodus' or just a few pissed off people going off to Blurt or Steem? You can do what you like on those.
I really don't have all the answers, but I think we can still discuss these topics to see what others think.
Thanks for the reply. The Wild West analogy is so perfect for crypto.
Upvote abuse Was much more of a problem and downvotes fixed that which is why I’m not against downvotes.
People who self vote tend to get downvoted. We still don't have a culture of discouraging massive downvotes for none-spam and I think the reason for that is most of us don't want to mess with the people who do it.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be free to do what they want. I’m just saying some behavior makes for a shitty ecosystem that’s going to scare people away and leak value. And the same way we made downvotes to put a cap on upvote abuse, we’d definitely benefit from exploring ways to do the same for downvotes. Though it's definitely a tricker one.
I also agree people benefit from working with the community, but a lot of people don't understand the politics of hive and don't believe there are good people with power here. My willingness to work with the community comes from my trust in people like acidyo and Theycallmedan. If I thought that no one cares about making this place more fair and that downvoting people "because they are from poor countries and don't need that much to survive" was widespread behavior...well I'd leave pretty quickly, especially if I just got here.
Speaking of upvote abuse,Has anyone thought about asking these auto-voting services to make their trails decay so they need to be updated every 6 months? I’m pretty sure 100% of ranchor votes follow haejin. And I'm pretty sure ranchor doesn't check hive at all.
There are some big accounts who don't care what anyone thinks of them and maybe they don't care about Hive either. I hope they are a small minority. It is bad that people have to fear retribution for doing what they think is right, but it's another price of freedom.
Anyone can create an auto-vote service, so even if one reduced the power another might not implement that. As far as I know haejin has control of the rancho posting keys, so he can make it do what he wants, but I saw a post from someone claiming to be the owner of the rancho account saying they had lost their keys, so I guess it can never power down. That seems very careless.
It is my hope that Hive can keep on growing with more people getting to orca level and above. That helps to spread the voting power and so the whales would have less influence. For now it is really a tiny community compared to the big sites. These could be considered growing pains I guess.
!BEER
eeeshhhh thats a shitty situation for hive but I guess it serves to challenge us to grow and find our own weak points. I did not know he had the keys, i thought he had been left on autovote by a dude who disappeared years ago.
Well I am trying to encourage some more brainstorming to come up with ways to protect small users against bullying which I see one person doing a lot of and 2 or 3 large stakeholders enabling. It's not about using downvotes on a single post, it's about targeting innocent people and continuously nuking their posts until their supporters give up on supporting them because their upvotes are all cancelled out anyway. I'm not talking about argumentative or even fringe people either (not that I think they deserve it) . I'm talking about hard-core Hivers who have never powered down and get involved in multiple communities and projects.
Sorry, out of BEER, please retry later...
@selfhelp4trolls, thank you for supporting the HiveBuzz project by voting for our witness.
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Once again, thanks for your support!
Check out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Even when I agree with almost everything you've said in this post. However, I still think we have no need to have daily free downvotes here anymore.
Given that they are only the large stakeholders who embrace this infamous practice, let them have to pay for this unpleasant activity as before. Because well we know that every user here with low HP not even bother to use it anyway. Never!!
Perhaps in this way we can find a middle ground as a new transient "experiment" to at least minimize the increasing exodus of valuable members of our ecosystem due so many unfair and arbitrary events caused by whales which produce such rage quitting feelings on many people.
And if in this new way not everything can be solved. I bet that without daily free downvotes, at least we'd reduce in an important proportion all those unexpected occasions in which we have no choice but to exclaim out loud that famous magic word to vent a bit after seven days right before payout.
The downvotes helped solve a lot of problems. As soon as we get rid of them there will be mountains of spam and self upvoters coming back.
Perhaps they could cost something and we could vote on certain people (like we vote on witnesses) who receive those funds to pay for their downvoting (and payment for their services) from the dao. Holy shit, you may have inspired an idea that might actually work! I’ve been racking my brain for days on this and that’s the best idea I’ve had. Thanks!
Nah! it won't be that different than now. Downvoting is a lovely passtime for downvoters and flag addicts anyway. So, I suspect we'll be fine and there won't emerge a mountain of anything new if they had to pay to keep up their hobby. :D
Hahahaha, well, I'm glad to at least have served of some inspiration.
Detailed Summary: The Downvote Debate on Hive
In this episode, the host discusses the ongoing debate around downvoting on the Hive blockchain. The host acknowledges that this is a sensitive topic, as they do not want to exacerbate the issue or scare away new users who may not fully understand the complexities of Hive's economic system.
The host explains their hesitation to weigh in on the debate, as they have a small but loyal support base and do not want to risk losing that support by taking a strong stance. They recognize that there are influential "whales" on both sides of the debate, such as Kenny's Kitchen and AcidYo, and they do not want to alienate either side.
The host then delves deeper into the core issues surrounding downvoting. They argue that the real problem is not about the rewards themselves, but rather the imbalance of power that allows certain users to significantly impact others through downvotes. The host notes that for smaller users, it is difficult to counter a large downvote, which can feel like an attack rather than a legitimate disagreement.
The host suggests that the solution is not to demonize those who downvote, but rather to approach the issue with more empathy and understanding. They argue that users who are frustrated by reduced rewards are not simply motivated by greed, but rather a desire for fairness and a sense of belonging to a community that values their contributions.
The host proposes that the community should explore potential protocol-level changes to address the downvote issue, such as limiting the influence of individual users or implementing a more nuanced reputation system for downvoters. They acknowledge that there are no easy answers, but believe that the community can work together to find a solution that preserves the spirit of decentralization and respect for all participants.
In conclusion, the host emphasizes the importance of patience, empathy, and a willingness to understand different perspectives. They urge the community to stay engaged and not abandon the Hive platform, as they believe that with open and constructive dialogue, the downvote issue can be addressed in a way that strengthens the overall ecosystem.