This morning I woke up and seen that my mother had posted a new post on Hive. I had convinced her to starting using Steem regularly a year or so ago and just recently helped her make the transition to using Hive instead. She still doesn't understand what either one is, or why it's so important, but she loves me so she at least tries to be on it. She shares her message daily in hopes of me looking at it. It's extremely sweet and I appreciate hearing her simple messages when I log on.
My mother is very open about her faith and hopes to share it with anyone who is willing to engage with her. I admire this about her. When she asked me what she could post on Steem I told her that's what she should be doing there like she already was doing on Facebook. Her use of Facebook was sharing bible versus with her church friends and she followed through and started posting daily the main verse from her bible study from the day. She's been doing that now for a little over a year.
About a week ago I had a Duo call with her while I was using Peakd. It hit me that I realized she was still using Steem so I walked her through exporting her keychain identity over then changing her bookmarks from steempeak.com to peakd.com. I can't believe it but she was able to do it all herself with me just coaching over the phone. That's when she finally made her appearance on Hive the following morning sharing Jude 1:21 with the world. I quickly jumped over to congratulate her on making the move to Hive.
She doesn't understand what Hive is or what Steem is. Like I said she doesn't understand blockchains or why this can change everything. She's the epitome of the mainstream users that we are all fighting hard to reach and bring here. That's why when I logged in to read her verse this morning and seen that @hivewatcher has added her to @spaminator's blacklist I was taken aback. That doesn't even touch the personal offense I feel since it's that of someone sharing their faith on the blockchain much less being my own mother. Let's hold off that for just a moment though.
Instead let's start by discussing the growth of Hive. I'd like for you to put yourself in the shoes of a new user who knows nothing of computers much less distributed social blockchains. You start using a new platform sharing what you find is interesting because you have a personal connection with someone that does regularly use the blockchain and is engaged. You come back to find that you are "banned". Are you coming back to use the platform again? Unfortunately I doubt many users do return.
With that in mind can someone please tell me why we have projects like spaminator on this blockchain? What good do they actually provide? All I see is them attempting to keep people from using the project more by attempting to "ban" a user that they have no ability to do. Is that what we need to be doing to get normal users on our blockchain as they won't know that their ban isn't real?
I've always thought these spam services were here to stop awards abuse. In the last week my mother has made 6 posts and had an anticipated total payout of .28 because of built up SBI votes and that I upvoted one of her posts one day. Not hardly a huge rewards thief compared to single posts that are empty bodies with only a question in the title receiving $40. If these are the users that get targeted then I have to wonder what their leaders consider rewards abuse.
Let's go with their stated reason of copy and pasting content. Ok I can see where their feeble logic arises that copy/pasting is a big, bad, boogie man. After all we don't want people just posting plagiarized articles from The Times in hopes of getting rewards but then I have to ask, "Is there any issue of copying works that have no copyright that can be attached to them?" I don't believe there is and then have to wonder what else it could be an issue of.
Then there's the fact that on some posts she didn't just share what she was studying but also gave personal insights about the meaning of the verse to her. This would be akin to quoting an article and then giving your personal perspective. This is something we all encourage and which is over half the content on Hive. It's the whole point of having a conversation about something! These are still quoted as simply being "spam".
Maybe the real issue is in the title of her post. Maybe it's offensive to whatever keyboard warrior behind @hivewatcher that someone is sharing biblical quotes on Hive. I'm not saying that is it but as I breakdown reasons for why someone would blacklist a user sharing bible verses I have to begin to question that as a motive. Either way going after religious text is really the best use of time for spam fighting? (What is spam when we have RC that limit spam in real life?)
Either way I'll take this back to the front. We have a new user that just switched to using Hive, sharing their religious texts they believe in and are studying and someone thinks it's a good idea to blacklist them. I'm disgusted.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://patrickulrich.com/2020/05/14/im-disgusted/
I've suggested in Discord that @peakd allow each user to define their own blacklists they wish to subscribe to. If this is implemented then I will be more than happy to disable @spaminator while maintaining other spam fighters who aren't idiots.
I agree with you each list should be separately treated with each user able to turn on or off the list... with lists that deal with fraud opt out and lists that are for things like spam opt in because it really doesn't impact users.
I think that would make perfect sense! As a user I see value in these lists because it helps you know when you might want to second guess your votes. When the flag is used on things I obviously disagree with it makes it harder to trust all of the rest of the good guy's judgments since their mistakes taint the authenticity of the badge for those not using it on an old lady's religious beliefs.
I've reached out to @hivewatcher's Discord channel for an explanation on this "banning" event and what their opinion is for what content can appear on the Hive blockchain. I will report back as I hear more from them.
This is exactly how I expected this conversation to go.
Progressing well...
My response took nearly a whole screenshot so I'm sharing it to continue the documentation of my dispute.
A new bit of commentary.
This is why I'm so sprung for Hive. Layer 0 is strong!
The first two paragraph I read talking about how your mother join the blockchain having your interest in me moved me to be frank. I was like that she is what a good mother will for her children.
I'm not happy seeing your mother getting blocked or blacklist from the blockchain but I'm sure they will send her couple messages like a kind of warning before they blocked her. But I will like to tell you that you can contact and reach out to those bot that blocked her on discord.
The reason why we have those bot is to prevent copy/paste and plagiarism. I know your mom don't have that in mind nor understand. Maybe you can put her through more. I'm just saying. I hope everything is resolved soon. I will reblogged.
My mother and I have had plenty of fights throughout the years but there's one thing I can say without any doubt at all is that she loves me unconditionally. She's taught me what a good mother should be towards her children and I'm forever thankful for her being my mother.
They did send messages on each post starting yesterday and the one posted today was the block message. The part is that she'll never reach out to them and I'm pretty sure only the user of the account can reach out to them as I've seen others ignored for reaching out for friends/family. The thing is they don't really have any effect other than just looking bad and attempting to upset the user.
As for the reason for the projects I can understand the desire to dissuade users from those behaviors but at what cost? If we are telling users they are banned for sharing their interests then how do we expect anyone to stick around to make Hive the predominant social protocol of Web3?
We fight and make peace with our love one's that is the principle of love.
I understand your concern and aggregation. Many are not used to the system and how things work here but we just have to orientate them whenever we onboard new user.
If you could have access to your mom account that will be a good idea so you can contact the bot directly I'm sure there are human like us so they should reason along with you.
I hope that help!
It's funny cause the unfair downvoting bots followed me to hive. I was added to spambot by another bot and they no longer are on steem. But yeah that is when I sold a 1/3 of my steem initially. Some asshole with a God complex can ruin your blockchain social and there is nothing you can do about. It really is a problem. But the users are cool. Why I ended up stopping my power down and still being a curator.
I'm on that fake list to it definitely needs to go
Hivewatcher definitely needs to go I think we need a whole new system this one don't work no one will ever stay here well some will and it will just end up a bunch of friends using this site in the end if things don't change
I definitely don't disagree on Hivewatchers now. I like the system of trusting accounts for flags but I just think it needs to be democratized more where I can select which user's flags mean something to me. If I start seeing flags on people I trust from the same source then I know I can just remove them from my sources as I obviously disagree on their qualifications.
I think we do need something like this but I think it needs someone new to step in because it's out of hand I mean I made a honest mistake and I've been blacklisted for life what a joke please check out my posts no spam plagiarism id theft
Maybe it would be a better idea to let each account have their own personal "blacklist" that allows the individual user to decide.
Have the individual blacklist hide all the blacklisted account's content just for that account like it can hide a NSFW post, then use the bot to compile how many other users have them blacklisted.
The more decentralized this place is, the better. Why not decentralize the blacklists?
We have that ability now by muting authors we find content disagreeable. The reason I still support blacklists is so you can get an idea if the person may be a plagiarist based on the reputation of the blacklist. If I'm reading through new and read the most amazing article about Bitcoin then I want to reward it. If I see that author has been known to plagiarize it takes effort away from checking each post I view here before rewarding to only check those with flags. My problem is that I am forced to now see someone's dimwitted opinion of my mother shown on each condenser supporting their blacklist. I wish condensers would allow you to filter idiots like @spaminator from being used.
I understand. I'd be a little mad too. Have you got up with them on Discord?
Yeah I'm documenting it for everyone to see their response in this thread.
https://peakd.com/steempress/@patrickulrich/re-patrickulrich-qac3k0
I was saddened when I noticed these groups had moved over to Hive. They don't even know what spam is.
This is a very great post! Thank you for sharing this man!
Righteous if I do say so myself. I'm going to show it to me own mum now...
too cool!