It is not appropriate to troll Hive accounts on Twitter with anti-Hivewatchers messages.
Making Tweets about Hive un-shareable does nothing to Hivewatchers. What it does is limit all of our ability to showcase Hive.
Equality:
I've said this before: Hivewatchers and Spaminator will treat all people equally. That means just because someone is better off than someone else, someone's mastery of English is better, someone is more connected and has more friends, more followers, more of whatever it is they have, they will not get special privileges. Everyone on this planet is a human being of equal importance. Whether they are from Lagos, Caracas, Paris, Toledo, or Riga.
Just because someone is better at expressing themselves or more likable does not mean that we will bend over for them and somehow assume they can do no wrong. Remember, it is the very "friends" and followers of the account in question that let us know about it.
Back in the days of Steemit Inc (and before I took over Spaminator) we had an issue with manipulation. Steemit Inc had some users it preferred and some that were hated. Those users and their buddies got special treatment, were 'let go', were allowed to do what they wanted. Most of these people are no longer here. Why? Well, they were scammers and when the Steemit Inc tit dried up so did their interest. Some of their friends still remain and for the most part those individuals had no idea that the reason they were always 'untouchable' was because of this type of manipulation.
Public outrage and threats have no impact. If they did, we'd be corrupt. How can you trust someone who changes their attitude based on let's say a threat to get their witness unvoted? Who would even vote for a witness that bows down to threats? We survived a hostile takeover. Do you really think that a witness that fought for decentralization will be manipulated? You have to have integrity and stand firm on what's right, not follow an easy dollar and betray Hive. If I caught myself thinking "I should just 'sweep this under the rug' for so and so and I can move up in the ranks" then I should just kick my own ass out of Hive. That'd be fucked. Mafia-level fucked. We don't play that kind of shit.
A few misconceptions and corrections:
Spaminator was rearranged a year ago. The Spaminator account does a tiny dust warning vote to warn people and get them to take a look at what's going on. It no longer removes all of the funds. The account that comes after it after 7 days is Adm but that changes.
Spaminator is not an artificial intelligence bot. It is a decentralized bot with manual input. It has a sizable framework, uses two servers, and streams the blockchain as a node would. When it stops, it needs to replay and catch up.
How do we deal with malicious reports? We catch most of them and discard them. We don't process reports where we can tell the user was reported because someone simply didn't like them.
We spend a lot of time on due-diligence and investigations. In that, we untangle massive botnets of exploitative accounts. The largest one is approximately 30k accounts.
When a person asks for help on the Hivewatchers discord we make a genuine effort to help them. We will point them to resources where possible and very often we go out of our way to help them succeed. Everyone gets a chance.
However, people who lie, manipulate, defraud their supporters, throw death threats around, and so on, end up on a permanent list. After one or two successful appeals, the listing is permanent. It used to be just one. Now we're more flexible.
Users have the option of ignoring Hivewatchers and Spaminator comments and downvotes. No one is mandated to do anything but in doing that, the users accept the fact that there will be downvotes.
Phishing always takes precedence over anything else. Even if the account is on the list ten times over we will still spend hours helping that person recover control over it.
Spaminator operates with a DHF proposal and without. The proposals help offset the costs but the bot will still run. The Hivewatchers site will still be up just the same. I'm not going to threaten Hive to fund it or lose Spaminator.
American politics have no influence on Hivewatchers or Spaminator. I haven't even been to the States in half a decade.
Changes and feedback:
We welcome feedback. Anytime I write something personally I want feedback and I want you to read it and say whatever you want to say. Same with everyone else. No one wants to work on shit to just let it fly by and get no feedback. All jobs have performance reviews.
But like I said at the beginning of this post, that feedback better not be to treat some people 'more special' than others. We are a decentralized community that is global. All members of this community are important.
If I don't reply to feedback right away, chances are I'm working on something for all of Hive. For example, the StealthEX AMA we just had which went very well. Just message me or reply to one of my posts so I see it. You can also always reach me by tagging in the Hivewatchers discord.
This post is NOT about any one person. Everything said keeps coming up again and again in general. No one reading this is the first to spam up Hive social media or will be the last. And same with everything else mentioned. And keep in mind, many of those who had to deal with Hivewatchers and Spaminator become our greatest supporters. General Semantics.
As a suggestion for the future, when leaving a comment to an user that is probably new and doesn't know better or even where to find info about what he/she is doing wrong or how to fix it. It would be nice if those comments came with a link to a tutorial o info post like the collections made by @newbies-guide.
Also since the important thing is to actually teach new users who don't know better and are not trying to abuse the platform on purpose, I think we need to educate them, some think even a downvote worth 0 is the end of their account cause they don't know how Hive works, explaining to them how that is not censure or how they are not losing their account would be good to see HiveWatchers do when leaving a downvote.
You've said what I was about to write in response to:
Treating everyone equally is commendable, but I don't see any mention of fairly? Genuine mistakes are made either through ignorance or a pure and simple mistake.Yes, we're adjusting the comments. Just last night the comment feature of our frontend received its post-HF update. They will likely end up being pointed using a link forwarder so they can be adjusted in the future. We are also getting some of the comments translated.
I have updated the comments with a guide.
Kindly state the reasons you chose to downvote all my post through spaminator please.
Please visit the Hivewatchers discord to discuss https://discord.gg/beSmkT3d
See, this is what I'm afraid I have to disagree with. The downvotes were on Hive. You've been asked on Hive to explain. Why take the conversation and the transparency away to Discord, where I have no desire to go or to look to find out the resolution? I'm confident there's a place for Hivewatchers et al. I'm just concerned about some of the practices and, from what I can see, lack of accountability.
LOL, It's a bot, which means it's coded software and operates on a set of parameters/criteria; it may not have the capacity to learn (AI), but it's still a bot. Tagging the word "Decentralized" on the end to make it look more acceptable is funny, to say the least. Hopefully, you mean by "Human Input", which means the bot pings you or A-another to an account supposedly in breach, and then someone [human] looks at it and decides to flag it or not manually.
How many members of the Spaminator/Hivewatchers team are former members of Steemcleaners and Cheetah? The thought crosses my mind that simply putting on a new coat doesn't necessarily change a behaviour.
That's such a naive comment that I see many people make and another prime example of the schizophrenia that Hive suffers from because one-minute Downvotes are for a post we don't like. The next minute they're for combatting plagiarisers and spammers. Downvotes are damaging in so many ways, even the so-called 'tiny.' ones because people notice downvotes more than upvotes; it's human nature.
I try and keep my nose clean, but someone needs to ask questions or point out failings. We can't, as you say, sweep things under the carpet simply because it's convenient.
The reason the conversations are on Discord isn't due to transparency constraints but because its impossible to have a normal conversation in comments and we do not have a good chat option as of yet that records to chain. People need to be able to answer "yes", "no" etc and use reactions as they want to. Hive blog comments are not suitable for a long discussion of a few words per statement.
Spaminator is decentralized in respect to its technical operation. I'm using the word "decentralized" here as most blockchains use it; while their nodes are operated by one person they are still located in different parts of the world. As Spaminator is a very large bot, it requires several pieces of key infrastructure which is distributed.
Cheetah was a hands-off bot. There are no members to it. The only former members of the entire project (who were Steemcleaners) are myself and Logic and neither one of us is a founding member. We had nothing to do with the initiation of the project. The rest retired and have been replaced.
I think the issue here is not Spaminator or Hivewatchers but how people see downvotes. All of the comments so far weren't very much in regards to the projects but based on downvotes and the fact that they exist. The community seems to enjoy downvotes as long as they are never on their own posts. The problem in my view with how this entire discussion always gravitates to downvotes is, as you and everyone else here knows, part of the reason that the hostile takeover and the loss of Steem to privatization was successful was because one individual wanted downvotes to be eradicated from use on certain types of posts. Over the years in general the use of downvotes went from their intended use of adjusting rewards to something seen as an attack. This is a bigger discussion than any project.
So first off. Thanks for the fair and IMV open-minded response.
Discord
We'll have to agree to disagree with Discord. As a crusty old IRC user, I find the Bling of Discord or any of the other IM services unnecessary. It was only recently I was tricked into signing up for an XMPP account. I suspect. Discord offers only one advantage, Speed? In terms of replies. So I'd argue that the conversation logs could be posted back against the original accusation on Hive to give a paper trail. I realise that's extra admin, but what price does one put on transparency? I'd argue it's worth every effort.
Cheetah
I really disliked Cheetah. It struck me as an entity, out of control, stalking the blockchain. I'm not sure, saying, "But I never started it; I just joined along the way!" is an argument. You were part of the Cheetah project, so I have to repeat what I said: "How does changing one's coat change one's behaviour"?
Downvotes
Now that we can both agree on. However, it would help if you kept in mind that both, in this instance, are mutually connected; it's almost a chicken and egg situation. I suspect the only way to break that cycle is to no longer have Hivewatchers/Spaminator downvote, but that would then make them toothless, and this is the crux of the problem for Hive as a whole Money if there weren't any money involved, nobody would give a tinker's fart. However, that's not strictly true, as you'll always find a group willing to bitch at just about anything!
STEEM
So I was fortunate enough not to have any funds taken on STEEM, but that was then, and this is now. Supposedly we have a better world on Hive, and I'm not really interested in attempts to tailor what Justin and Ned did to cover up any cracks or inconsistencies that appear on Hive.
I can't make up my mind if there are a lot of naive people on Hive or a boatload of clever people that have managed to sell the idea that all the bad people waved us all off at the STEEM quayside and only the good people disembarked at the promised land of Hive. That's insane! Pretty much everyone moved to Hive, good and bad. Some retain accounts on STEEM. Some have one foot in STEEM and one in HIVE. I would say that things are better on Hive, but that doesn't mean we can let our guard down and give up on making improvements across the board, including Hivewatchers or Spaminator if enough people think it's warranted.
Let me be crystal clear. I'm not on anybody's side other than my own, but I can't stand by and say nothing when I see clearly wrong things, even if a group of individuals think it's right.
I'm not a fan of Discord but there's no better alternative for now. That may change and I hope it does, especially if Discord starts collecting user data in an invasive way like Whatsapp does. We're watching what they're doing carefully. It's not realistic to use comments. There can be a better way on Hive but it has to be built. I do have some ideas but I can't take it on right now, there is a pile of deliverables waiting.
Cheetah is not something I can speak for. It's not mine, I can't operate it even if I had the code, it's not worth discussing at this point.
Yeah, what people have suggested before is instead of downvotes to limit the visibility of accounts on frontends. We won't go that route. The other train of thought in suggestions was to turn Spaminator into a low-quality-content tracking bot but I refuse to do that. Both avenues are extremely immoral.
On Hive we're still dealing with the fallout from Steem years. There was a lot of toxicity built up. I have an old post somewhere about it. It's not going to get fixed in just a year. Completely agree on improvements, that's why I welcome all discussions. We're pretty much on the same page.
Thank The Pond Gods for that!
Mmm? I agree about data harvesting. I do think conversation logs are OK in a public dialogue. Obviously, in a DM or PM, that would be up to both parties to authorise. I'm a bit of a zealot when it comes to transparency unless there's an excellent reason why something should be kept from us, for example, personal safety etc.
Totaly behind you on that. If Hive is a Free as in speech....... platform, people will have to learn to accept there will be folk who will say and possibly do things they do not like. It's about how we educate them to modify their activity OR! Accept that maybe we have the wrong attitude, but we can only come to that conclusion through dialogue; simply shutting someone down diminishes ALL OF US because we've failed to resolve a problem and resorted to drastic measures.
I wrote this the other day. You might want to think about my suggestions, or not. 🤷♂️
https://ecency.com/hive/@dickturpin/re-wilmetcalfe-2021715t10921298z
Yes, there was/is a witness running around downvoting anyone who says anything nice about STEEM. I find that behaviour totally offensive, even more so given it's a Witness.
A. We should demonstrate we are better and more mature when it comes to STEEM and freedom of speech.
B. More importantly, and I cannot overstress this! IMV, Witnesses should be beyond reproach because to me, they should be setting an example to all of us; that's why they were voted into a position of trust.
That would make me very happy if everyone was on the same page as me. Bwahahaha. 😉
Enjoy
IAM there currently but no response yet
Wait a bit for my partner please. Timezone difference.
Thanks for doing what you do. I check on the Discord once in a while and I see you get some abuse. A lot of people really kick off just for being tagged for abusive behaviour. I would not like to have to do what you do. Dealing with various languages and cultures adds to the stress.
Hive definitely needs policing, but as nobody is actually in charge it needs to be done transparently. If the greater community can see the evidence of the 'crime' then they can judge what needs doing. Without the support of the community your task is much harder.
You have to automate some aspects of this as it is not viable to do it all manually.
Even if someone writes a long, ranty post that personally insults you this ought not to affect the situation too much as they may have no idea who you are or what your motives are. It ought to be as easy to get off the blacklist as it is to get on if you can show your motives were honest. People will make mistakes, but as you have often said, repeated offending tends to show bad intentions.
I have defended your actions to various people and many do not see all the good you do. We are all humans and mistakes will be made. Just have to own up when that happens.
Stay well and Hive five!
This:
It's definitely no easy road and there's no solution that will work for everyone. It's a difficult question in general because one, manpower is hard to get as this type of role is incredibly hard on people on an emotional level. People can't handle being lied to all the time. At the same time, I won't step away from this role since I don't want this type of service to be replaced with another service that has no appeal, no scope, no accountability of any kind, etc. We don't factor into our findings who insults us or who doesn't. We're against removal from frontends and things like that. All we want to do is reach the point where there's no plagiarism, no ID theft, no botnets, etc.
I am so grateful that someone is prepared to do this shitty, but essential job. There will always be people trying to game the system.
A key thing is to not drive away people who are trying to do good stuff, but may 'break the rules' in some way. There has to be some leeway if they bring some benefits to Hive and the infractions are minor. I know that balance can be hard to achieve.
Cheers.
Thanks for not being fucked 😄
Some people take that tiny downvote way too seriously
It's one of those times its best to just take a deep breath and think about things rationally.
THANK YOU for ALL you do to keep Hive Alive.
Thanks
The line about politics brought a few thoughts to mind. There truly is an outside world that does not subscribe to the USA channel. That might come as quite the shock to some. And it's strange there are times when it actually needs to be mentioned. But I get that some are just buried so deep into those device chambers these days and it's hard to tell. But yeah. There's an entire world out there. And some of it is actually quite interesting.
Well-said. It's Twitter and mainstream media. No matter what VPN you set you still end up seeing this rat's nest of divisive American "news" which trivialized every argument of any kind that could ever be made.
Pick a team. Become a product. Say goodbye to everything else, for the rest of your life.
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Never had a problem and the whole trolling bit, is just asscake nonsense when you guys are out here trying to help in fighting the good fight. Carry on man.
Thank you.
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STOPWell said.. We are all equal and no one is better than the next.
We all have different skills and we are all in this together.
People Who acts like asses they don't belong here.
All you do is helping People so..
Thank you for all you do and keep up the good work 👍
Happy week. Cheers!
Thank you
Thank you for your work, your patience and your integrity!
Thanks a lot
Hello, @guiltyparties, I love this write up, but i have a problem though. I have the spaminator on my tail, down voting all of my posts and comments, I might've done something wrong, but this is out of hand now, please how do i make it stop?
T
Hi there. I have not been able to contact them by DISCORD, my internet is terrible. I want to know why I am getting a negative vote from sparminator on all my posts? If you are so kind to answer, I appreciate it. @guiltyparties
Hola. No he podido contactarlos por DISCORD mi internet es pésimo. Deseo saber por qué estoy recibiendo un voto negativo de sparminator en todas mis publicaciones? Si son tan amables de responder se los agradezco.