I keep finding myself writing these posts ever so often, it's a bit weird how to some it feels like I'm coming out of nowhere when I bring certain things up while majority of people feel it's quite obvious.
There's a perceived value of content on Hive. Some might say posts have close to no value unless they're driving attention to them which I kind of agree with. There's a lot to bring up in this post and since it's my first one after quite a while as I'm back and settling in from some traveling I'm going to try and keep it short.
If you write an amazing post with amazing content but no one consumes it or there's no proof that it was consumed even if it has many and big votes for one reason or another, you shouldn't be surprised if people deem it overrewarded and want to adjust the rewards down a bit using their (delegated) stake.
I'm not a great example to use here as there's a lot of different factors why I do get attention and engagement on my posts, but there are a lot of great other examples with users with close to no stake receiving a great amount of engagement. We've noticed this in the philippine onboarding initiatives for instance, most of these users are very new to the blockchain but they post in the right communities, engage a bit with others and not just replying to comments on their own posts and others reciprocate that activity by dropping comments back on their posts. Comments are a great indicator that posts were consumed, even if not fully and in some cases maybe not even read at all but just viewed images included in it, etc. I don't even read all posts I upvote personally either but I trust the people I've been following for years that they're not just reposting, plagiarising, all things the community is generally against being rewarded on here.
The reason I bring up the example above is because there's some top earning authors that have way less engagement than literal newcomers to our blockchain but are receiving 10-20x the rewards per post on a constant basis. On top of all that they barely engage, (one of them had no comments in over a month yet posting twice per day earning anywhere from $30-60 pre-pump), not just in their own posts but on posts of other authors. So not only where they socially inactive here but on their web2 socials they also didn't really receive any engagement, weren't bothering to try bring some "perceived" value to hive like backlinks, etc. It really begs the question as to what value do you think you are bringing to this blockchain when none of your posts get any comments, any views (youtube content in the posts as indicator) and you're not even bothering to be social on the one platform that's rewarding you heavily? I personally think it's kind of rude to completely desert social activity when you're being so handsomely rewarded. Aside from throwing a hissyfit initially on a few downvotes I cast it seemed they understood the issue and that I didn't have a personal problem with them but the voters overrewarding this user by that much without a second thought on the lack of perceived value I was mentioning.
Image generated with peakd.com/ai
One of my favorite authors on Hive who does quite well in rewards as well, @tarazkp, receives quite a great amount of engagement even though he posts just as often as the user mentioned above. Taraz not only replies to his own posts but also goes to other people's posts and engages with them, he's also maintained quite a large stake over the years whereas that other user is constantly just selling everything (although I didn't wanna get into this cause it's not really an issue what people to with their stake, I figured it was worth noting here either way as comparison). Taraz brings a ton more value to the chain because consuming his content gives you every time additional content to consume in the comment section. Yet these two users are equally rewarded with the former actually earning more than taraz.
Are you telling me that's fair? Am I an asshole for wanting to adjust the rewards with my low $5 (pre-pump) downvotes to hopefully discourage the voters continuously overrewarding this user which to me seems to bring close to no value to the platform?
I know for many they don't really understand how hive rewards work but let's put it into an example for fun.
Let's assume taraz and this other user are the only ones posting on hive to put it into groups of other similar users in such categories. For simplicity's sake let's say blocktrades and ocdb are the only curators on the chain. While blocktrades is voting properly, noticing that taraz is getting 20-30x more engagement on his posts compared to the 2nd author, ocdb for some reason with stake that doesn't actually belong to it would ignore this fact and vote the 2nd user a lot more than taraz. If we assume both have the same vote strength, this would mean that blocktrades is receiving half of the vote value back as curation rewards while the other half is going to taraz but in total of the inflation of new hive being created, the other 50% of them would go to the 2nd user which ocdb is responsible for constantly voting. Now let's assume this 2nd user is constantly selling the HBD and on a constant powerdown, ocdb doesn't care cause it's not their stake that's being diluted from the inflation, they're only voting with stake delegated to them by someone else. This activity means that the inflation of Hive makes blocktrade's stake 25% less valuable over time because the voting towards this "bad author" that's only causing sell pressure while delivering close to no value nor attention is getting rewards the same as taraz. In this scenario with only these two users and things not improving it would make perfect sense and be obvious to most people that the best course of action would be for blocktrades to use some of his downvote mana to adjust the rewards of the user perceivably bringing less value to Hive since they are garnering close to no attention compared to Taraz. It is the attention economy after all.
Now imagine the above example on a larger scale. I'm sure there's a lot of other users in the same position where they're getting overrewarded from auto, blind or questionable votes consistently and unfairly in terms of perceived value while others doing a lot more and grabbing a lot more attention are barely getting the same rewards. Not to mention some new up-and-comers that may be trying hard and hitting all the checkboxes of what curators should be looking at when rewarding content but not getting the actual votes because most voting power is going to the wrong kind of authors. I'm not even talking "overrewarded" here in terms of hive being worth more, the amount of hivepower authors receive remains the same and the amount of HBD people receive is equal all over the board when hive is worth more.
Just the other day there was a user who quite literally would just post what seemed like the title of a youtube video and the link and earn $3-5 rewards on every post they did on a daily basis. Close to not other activity than that and most voters were always the same, from some tribe tokens where if you delegate some HP to them they'll automatically upvote you or if you buy/burn some of their tokens they'll do the same. We really need to start looking at these things as an issue eventually because a lot of value is being wasted with bad autovoters rewarding bad authors that are only here to farm and don't care about these things or anyone else from the looks of it, not to mention how bad it makes the platform look when curation seems broken due to too much stake being abused on autovotes compared to manual curation. Downvote adjustments could fix this either by penalizing the autovoters and authors so they'll end up with less inflation over time compared to manual voters and good authors or to give them a kick in their butt to stop being so farmy and unsocial and just taking things for granted and expecting it to continue on like that forever at the cost of others.
Anyway, rant over for now. Hope you good people out there are enjoying these greener times and that you've all had a nice new year and a good start in 2025! Hoping to post more actively from now on as I'm trying to change some daily habits for a healthier and hopefully longer future.
I have noticed that some people get voted high, quite often and it feels like the post doesn't deserve it.
But there are plenty that do put in effort and the content is a good read or watch, they show they enjoy it and definitely should be rewarded.
Understandable if someone just powers down constantly and doesn't try power up again or keep HBD as it is their stake and not our own.. I personally want to grow mine again, currently been struggling at times and some is self inflicted but I always come back and grow my stake again as I miss having my 2k HP (only small but nice having) or over 100 HBD in savings and growing.
I generally find I don't often get comments on posts which sucks.. but as long as some people are looking and keep enjoying my content then I am happy since I really enjoy writing the posts myself.
When I recently took a few weeks off to rest up, I was itching to get back into the posts again 😂
Anyways I find engaging someone's posts can really help them feel their content is valued and being looked at, I am trying to comment on posts a little more frequently now with something meaningful about the post of what I feel from seeing it or what I liked. With more people engaging more often, it will feel like Hive is more lively and be great to see!
My rant also over, happy new year and a happy 2025 ahead mate!
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It's the social media problem, some "big" accounts can do what they want and still get the likes/votes/autovotes.
I have to comment more regularly but when reading on smartphone I am often too lazy xD
I do manual curation on a very similar basis as you described. I see just token distribution as essential to ecosystem health and long term success. But even now, in "larvae state" Hive is too big to catch these newcomers and try to split your votes perfectly in accordance to the value of content/engagement.
It seems like a perfect job for AI on Hive.
Another feed with AI-assesed underrewarded content on Hive? Some sort of colorful icon next to posts suggesting how valuable is it in terms of measurable factors? List of underrwarded users based on provided content value?
That sounds like a solid use for AI. I'd like to see that list someday.
Good idea!
You could also use AI do detect overrewarded posts.
There a quite a few good ideas in the comments. A lot of people agree that something needs to be done. I do wonder how the next steps can be done.
That's a great idea and also a good motivational took for those that are underrewarded. Also great for new users who do put in the work but not beeing seen by Hivians.
Yeah AI agents for that would be amazing!
Morning @acidyo , it is not a rant in is a piece of insightful realism, that hits a nerve and pisses me off too! I agree totally with everything above so no need for me to cut and paste little bits of it.
I get pissed off that I put a lot of effort into my posts and sometimes get downvoted for no reason. My guru on here told me not to take it personally, it is done for "political reasons".
Also when I look at what a post of mine earns and I think "that's pretty good" then go to comments and might see maybe just a couple of comments posted, from users I engage with that racks me off to, total imbalance. I guess though, that killing the auto vote system ( which I do not use ), would be a death knell to the Hive? Could the @topcomment initiative maybe drive more engagement from people? I don't know it is above my pay scale, but I guess every little bit helps.
Also maybe it is lazy arsed authors that should be looked at, and like you say penalised, as you say this goontube cut and pasting malarkey is pointless bollocks.
At least we haven't sunk to the depths of fb yet " here is a picture of my dinner" 36 blue thumbs up " here is a picture of my dog licking his balls" 187 blue thumbs up!!
HNY 2025 onwards and upwards
You can't kill the autovote system without frantically increasing RC cost (this would only affect those pesky barely any stake autovoters so you wouldn't see 100+ votes on a post in the first minute with barely $0.1 rewards pending) or the other option would be to place some other fee on casting a vote which would also drain those smaller users, especially those casting 0.2% votes for no fucking reason since their accounts are so small they're never going to earn even 0.000001 hp even if we had that many decimals.
Maybe the solution is a combination of RC costs and the "optimal" 10 votes per day we have, like if you're casting 500 votes per day and you have less than 1000 HP stake it should cost you more RC than leaving 500 comments per day with same amount of stake - currently it's the other way around. Not sure, it's quite technical and I'm not the best to think about that but could make for a good post and discussion in the near future. There's been some discussion around those with stake purposely spamming the chain which causes bloat to witnesses who want to maintain the full ledger which is 160gb and growing at this point I believe. So imagine how much of that 160gb are these spammy tiny votes from accounts with no stake getting no returns but able to do it for free using free services like hive.vote, etc. It may not be a big issue now but if we start seeing 10-100x increase in users it'd mean the same increase in that activity as well.
This is far more complex than I could ever have imagined! Do I summarise?
We are fucked!? Damned if we do: Damned if we don't
That's the idea of this project indeed.
Try to reward people for engaging, also on posts where the author has a low stake.
👍
PS HNY to you too!
Diolch yn Fawr
I always try to make my posts good enough that I feel comfortable receiving rewards on them.
I know my posts don't get the most attention and I mostly write about stuff that only HIVE people are interested so I'm not really grasping outside interest to my posts.
But I very often find myself writing a post, looking at it and deleting it, because I don't feel comfortable posting it due to myself not liking it enough to be on my blog page.
Some time ago I did a series where I went from nothing to a Gold Foil legendary in Splinterlands and there I really felt like I was making cheap posts.
My goals right now with posts are that I hope that at least one person finds out something new from them or finds it interesting, the upvotes I get on my posts don't really phase me that much. The top priority is that when someone opens up my page, the blogs look nice and interesting. I might not be the best at it, but that's where really my own opinion counts the most.
But I would be lying if I said rewards are a 0 factor for me, obviously if I got 0 on all my posts it would demotivate me to not write again.
This is why that in many ways, web3 social media is similar to another social media in so much that it people like to be seen and heard much more than they like to see and hear.
With Web3, it doesn't end there though as it appears very, very few will disagree with anything preferring to just move on. Not great for debate or discussion. This problem is compounded by reward. The bigger the HP of the rewarder, the most engagement they get, always in agreement. Your comment rewarder is brilliant but it also proves the truth that engagement increase when comments are guaranteed to be rewarded! This post may be an example, and it's the reason I'm not in total agreement with you over the definition in value of a post or necessarily think the two examples you quoted are great examples to use! I will 100% agree though that users simply turning up, posting and cashing out from legacy auto-votes and never engaging at all need to be 'strongly discouraged' by community use of downvotes, as do users who farm their autovotes of community delegations by posting 100 words and a picture each day.
Ahhh back to the same problem, very rarely do users downvote anyone with more stake than they have and people can use their stake however they choose........enough!!! Going around in circles yet again!
Hive needs more discussion and debate, and just a little bit of drama from time to time :-)
Hope you both had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
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This is exactly why the downvote is essential on Hive.
Authors who create content but don't engage with their audience don't really care about what they're creating. An audience can improve the ideas and discussion, and add further SEO that can also bring more views/search engine results.
Value is always going to be subjective, but I think we can say that more views is better for the blockchain as a whole.
Authors who don't care, and likely produce content just for the autovotes and going to keep doing it as long as the autovotes come in... and the autovotes are going to continue as long as it's profitable... so the downvotes make it less profitable. Eventually, hopefully, the autovoters will move their votes to authors who are more engaged and bring more views to their content.
Honestly I think it's hard for most people to think of their content in regards to the blockchain and internet as a whole.
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Nope, the autovoters will move their votes away from authors only when and because their "curation" rewards would be diminished by the downvotes that those same authors potentially would receive. But for no other reason. They really don't give a damn if those authors respond to comments, engage, withdraw their earnings or whatever.
If they don't bother updating their autovotes based on metrics that provide value to the ecosystem then we have to use downvotes to encourage them to do so for the health of the ecosystem. This may also encourage manual voters if as you say rewards/APR are that important to check on those requirements before voting posts up. Too long have blind autovotes received the same APR as those putting in manual effort without consequences and caused a lot of authors to become the same as the one mentioned in this post. It's proof of brain for a reason, if you're not using yours then you're bound to face some pushback.
¿We? ¿Of who the fucking "we" are you talking about?
Are you by chance implying that you are the one to define and determine what the fuck provides value to the ecosystem? That you are the one who knows what's the best for the health of the ecosystem? Or that you have the slightest idea of what a metric is or means?
But what is the last straw of stupidity is that you imply "we" should and have to use downvotes to punish the autovoters you don't like and please your whims as you wish.
Holy shit! Oh yeah, tell me more about proof of brain.
You've done nothing but complain here for years and for some reason you're the minority here defending someone providing close to nothing of value to this ecosystem but being a top 10 author for months if not years due to autovotes. It's clear as day that users like that don't make this ecosystem better and only taint it to look bad to newcomers as many here in the comments have mentioned. If someone doesn't step in to warn the autovoters and adjust the rewards a little we'll easily become like trending on steem or blurt. I don't know what mental issues you have but I'll stop feeding the obvious troll at this point.
Happy New Year! I hope you're enjoying the holidays—you deserve it, man.
I’m loving these greener days because it means less work weeding out the FUD! 😄 But honestly, it doesn’t really matter since I’ve already gone through the tougher times. I stayed consistent with my posts and engagement regardless of the market conditions. There’s just no better place to be social than here on Hive. I’m completely done with web2 socials and haven’t looked back since (other than the casual sharing of Hive links in X :D).
That brings me to this question: why would someone earning decent rewards and gaining genuine attention on Hive take it for granted? To me, it’s such a wasted opportunity to not establish a real presence on this platform. I’d much rather have 100 genuine followers here than thousands on web2, where I can’t even be sure if they’re real people or bots.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that Hive feels like the perfect platform to build a community and connect with Web3 friends. The culture here is better, and I love knowing my content is on the blockchain.
Exciting times are ahead especially since there are plenty of developments in the chain. Cheers!
I'm under no illusions that some post on my content because I'm known as a comment rewarder. Some author's don't reward comments which is their prerogative but I don't understand it.
I have to figure out who's genuine and who's after my vote. It's not that hard. I have been told there's and 'underground list' of authors like me... give out comment rewards. @tarazkp is also likely to be on it.
I hope some of my comments are due to what I write and not just for easy gains.
I think that "issue" is a much smaller one than some of the things I've seen lately, it's probably mostly voters at fault and authors getting used to it thinking this is the norm forever now and they can just sell everything cause no one's gonna stop it + since it's auto what's the point of spending more time here than just posting twice per day.. ugh.
The autovoter 'thing' is not going away. Some of us will keep a big stake here (though I intend to take advantage of the impending bull if it happens). I am not going anywhere or exiting HIVE.
I mean the general issue of "is this user commenting on my post cause they consumed and liked it or just to get a vote", it's almost a non-issue in my opinion as long as the authors/other curators do their due diligence to vote "fake" engagement much lower or not at all. Being able to drive attention to your posts with stake you hold is a good way to give more value to hive power as well, if you use it well.
I've seen whales with millions of vote strength not use it or use it badly and the comment sections where often garbage, or the posts themselves were so bad that people didn't even bother to comment even if a vote was waiting. Then I've seen smaller users barely able to get past the dust threshold have a great comment section that added a lot of value to the post. It's all what you make of it I suppose.
You will probably find this funny.. but just recently I stalked your account to see who you followed recently. Knowing your habits, I figure those you did could be alright. I would rather have the BOT I run be filled with 500+ users.
I know it's not interaction, and targeted votes by the likes of @hr1 (2018 days) kept me going and infused in my earlier days with these votes.
I've been a bit semi-afk lately (travel + focus on holozing) so haven't followed too many new ones. Another great place to look at and which could use more curators would be @lovesniper/feed or accounts it decides to trust and follow and then later unfollow once they're doing well enough on their own or pass a certain threshold.
Its following also represents all the accounts it deemed genuine/real but who stopped posting so there could always be some gems that return.
I don't comment on some of your most interesting content, the urban exploration stuff often, because most of the comments I would leave feel pithy or trite. The house with the penises was bizarre! Someone really took some time to graffiti those penises in. The tawny house made me think, we don't have nettles like that here in my area of North Carolina, but we do have blackberry brambles that will tear you up. I do enjoy reading the posts though! The stache of romance novels juxtaposed with the decay made me chuckle a bit too - it almost seemed like a dystopian setting from a video game.
There are at least two sides to HIVE, the mechanical reward and curation side, and the social-content side. If I had to pick between big rewards and regular readers - I'd choose the readers. The monetary aspect of HIVE isn't going to change my life, I don't have the intention of selling whatever stake I build in HIVE. I purchase some HIVE every month because I want to support the ecosystem, and it can certainly change other peoples' lives (financially). The important thing to me is that HIVE gets perpetuated way out into the future.
Ironically my content on Twitter and other platforms often gets more engagement than my content on Hive, but I think some of that comes down to cultivating the audience here that enjoys my content. Some of that is also shifting- I enjoy writing short stories.
Wrapping back around I think we each have a different model for HIVE and value different aspects of it, some of which align with the reward structure more optimally.
I think you commented here more than anywhere about my writings!
There's no need to explain anything like this, each to their own. Never tell a man what to do with his stake. Some have tried this with me in the deep past. They were unfollowed, muted, and rewards removed in one case.
It's your choice what you do here, that's the no censorship we enjoy.
I agree, and the great part about HIVE. It was more to illustrate the different approaches or models people have of this network.
As long as the system is at least in equilibrium I think we are in good shape - where the value coming in or being created exceeds the value that is being extracted. That we are sustainable.
I like the idea that 20 years from now someone might stumble across one of my stories here and enjoy it. Assuming anyone can still read and everyone isn't jacked into some neurally inducted dystopian fantasy world...
I want HIVE to persist.
I had a rant going round my head before reading your rant.
It made me pause and ask ‘what is the biggest drain on the hive ecosystem?’ Like actual stats real, not just perceived.
This led to more questions,
How much is rewarded daily by the reward pool on average? What was the total of all author rewards for 2024?
How much of that stayed in wallets vs left?
How much were witnesses rewarded in a 2024? How much of that stayed in wallets vs. left?
How much did the DHF reward 2024?
How much did the Value Plan reward? (That one i can answer 1,200,000 hbd. I know because of this post from @blanchy from yesterday. https://peakd.com/hive-167922/@blanchy/valueplan-the-numbers--total-payouts-in-2024-part-i )
I’m glad this rant of yours is getting a lot of traction and reward. I feel this post by Blanchy should get similar visibility and community contemplation!
I did some search queries on my above questions. But we all know how painful searching for info on hive can be. Maybe one of @dalz posts has info about some of my questions?
I really would like to know what is the greatest overall drain on the hive ecosystem.
A data driven ranking would be a fascinating read. Lol, unfortunately this Butt is not capable of generating a post like that, im just capable of wondering about it.
I appreciate your rant widening the perspective of my internal brain rant. 🙏
The more important question for me personally is the biggest drain for least amount of work/effort. "Free money" is easy to part with as they say.
I don’t disagree. I guess what I’m saying/asking is for real data not perceived.
I get that it’s nobodies responsibility to provide that data.
I’m mostly saying that with accurate info we can correctly evaluate if a said user is mailing it in with easy post, collecting big rewards, not engaging and cashing out is a bigger drain than say a user receiving 5000 hbd from value plan to race and pay repairs for a pedal bike and having no real accountability after receiving.
With accurate data we could say appreciate say 1 witness over another based on their behavior with earnings.
If say more projects funded by dhf demonstrated follow through and metrics of what was created for community and how we benefit.
Haha, shut up buttcoins…. Hive loves its black hole funding and earnings ethics 😝🤦♂️
I totally know what you mean about users who reap big rewards and then they don't even bother to comment back. I think what also bugs me is when I find someone I like and I read their posts and comment on them, but they never comment on mine. I get it that maybe my content isn't their cup of tea, but you would think at least occasionally the "broken clock" would be right right?
There is a value in being read, beyond the monetary.
The exchange of consciousness - the exchange of time. You may optimize your time, manage it efficiently but there is nothing you can do in this life to substantially increase it.
You may stake some value in your health - and expand its duration by perhaps 10%, but nothing you or I will do will substantially increase it. When you read and comment you're giving essentially your most valuable token.
I've always said that if HIVE goes to zero I would probably be sad, but not because of the potential money I have lost on the platform, but the time I would have lost.
100% one of the many reasons I want HIVE to persist.
It'll never go to zero really, think about all the people that are here and hold other coins/fiat that may overshadow their hive holdings, sure it would potentially get more centralized that way but I'm sure many would buy it for cents just for fun.
I'm a bit guilty of that, I'm sorry 😅 Hopefully I'll have more time to go back to the roots soon where I mostly just comment and consume like I did in 2016 lol
No worries, I wasn't even thinking of you when I wrote that. :) There are others who are far greater abusers of this. I kind of get it because as your account grows you get more and more people interacting with you hoping for one of those upvotes. It would be a full time job trying to touch base with all of them, but when you are just hitting the same people over and over, or even worse, no one, then it is bad.
This was complicated to consider ... the problem is, Hive has no guide for this. People come with their own plan, but are not handed anything to let them know: "This is what the community expects of you as a good citizen." We assume people should know, and then we constrain their behavior by negative reinforcement -- but it is not effective reinforcement because they still do not know what the positive is. Hive pretty much needs a constitutional convention at this point for the community, because without that, anything around downvotes will seem arbitrary and unfair to many. There are some farmers who know they are just here for the rewards, granted ... but for the people just having to figure all this out, if we want to retain them, we need something more than negative consequences for rules and requirements and best practices not explained.
In addition to all that you have mentioned I hear that there is a lot of quid pro quo voting going on and in order to get noticed you have to have a large stake.
I am trying to grow my stake and believe that you should be taken more seriously if you have a high stake but using stake in vote exchange manner also does not encourage good content.
And Taraz is one of my favorite authors on Hive 😀
This is still around: https://jryze.me/hive/.
I totally feel you on the part with the authors that are not having much engagement but still earning lots on their posts when these are created as in fact, this remains a question I had in my mind for years of being around here and somehow, as much as I tried to understand it, it still seems unfair. Obviously, I'm not talking here about the people who might not have lots of engagement but getting involved in other ways such as curating or being a witness, but I think we can all agree that there are lots of posts that don't deserve what they receive. Speaking about both these that earn too little and those that earn too much.
This provides food for thought and is certainly worth pondering. I've come across articles discussing how some posts receive more rewards than they deserve, possibly because they're engaging in some form of dishonesty. They will likely get caught eventually.
That is why I love curation in the blockchain. It is one of the great aspects of Hive and I am grateful for the curators who promote quality posts that I enjoy reading. !BBH
I think this is one of the biggest of hive problems and one of the most complex to solve.
There are numerous ways to earn votes and there's always that lucky break when your name gets written down on a curators list and everything you post gets you the daily 3-5 dollars regardless of how good it is or how much engagement it has.
It would always seem unfair for new accounts who aren't earning much now, heck even I sometimes look at people's posts and upvotes enviously which have little to no comments and half of the words are filled with the template advertisement and self biography of themselves.
Although this earlier scenario is different from what you're explaining.
If the person is constantly leaching off hive, selling stake and powering down without any given reason, still putting out low content posts and no engagements then of course those who can should down vote.
That's what the down vote is there for yes?
A bit of a slap on the wrist, a warning and punishment...
First of all, good luck getting into healthier habits!
Some personalized AI content discovery tool that makes a feed with only good content that someone actually loves to read or discover would be nice and make manual curation more interesting. Now, Hive still kind of feels like a garbage field where posts are put out just for the sake of earning potential (also because of auto-votes) which is impossible to plow through to find something good.
Also a solution to this could be a curation group that actually takes all these factors fully into account, I once again did the test to click on some users that got upvoted by some of the current groups, and each and every one of them was dumping their earnings.
Another thing that could be done is show the post earnings only as the author earnings, with the price of Hive going up and payouts increasing, this also tends to increase the drama. Having high payouts on many posts might also scare investors away. At the same time having higher payouts shown than what they really are for the author, it likely sells more new people to try the platform.
Maybe it's just that the entire model of Hive is just flawed and something fundamentally needs to change.
You periodically encourage the use of downvotes, which can work if people don’t start taking it personally.
However, I’ve seen an example where a user who writes about travel and earns $100+ USD rewards per post goes to a curator who left a downvote and asks why they acted that way. This user doesn’t care about the platform’s economy; they care about maximizing their profit. That’s how most people think—it’s a consequence of consumer society.
On the other hand, users with a small amount of HP are unlikely to do this because of the risk of personal vendettas in return. I’ve also heard of cases where whales start wars with each other across new users' posts, which could lead to chaos.
Honestly, it’s strange to see auto-upvotes of 300–400 likes on a post within 30 seconds, while the PeakD tool shows that only 5 people visited the page, and the average time spent is 2–3 minutes—not enough to read the entire article.
Users need guidance and education. You can create as many punitive or incentive measures as you want, but if the quality of users remains comparable to that of parasites—those who only consume (in the broadest sense) without creating—then all efforts will be in vain.
You have great old posts that touch on interesting points. But users need to be engaged. The best kind of content is the one that makes users think, not just consume information. If everyone on the planet became parasites, our civilization would end. Conversely, if everyone became the opposite of parasites—creators and innovators—it would lead our civilization into a golden age.
This is a topic I'm always very interested in, because I think that a lot of the users-retention issues we have are deeply connected with the voting patterns of a lot of big curators, mainly those that, as you wrote, curate with others' HP.
A small premise: I know that the majority of posts on Hive are over-rewarded, because we value a lot effort and engagement, even when quality is not so high - and I'm not exlcuding myself from this, as I know that my posts wouldn't get the same rewards anywhere else.
But one thing is rewarding, even more than deserved, those that put effort in their posts, engage with other users, bring traffic to Hive - just to give an example, my small account on publish0x, where I re-post majority of my Hive-posts, averages 10.000 views per month -, build apps, games or useful tools; something completely different is rewarding those who don't help in any way Hive.
Why should someone give huge upvotes to an author which is clearly leveraging the rewards pool as a sort of passive, zero-effort source of income? None is reading those posts, they aren't driving any traffic into Hive, the author is not interacting with other users and isn't building anything here, not even their HP...
The only reasons I can find are:
And they think that's ok because their are using a big curation account instead of their own HP.
Or, even worse, they don't care because those are easy free money and that's enough to exploit the system as much and as long as possible.
I already said it in the past and I'm going to keep saying it as long as I will be on Hive: we should ALL try our best when curating, not giving for granted our upvotes to someone because they used to do better, helping newcomers when they put effort in what they do, even if they can't upvote back our posts, and, lastly, we should do our best to make Hive a more healtier and fairer place, where people would like to share their experiences, engage with others, build something beautiful togheter.
Good article about voting. There are many questions, what is good content, how should it be rewarded. To read through postings needs time, but I think many times big upvotes are given just because of the author, not because of the content of the posting.
Another point for me is self upvoting. There are different views on this point and there have been many discussion, but for me, self upvoting is not ok. It drains out stake of the reward pool and so the users, who do not self upvote, get less.
I use @commentrewarder to encourage users to reply because I think, replies are undervalued. You do not often see big upvotes on replies.
@topcomment is another initiative to get more attention for replies. I think, this is a good initiative and should be supported.
To write a good reply needs time to read the article and then to write your answer. But this is not that much rewarded as postings.
Have a nice weekend.
I personally have had a hard time adapting to the interactions, the truth is that I have no idea what has happened to me in that aspect, because if I go back to the old days of Ste... My interaction was daily due to the fact that I was a curator in several communities and I did it naturally.
When I focused on being just a content creator this changed, and I received a lot of criticism and that's when I felt that in a way I was being imposed to interact with others.
I'm not going to say it was time factor, I will admit that sometimes it was the ego telling me, "just post and you are not obligated to comment because you should not do something obligated".
But times change and one can reflect, I think I already have more than a month interacting with people between the time I have looking for what content to do, preparing my content, working outside of Hive (organizing my time, I think it was an important factor).
Right now I don't use the networks to interact about Hive directly other than doing some kind of like or RT because I don't have the capacity right now to maybe approach someone and invite them to Hive (something that happened to me every time I published something about Hive in my networks, people were interested in knowing what it is).
I know I have had many differences with people including you, but I don't live from the past, I guess the idea is to improve, and now that I do I understand your point of view and it is not only understandable, you are right.
I hope for me, it's not too late and I'm still going.
Right now I'm a bit affected by seeing very high votes on posts of less than 500 characters.
But I'm betting that somehow that person is giving some kind of value to blockchain and not continuing to think that there must always be something wrong.
I always thought that a longer, well arranged, non-plagiarized post had a better chance than a short one without any arrangement. But as I said, times change, and I want to focus on the positive to improve, although there must be people who see these flaws and say something even if others don't like it.
I am not forcing myself to interact right now, on the contrary I am looking for the way, I am searching very well what content I like (sometimes I think I am following the wrong authors and it did not help me much to interact), now I have the time to go deeper.
I agree with all you've said, I have thought about this whole situation before, but I came to the conclusion, that it is just another one of the orders in the world, achieving balance is always going to be difficult. Some people will always get more than others, regardless of their effort, maybe because of relationships or other factors, while others will still not get enough, maybe because they haven't gotten so many connections or relationships even if they put in the work.
It was great reading from you, hope to consume more from you this year.
As a user who has been grinding out posts for user it can be frustrating to see little engagement and huge rewards since I know most of the time it's auto voting. The perception of this is difficult for retention because it makes it seem like only those who got in early get rewarded even if they are not furthering the content or engagement. I have been looking at posts for engagement vs hive value becase one day I think we will see a rebalancing as people want to make the ecosystem better.
I'm not going to lie, I really agree with what is said here, every creator should strive to create quality publications that contribute to the ecosystem, and to tell the truth (although I have not been on the platform for more than a year, which I know is little compared to other users) I feel that we should also give a chance to those authors that although they are new, they are still creating interesting and quality content. And in all the niches that this includes, since, in my short stay here, I get the impression that certain sectors are overshadowed by others, which does not seem so good to me. Let's hope that as time goes by this will be solved.
Great insights man. I don't disagree with anything you say. I remember getting downvoted in the early days and it stung. I poured my soul into a post, it did well and then the downvotes. Now I can understand their importance and why the mechanism is there. I don't really bat an eyelid now when a post is downvoted and realise now it's not personal.
Regarding comments, I endeavour to answer all of mine, out of courtesy. It's great to get the engagement, so the least one can do is be social and respond.
Good shout calling out @tarazkp
One of my favourite authors on here for quite some time - interesting, engaging, good writer - ticks all the boxes.
I think their is not enough checks and balances in auto voting (Both up and down votes). Auto voting is very beneficial for the voter and the one getting voted on when their is enough checks and balances to combat abuse. We do need to encourage more downvoting overvalued posts but we need to put in a minimum of what is allowed to be earned. Too many times I see downvote trails zero out posts, that are just low quality posts. The downvote button needs a button you can click that will indicate if it is an adjustment, personal opinion, or abuse of some sort. So it can tell the auto vote bot to not to zero, if it's just an adjustment. If user meets that minimum for adjustment then it will no longer add another downvote.
Value on post is just an additional reward for me, even i dont get any value on my post i am still happy to share about my experience and what i did as long as i love to share it doesn't matter the value.
Glad you are able to share some good thoughts today sir it's been a while for me also to post here because my @bien account i lost my password only active left on my paper..
So here we go again back to the basic from 2017 and now 2025 i am still on this stage but it doesn't mean i will stop instead i will keep on pushing..fight, fight, fight..bamossss☺️☺️
Sorry to hear about you losing your account, it's happening too often lately. :(
Thank you sir! But it's okay i can start a new one and these would be a great start. I will keep it safe now if i need to dig depper just to keep it safe this time i would❤️
That's so true. Hive is not a solo journey, it is a community. As with any other community, would it be a community irl or online community, you should engage and interact with others.
!PIZZA
Hmmm, true. We need to stay committed to a platform that's as sweet as Hive. I always have one thing at the back of mind that, if you want to be seen or heard, you must leave your space and visit others too. It's all about building a good community, which means being sociable on the chain and before you know it one has gathered lots of amazing hivers as friends.
I don't have enough comments on my post but I try to engage with users on hive as it's the better way to grow on hive and make friends on hive too..... Yeah it seems users too who aren't good in engagement but post content to get rewards
Yea well you have good points, since it's a social platform, some engagement should be done... Also I can understand someone might need cash out to buy food or whatever, but should also support the chain and keep at least 30% here... Downvotes and upvotes can be both abused, upvotes as you said, downvotes can become abuse like I argue with you, then you set me on your autovote, that's not great
A other broken thing is autovotes on tag, like I can put a picture of a dog, add tag 'splinterlands' and splinterboost will autovote it
Yeah downvotes are way less used in an abusive manner than upvotes lately however, it causes a big issue IMO because many get used to thinking they can earn big with minimal effort and then see you as an enemy when you try to balance things out.
Yep same as when Marky used to downvote splinterlands posts, who got the downvotes saw him as enemy, but he was just countering some whale upvote abuse with steemmonsters account
In such cases the responsibility of the token creator and the community builders is more, and they have to check the list of users on auto voting on regular basis. I always wonder how some one with just 2-3 pics of them in post earning 5 to 10 usd rewards.
I am on the chain fronmore then 6 years and posting regularly but honestly not get much visibility as expected (I do not know if I am going something wrong).
I am a new dolphin 🐬 in the ecosystem and despite of all still have good hope on Hive and will continue to publish posts with best of my efforts.
Hmm maybe delegate less stake away and use more for connecting with others through post and comment votes to increase your active user connections? Just something that came to mind after a quick glance at your account.
Thanks for the suggestions.
You are right in what you say. Everyone should have this awareness. We can express how much we like a post more clearly by commenting, not voting.
@tarazkp is one of my favorite writers. His writings are very informative. He adds great value to the Hive blockchain and provides interaction. He is like a teacher with high work ethic.
I personally think that hard work should be rewarded, because trust me to put in much time to generate a quanlity and at the end of the day , someone who didn't put as much as you earn more is somes feels discouraging but what else can we do , we keep posting quality post while hoping for a better reward
Personally, upvotes are cool but then the fun is in the comment section. That is where the feedback happens, that is where the correction and excitement takes place. I mean how do we learn if we don't get the honest opinions of others? Engaging is fun and you raised a valued point.
So where the problem lies?
Author or stakeholder?
I guess it lies on blind stakeholders devaluing themselves.
Yeah i do find the comments on my daily blog are rare and uncommon, but i do try and interact with as many comments on snaps and posts as much as possible, Commentrewarder helps but sometimes it not about the money value it sometimes feeling like people are reading your post and connecting with it
I write about 1 post a month and about 100 comments. I'm more involved in Hive than some who write 50 posts and don't reply to anyone in the comments :)
I totally agree with you.. Whatever I post, I try to think.. would I be telling a friend whatever I post and does it truly help them or entertain them. 💪😎👊
Loojing forward to see some similar healthy content from you in 2025 ... and more healthier outcomes of this post on hive. It is important for users to understand the reward system.
Compared to many ordinary people, hive still has some barriers to entry.
but I recently plan to write a robot to deploy hive, to play and test.
I am reading the community rules
There are no bad posts, only bad curators.
An easy way to cure over rewarded posts is to make it a personal policy not to vote posts with more than 10htu in rewards already on them.
How silly is it for a curator to add their .3htu to a post with 50htu already on it?
They could have given it to somebody that routinely gets less, but nope.
Following the herd is strong in the hive.
What is Htu? How does one see it?
Rewards on posts are not measured in hbd, they are measured in hive token units equivalent to the displayed amount in hbd.
The payout won't be measured into hbd/hp until payout and the amount shown in htu is not 100% accurate.
Thanks. Where do i see htu estimates? Ive never noticed those before. 🧐
It's at the bottom of every post, you used to think that was hbd, but now you know better.
Me gustan estos post aunque me cuesta un poco entender aún como es la mecánica del voto, pero e entendido la razón de porque a veces te esfuerzas y no recibes mucho valor y otras veces haces algo rápido y optienes mayor recompensa, en mi caso que trabajo más con música audiovisual, siempre trato de promocionar mi contenido de Hive en mis otras redes sociales, lo que si noto es que si en Hive público un vídeo puede alcanzar máximo hasta ahora entre 30 y 60 vista y el mismo video luego publicado en la web2 alcanza en una 450 y en otra 1300 pero es una forma de promocionar Hive con sus símbolos , pues considero que con todas las cosas hasta ahora es la mejor opción en las redes donde participo, solo siento que le falta aún mayor promoción, entiendo que Hive no es para todo el mundo , pues hay que aprender y trabajar de verdad
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@irisworld(1/5) tipped @acidyo
still a social permission based economy all these years later. . .. still going moon right folks? :)