Anonymous downvotes would be interesting, but could also lead to frustration and even more abuse. I think the PoB system as it is today is not that bad after all, especially after the 50/50 curation change, things got drastically better. Any other attempt like free upvotes to counter a downvote could unfortunately also be misused, but I like the idea to somewhere appeal a downvote, making the case visible (does not need to be a proposal but could also be a special page), so that other users can judge and either up or downvote the post.
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How do you think it can be misused?
An abuser who is legitimately downvoted could use the free upvote to counter the downvote.
OK, so if an abuser is legitimately downvoted, does a free upvote help them in some way? Currently, abusers can use a regular upvote to counter downvotes on their posts. How would a free upvote help them? (Remember they can't use both types of upvotes on a post.)
Thinking about it a bit, I guess I can see how it could help abusers to harvest more rewards. If they make their own post (let's say it's plagiarized post), they can upvote other posts for curation rewards AND counteract any downvotes on their plagiarized post using the free upvote. So if anyone upvotes their plagiarized post (e.g. they didn't know it was plagiarized), it could be free money for them if they can use the free upvote to counteract any downvotes received for plagiarism. So I guess I can see how it could help them.
That is a good attack vector, but the extent is pretty low. First off, you can't upvote for more than the upvote is worth nor more than your HP. So, this would take a scammer posting others' content, getting high rewards, + being/having access to a large stake. Most scammers don't keep HP powered up, they steal it right away, so their free upvote would be worthless.
In the rare scenario where you had a large stakeholder posting other content, they would quickly be found out, curators would stop voting them, and the downvotes would mount up as word got around. We had a similar scenario. Actually, that's what I love about Hive. It seems like we have seen it all; even the most unlikely of events take place.
The person who was legitimately downvoted had to have something to downvote in the first place, which would be the self vote. You can't unvote and revote the post twice with the free upvote. So the free upvote does not help the attacker in this case.
You can split your stake into two accounts, post with both, upvote one post with each account, and then use the other account to counter downvotes.
Yeah, this is true. If a large abuser split his votes, he would get a free counter effectively for 100% of his vote. That would be too big of an attack vector for what would be gained; upvote abuse is done much more than any other type of abuse.
In my view absusive downvotes are mostly a problem because there are too few downvotes. As a result, when downvotes do happen they have outsize impact both financial and emotional. The solution to this is not to nerf downvotes, it's actually to make them better. Your suggestion of anonymous downvotes is one such way, but there are probably others. I would actually prefer that all votes (both up and down) be anonymous, as is the case on most centralized sites. Focus would then shift from who is voting and whether that vote is "legitimate" to whether the net payout is appropriate (and if someone who has not voted disagrees, they can vote up or down to express that). That's the right focus.
People should be able to "like" content non-anonymously, a social operation that doesn't affect payouts.
More directly to the point here in your post, I think it would be possible to take the downvote curation reward penalty only from those upvotes chronologically before the downvote, so upvotes to counter the downvote wouldn't be penalized.
If it's possible to make both upvotes and downvotes anonymous, that will take the politics away from voting, and we would get a more accurate picture of what a post is truly worth. It would make the single biggest impact for PoB in a good way IMO. I'm sure many will see a post; think that's a bit overvalued, but don't want to downvote even a small amount due to having their name plastered up for all to see; it can turn tribal. I'm not sure how we would do that without taking voting off the base layer, but I don't think that's a good idea as anything to do with HIVE should be as secure as possible.
The last point you made on downvote curation is clever and accomplishes the same thing without the negative side effects. I'm in favor of doing it that way.
Why does it have to be his stake, what about the DAO?