The digital safety act will probably affect us at some point but if we bring more clarity to how downvotes and censorship on the frontends are done we should pull through. This may be an unpopular opinion but we need to decentralize the downvote services we have a bit more. Have them create a Decentralized TOKEN fund so the community can vote on how it is run and funded. Have the Decentralized HIVE fund, fund the TOKEN fund instead of the service itself. We need more transparency on how downvotes are done by the services we have. I think we have the services already that should satisfy the regulators but we need to bring more awareness and clarity on how it is done if we don't I fear we will destroy ourselves trying to protect ourselves. Frontends depending on where they are located may get effected more then HIVE itself since they are an access point. A frontend may at some point may have to start censoring more then they have been. Where they just don't retrieve a particular page or profile. An the Canadian government says we have freedom of speech we just don't have freedom of reach. Maybe @hivewatchers could help bring more awareness to the other downvote services that are out there and a post on what tools they use to determine what is plagiarism, spam, etc. We need to normalize some censoring and make people aware of how we are doing it so that regulators don't demand we regulate at code level. As long as we focus on frontends doing the hard censoring and downvotes doing the soft censoring we should hopefully be able to keep HIVE itself censorship free.
I agree with everything you say. We should minimize and maximize and there use. What I mean by this is more people need to participate in downvotes and cool there jets when someone objects to the downvotes. We need the downvote wars to stops it doesn't look good on us as a platform. And more people need to put a reason why they downvote to zero on every post not just the first so the voter knows why that person has been downvoted, especially if they have a downvote trail following them. The way we decentralize (which is what I think you mean) the downvotes is by bring awareness to the downvote services that we have that are small. I'm not sure how many we have. I know there is the Helios burn and a few individuals presenting a service for it. But if we share the tools that we have created to fight spam and plagiarism I think more services will pop up. We need everyone to have the ability to identified spam and plagiarism. The tools should be available to everyone to use if they so choose. If we bring awareness to who is doing the downvoting and how they determined it should be downvoted, it might lead a more unifided front in downvoting and less downvote wars. Maybe even have a consensus on how much a low quality post is allowed to make instead of voting it to zero.
It ought to be possible to have a tool that shows you where a downvoter left a comment previously rather than doing it every time.
I do still downvote, but it's really just for plagiarism and persistent spam. There's also a lot of sneaky self-voting going on that most won't see. Some people run scripts to find such behaviour.
People like HW try to stay anonymous as they get some nasty threats and I've had some too.
I haven't downvoted yet. Still learning what to look out for and I don't want to get downvoted for doing it to the wrong one. Hopefully someone can build a tool that could show when a downvoter commented last or at least an automated script that when they downvote a repeated offender, it posts a link to what they have done. But at least some indication to what they have done. Maybe we could have a comment that is specifically with the downvote button that has the ability to post last comment or any of your saved downvote drafts. Where the comment only has access to downvote comments. With a few defaults to help people out.
The data is generally out there, but someone has to have incentives to create the tools. I don't know if this is on the priorities for the DAPP teams.
Very true. I'm still trying to figure what is out there. I hope someone does at some point because the downvote backlash doesn't look good and leads to more people getting caught in the crossfire.
I'm not sure how you would centralise it, but HW already do a lot of the necessary work. I would disagree with some stuff they downvote as we cannot expect all newbies to know what is acceptable. It needs warnings and education before downvotes.
I've long said that we should accept DVs as a normal part of Hive, but minimise their use. You just can't force people to be nice though and there will be feuds that have nothing much to do with the content being legitimate.
The front ends may need to block certain content in specific regions, but that is not easy.
I would hope that those with the power are looking into this.
We do not downvote newbies unless there is a reward on abusive post that need to be removed.
That's what our comments are for. Ther is information on what abuse was committed and what posts to read to learn what it means.
Occasionally I leave just a simple comment if I see that the account is new and/or has some abuse. Like this one:
https://hive.blog/hive-174578/@hivewatchers/son8ws
Unfortunately it's not on every post. I shouldn't as a consumer have to find the post that @hivewatchers or any other downvote service has commented on, to find out why they are being downvoted. When the comment is not on every post it looks like targeting. Especially when we have downvote trails. Not saying that is what you are doing. Just saying this is how it looks as a consumer. I do appreciate that you inform the person you are downvoting.
The comments are left only on abusive posts, generally between 1 and 5 at once. Is to let the user know that the abuse was found and what to do next.
It would make no sense to comment on the abuser's account on each post (it would be spammy).
For ping wise I do agree but there should be some way for the reader to know without having to search through the posts to find out why they are getting downvoted, that's why I suggested in my other comments to have a separate comment system attached to the downvote button so we could avoid spammy pings. Where you set a message pinned at the top of the comments that you can disable when no longer needed.
There is no need to search all posts. Checking the replies section makes it easy to find comments.
If still cannot be found, then they can be found in our tool if the account is blacklisted.
https://hivewatchers.io/blacklist-search
Well I only see a few cases, so don't get the full picture. I know it's hard work that may not get appreciated. If Hive grows rapidly then it will get worse.
We often get discussions about downvotes and I still see them as an essential part of Hive. Having them decentralised is important.
I am still trying to understand myself. I have seen more cases than I would like. I've been reading a lot of the downvoted posts to try and understand the problem because they do a lot of good work and so do others. I want systems put in place that can minimize the attacks on the ones doing the downvoting that protects the HIVE blockchain and prevent misunderstanding from happening because of the downvoting. The more resources for and people doing the downvoting the better off we will be. Because as it stand now there is not enough communication between downvoter and the one downvoted for multiple reasons. And I think a comment system that a downvoter could partially automate would help.