I think we need to normalise downvotes as part of curation.
If you know of a way to effectively market that, I think that could be a welcome change. Education could be a part of this, but I don't think it can fully overcome the essential gamification that's at the core of what makes social media successful.
Just downvote more. Everyone who does it encourages others to do so as well. Ignore the complaints and "outrage" that more often than not is just self serving.
I'm not convinced this is a good idea at all. In fact, I think this is a terrible idea. The carrot and the stick only work if they are in balance, and multibillion dollar corporations have ignored user pleas for years to add a dislike button for a reason. To ignore this is to be willfully ignorant.
They don't give away rewards based on votes. It's a completely different problem space.
As you say, removing rewards would be one solution, which makes it more like those multibillion dollar platforms, for better or worse.
Agreed, and as I also said, removing downvotes is not an option. However, one must view the downvote as a stick, a punitive measure to correct some behavior, and this becomes especially true the larger ones' stake becomes. There is a psychological effect at play here, one that a simple explanation, or even a reversal of the downvote, doesn't correct. I have ran @freezepeach for over 3 years now, and even when we were able to completely neutralize downvotes on posts, people still left. It's not about the rewards, it's about the dopamine, or perhaps some other value derived from the interactions.
Getting a dislike on facebook or youtube is whatever, getting a dislike on here having rewards removed can be very unnerving.
Dopamine hits are what attract people to something typically, if a bunch of people are being downvoted they aren't going to want to be here, whether the downvote is justified or not. It's a psychological issue that doesn't build confidence in the way this system is setup.
I still think limiting posts to a maximum of 50 USD would be a great start. There's almost no reason why any post should make more than that.
I actually think there is very, very little on here that is worth even close to 50. Most days nothing.
To be worth that, content on the internet has to attract a very significant amount of search traffic, monetize in some manner, contribute meaningfully to increasing the value of the Hive brand, or document some important work (development, marketing, etc.) for Hive, not just some not-terrible pictures posted to a blog, or rehashed conspiracy theories that have been going around for months or longer.
If no one else will pay you even close to that much to post to your blog (and they won't), that should be a clue we're overpaying too.
If there were a cap it should likely be lower, but since there are occasional legitimate exceptions, better to recognize that autovotes and various forms of vote buying are often pushing rewards way out of line with actual value-add and make more use of downvotes.
This seems to eliminates most posts of a 'personal nature' from being 'worthy' in your eyes. Thus works of fiction, anecdotes of a personal nature, creative expression (art in various forms), music and poetry etc posts IF they get to the 50 USD mark are in the smooth-downvote zone is it?
Kinda sounds like it!
They're worthy and welcome to post but should they get rewards that are frankly crazy in economic terms ? No, I don't think they should.
Hive has to attract investors in order to pay for rewards that people want to cash out, and a story of taking money from investors via inflation and giving economically absurd amounts to people for making personal blog posts that don't attract a large following or otherwise pay for themselves isn't and won't be a story that compels.
I don't have all the answers and I suck at marketing. I have tried to talk some people down from their state of outrage. We cannot afford to lose those who could add value. The gamification is different here as we have rewards. For some people a few bucks make a big difference. There's also the issue that a lot of people don't dare downvote for fear of retribution. A whale can wipe them out on a whim, but I would hope they can be better than that. I've always said it's like the wild west. Some of us can be vigilantes if we want.
!ENGAGE 20
ENGAGEtokens.