I received an "offer" recently for someone to assist me with my blog here on Hive.
The comment started off with congratulating me on "craking the game" because my posts do well in terms of attention and rewards, so I figured I'd start there.
There's not a lot of "game cracking" going on here. From the very beginning when I landed on this chain I told myself I'm going to do things genuinely and put a lot of respect to my presence here. This meant, no asking people for follows in exchange for following them back. This is something we still see everywhere on other platforms, people thinking these "free" follows will lead to something greater just because their follow count increases. Eventually most of these are going to unfollow you either way so one of you ends up being the pawn while the other benefits from your action, even if that benefit is close to pointless.
There are other variations of this, such as asking people to reblog/share your post and making certain actions a requirement for a prize to be distributed. You may have seen this when people do certain things like "to participate in this contest/giveaway you have to upvote, reblog, and follow my/this account". This is another number inflator but in terms of receiving genuine valuable engagement it does close to nothing - it may generate human bots instead as we see in many giveaways where the activity is real, its real people commenting but the results are comments like "count me in" or "me", etc. There's some giveaway farm accounts still doing this in this day, they receive quite a large amount of participation but for consumers this content is worthless and most of the time the only reason they give anything away is to farm post rewards - not actually try and promote something or make hive more valuable. It's a "farm rewards for the least amount of effort by giving a little away that you make back from the rest of shareholders through post rewards".
Don't wanna get into the giveaway spam too much for now so let's move on.
There's been a lot of accounts that have attempted to use "cheap tricks" to inflate their influence numbers, one of the top accounts in terms of reputation who excessively purchased votes during the "bid bot" era: https://peakd.com/@chbartist for example, if they came back today they would really not do well in terms of rewards and engagement. Meaning their follower numbers they received due to easy/cheap or "blind" follows just cause they were trending for a long time from bid bot usage would be close to pointless today because they can't buy their way to that trending attention they had back then by purchasing votes and still earning a profit from them. A lot of their followers may not be around anymore and many who engaged with it at the time probably only did it because they saw the posts trending.
Furthermore such accounts usually lack one thing - personality. Their content often revolves around general things, more like they're out there looking for something to post about rather than posting about things they run into or are happening to them. This kind of removes an important layer from blogging in my opinion which having an assistant would squander even harder.
I'm sure there's some prominent members in our community today who don't personally deal with writing their posts but have someone else do it for a portion of the rewards, etc. Maybe they do reply to comments themselves and/or curate them but once that doors been opened it is hard to know what/who exactly you are engaging with. The reason I say what is because in this day and age we may very well see AI tools assist with that activity as well, further removing personality and "randomness" from the engagement. In terms of randomness I mean two people interacting and random misunderstandings or moods or you know, life events causing the conversation to be organic, unique, and genuine for potential readers.
As I'm writing this out I'm realizing there's so much that could be talked about all this while I was hoping this'd be a short post.
There's a lot to say about intention as well, if the sole reason you're posting is the rewards rather than attempting to grow a genuine following that'll be there with you for the long run and with some of them you build connections that go both ways in consumption, you're more likely to present a quality blog to readers and they're more likely to consume your content AND your engagement compared to those with the intention to mainly extract value. They're more likely to get cut off at some point from the rewards they may be taking for granted and not attempting to "make up" for being on that list at that point in time.
There was an author that came into my radar the other day, someone I've seen often being on @dalz's top 10 monthly authors and what I noticed about their social activity kind of shocked me. They hadn't posted a single comment in over a month, the engagement their posts received was close to 0 as well all the while they were posting twice per day content from youtube with a template and some text. How does one go so long without socializing on the blockchain all the while earning 99% of their income from here compared to their other socials - which I also checked and aside from the mention that they're "a blogger on Hive" on X, none of the others had any links to their hive account to attempt to bring traffic over here. It's quite baffling to me that we still have curators/autovoters blatantly rewarding such content to the tune of a thousand of Hive per week pretty much creating a problem for those who'd want to adjust the rewards but not want to deal with the drama of downvotes and how it affects both parties.
Maybe this user needs an assistant, or just you know, not get too used to the rewards to the point where they just take them for granted thinking their content alone being shared here is worth it. Content alone is quite valueless. Imagine the millions of content that are created daily and shared on web2 but the creators don't have an audience so they never even see a $ in rewards for them, but they continue to invest time, resources and dedication to one day maybe get there. While here you can instantly earn rewards and stakeholders are encouraged by a growing ecosystem to want to reward new users joining and allow them to get some attention through votes, reblogs, etc. It kind of annoys me that some people "when they make it" or "crack the game" as someone put it, they decide to go back on their attempts at making their blog valuable because they're okay with the amount of rewards it is receiving and expect that to go on forever. They've pretty much chosen to "retire" so to speak but lack the stake to make it through curation and instead gamble on their post rewards to carry on doing the work for them.
I don't know, I guess at some point people have to start to realize that their Hive journey is more than just a short term bubble, reputation isn't just that number next to your username but also affects how people perceive you. My perception of this author mentioned above changed drastically now, I'm not going to name names cause I don't want drama to ensue but it was quite difficult not to downvote such content to lower the rewards because I honestly don't want to delve into that kind of activity at the moment when I have a lot to do. If you don't have the time to stick around and maintain some value on your presence, maybe just don't post that day/week? If you have to post because the rewards are so important to you at this point in time, maybe make sure they're worth it?
Okay this post kind of sidetracked quite a bit and ended up being about something else, but yeah, there's still plenty of people who are on here who do value consumption of their content and in some cases even more than the rewards it generates. I wish voters would put a little more effort into changing the way they case their votes and take more things from the author into consideration before doing so and that authors wouldn't become so lazy/spoiled that they'd pretty much force others into uncomfortable situations where they'd have to use downvotes even if they didn't want to.
The questions to ask I guess is, if this was a new user would I vote their post?
Would I post this even if it didn't earn any rewards or engagement?
You touched on a good point.
I am talking about the Hive blockchain.
I think the source of all these problems is automatic voting. There are curators who have not done manual voting for years. There are posts that have won tens of dollars in rewards with a single image that has automatic voting.
Without automatic voting, organic interaction on the Hive blockchain would increase more. Therefore, quality would increase.
I think automatic voting should be prevented somehow, but how?
It can't be prevented, maybe by placing fees on the votes but that would go against hive since it is feeless.
Only way to combat it is by downvoting which affects authors as well.
I'm sure I don't fit the typical Hive user profile in the sense that I came here having already invested 18 years in blogging on various venues (since 1998-ish) and "Hive 1.0" basically represented a sort of return to the kind of "social blogging" that existed — and thrived — prior to MySpace and Facebook.
People sometimes think of blogging as being "very niche" but it's much broader when you add in the social component... my personal favorite blog site was Xanga (1993-2013), which had about 30 million users at its peak. Just imagine Hive with 30 million users...
The original appeal here was actually the so-called "immutability of the blockchain," meaning that I saw it as a place where I might not suddenly wake up one morning and all my content would be GONE or hidden behind some financial hostage paywall.
Do I care about the rewards? I care about the idea that as I continue to create content, I am slowly building something akin to an "ownership stake" in the platform that I am using. I wish I had more time to spend here, but I enjoy the content and engagement, to the extent that I get it... and would likely still be contributing even if Hive were $0.01 per token (god forbid!).
The drawback to a lack of time is that what little time I do have tends to be concentrated around my follow feed... there was a time when I would spend an hour or two regularly, just "lurking" the new posts feed, looking for something interesting from new users or new-to-me users.
There are several ways to help a new user, and voting is certainly an important one at the beginning of the journey. Obviously, over time you will see how this user performs in the community, what he adds, not only in terms of posts, but mainly in terms of networking, and then you will find a percentage that you think is fair based on the average of what he always produces. There will be bad posts with a good reward and good posts with a not-so-good reward.
I believe that the most important thing for a new user - after the initial vote era - is to keep him motivated. In a scenario of an upswing like the one we will face in a while, it will be easy, but it is interesting to see how users who have only faced the downswing behave, as is the case of some users who are currently coming to mind names like @michupa, @shiftrox, who joined in 2021 and will now start to surf the profits of their 3 or 4 years of consistency.
Thanks for the mention, Edu!
The work really never stopped. I joined Hive when it was worth $1 and even with the successive drops, I didn't stop. I remember seeing a lot of people disappear and stop posting, but I stayed strong, along with several other members who kept believing even in the face of adversity, because we love the hive, the people we meet, the search for financial freedom, learning or simply because everything is fun here. Anyway, I'm very grateful to you and my friends who teach me so much! Thanks a lot! 😍
@topcomment
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
You can support the Topcomment initiative by delegating HP
| 50 HP | 100 HP | 250 HP | 500 HP | 1000 HP | 1500 HP | 2000 HP |
As always your posts contain interesting points of reflection
I don't consider myself a good blogger and on Hive I enjoy posting what I like and that is why I post content about the games I like to play and the rewards are important but I consider more important to write what I like to write because that way I always get a reward: I enjoyed writing.
I used to write when I made less than $1 per post and I continue today that my posts are more rewarded.
For the content I vote for I mix automatic votes and manual votes but the automatic votes I check every 15-20 days and if I see accounts writing or doing something I don't like I change the vote.
For example recently I removed my automatic vote from a user who did the almost complete power down of his HPs
I personally don't consider only the content because in my opinion the propensity for staking is also important. If an account posts nice content but interacts very little or makes continuous power downs I hardly vote for it and that is why I prefer to vote medium-low quality posts of a hiver who has HP related growth goals than a high quality post of an account who has been on Hive since 2017, received many rewards but has HP close to 0.
If some whales who vote automatically would consider staking propensity and interaction important for their automatic voting, it would definitely be a step forward in my opinion....
Excellent, that's the way it should be
Your comment is upvoted by @topcomment
You can support the Topcomment initiative by delegating HP
| 50 HP | 100 HP | 250 HP | 500 HP | 1000 HP | 1500 HP | 2000 HP |
People offering social media assistants service on a web3 platform like Hive is interesting, especially considering that these services are more common in web2 platforms. This raises the question: Do users think Hive as operating at the same level as mainstream social applications?
While one might assume so, I believe our platform is still unique compared to web2 social media apps. This uniqueness is because we don’t have manipulative algorithms that can be gamed. Instead, the platform's dynamics are because it’s driven by the behaviors of creators and curators.
From my observations, the most effective approach is to focus on creating content that:
On Hive, there are many Communities that has substantial voting power to reward content with decent $$ that matches their interests. For content creators, it's important to explore and understand these Communities, identifying those that appeals with their content style.
Another critical factor for success is maintaining consistent, authentic interaction within the community. As many successful Hive users emphasize, "Engagement is King". A principle I also believe in. While seeing good results may require months or even years of dedicated participation, the long-term rewards make it worthwhile.
The platform rewards genuine connection, creativity, and persistent community involvement, setting it apart from traditional social media ecosystems. I don’t think that it’s easy to game if it’s “gameable” at all.
I listened to the whole content of your post but I’m just sharing my thoughts about the points that you mentioned in the earlier part of your post. I haven’t fully digested the later part✌🏽
I prefer voting comparatively new authors more than 50% of my votes nowadays. For new users the platform is becoming so hard unless the new user has some good connectivity. And engagement can help a new user a lot that I can feel now as I was like a silent user for the so long. Still it is difficult to be more engaging with tight schedule. At least I am giving my fb time to Hive now that making me able to post each day and I want to keep the consistency.
There are dozens of users who gets a lot of votes without much effort to their posts, just like daily reward mining tool which should be minimized with expanding the curators team who support themaelves in some cases! And many are in position with ultiple curating trail that making the scope limited to diversify the curation. Also, authors with higher HP get more votes as usual for their support to the Blockchain. In a word the whole system is very comolex. Only devoted down voting trails can make the ecosystem better what I feel. At least it will trigger the autovoters and reckless curators around the sphere and more curators can be appointed to handle the iasue to make Hive more effective and genuine.
It's a bit frustrating sometimes when you write a lengthy post in a community and don't get much votes. Then you write a short post in snaps or threads and it gets upvoted more.
You can't expect every post to get upvotes unless you get on some autovoter trails, then they become more guaranteed unless the service goes down or the voters decide to pull you off from their list.
For myself for instance I've noticed that some of those voters only vote 50% compared to 100% on my 2nd post of the day. It'd be way more rewarding for me if I posted daily or for instance put this one on a schedule and let it post tomorrow instead of having days where I go 10 days with no post at all.
If however you aren't on any autovotes yet than it's quite normal not to get any votes on some posts, it shouldn't discourage you. You should look into how much rewards you earn on average after a certain period rather than looking into each post individually.
Auto-voting is evil; by its nature, it can only cause harm by introducing even more imbalance that already exists.
Also if you've received manual votes, think of it this way, some curators are out there looking for posts like yours to upvote all the while getting no extra rewards or returns compared to if they had just set up an autovoter. Another thing to think about is how many posts do you stumble on yourself daily where if you had the voting strength you'd make sure they'd get better rewards compared to just tending to your own posts/comments/snaps.
You mentioned some imbalance in the rewards for authors. I wrote about it today, and honestly, the numbers in percentage terms are shocking.
I get some auto votes (based on how quickly they vote) but most of those accounts leave the occasional comment, suggesting that they check on me periodically.
Those who depend on auto votes may discover the hard way that if the price of HIVE does something like a 10x, many of those voters may start taking a closer look at how their votes are being allocated.
I enjoyed your rant LOL, to me the hive is about meeting and engaging with like minded people with similar interests, etc. I tend to get a lot of autovotes like $0.002, pretty pointless, but with very few comments good bad or indifferent. I guess I regularly comment and chat with maybe no more than 10 or so real like minded bloggers on here.
It would be good to see autovotes removed, that would either force people to engage, or what? bring hive crashing down?
Guess creating content is "hard work". Imagine having to push buttons 9 to 5. Already generating a sweat thinking about it. Might have to call it a day and skip a video streaming. Those oil rig workers don't know how hard it is to be creative and stream a video or write 1k words blog with some pictures for attention due to the general low attention span people have. Imagine having to read it all. Equivalent to workouts until failure.
Sincerely the sarcastic asshole.
I think posting on hive is one of the things where you've gotta be here for the community. I take breaks now and then because I get burnt out. But when I started here I was giving advice to spend just as much time commenting and reading other posts as I do with writing.
I've made money on here, I aint going to lie but the thing I love the most is the community and hearing their takes, what they disagree with, etc. I find that people who are only here for $ are pretty easy to spot!
Good post, Acid!
And most hivers still do that especially farming for upvote to win a poll I find that unpleasant, if everything is to be done genuinely, people who deserve such wins wont be discourage. The point about hive is genuine post that caught your interest at that particular time, most folks in here are just doing it wrong
from what I remember I will ago I tried to hire @tarazkp to be my ghostwriter. It seems that he was not interested either.😛
This is true. I make art but I lack the skill of selling art so my pieces are worth less.
Here on Hive part of the value comes from what you create and probably bigger from your interactions. Now I am interacting more than before so my rewards have increased. But I still can do better.
I think anyone that's from here that even applies and thinks of an assistant poster missed or doesn't understand the full idea of what Hive is about.
How is it originality if it's not you who are writing the posts and/or comments?
The best content always is made by people who would also do it for no rewards.
for me a blog is supposed to be about what you enjoy/your hobbies/do, your life if it was something else like promoting products, etc. and just trying to earn money it wouldn't really be a blog in my opinion so having someone else manage your blog where you post about the things you enjoy and do is just stupid.
You brought up a lot of good points and yeah I am guilty of some of them also like auto voting which I have removed and only do manual now and I do have bought HBI tokens before but oh well... also I have always been bad at engaging on other people's post but I do try at least and trying to get better :P
I really think hustle culture has gotten out of hand. I can respect it on some level. Especially knowing that some folks across the world probably don't have it as well as I do and Hive is their chance to actually have a life. Still though, the balls on some of these people if you know what I mean... I'm one of the first to admit, that I came to Hive thinking it would be an easy way to make money. Post some photos of my dog and make a thousand bucks. I quickly realized that commenting was going to get me ahead and I have made that a priority as my stats will show.
One good thing about reading your posts is the insightful comments I get to read, it sort of feels like we are all having a town hall meeting where everyone is contributing and I like to read these comments so much as they are super helpful!
I don't have the biggest stake in Hive power, so my upvote is not too big (And I have my HP delegated out most of the time).
But as a casual user who also posts on Hive blockchain, I'm stuck in a content loop of only people who I follow, I so rarely go to the "Explore" button, I mostly only consume from my "Feed", so the only way I find new content creators is through reblogs, or if someone on discord servers share.
From a content creator side, I don't create the most engaging content, but getting comments on my posts is the most pleasure I get, followed by upvotes and reblogs. This has made me love the Commentrewarder project which helps me incentivize people to comment more often on my blogs, due to it giving a financial incentive.
You made me look... I think I upvoted that account in the past (seemed/s genuine with full name, branding and everything), but haven't done it in a long time (not manually at least, but I follow a few curation trails when my mana goes too high). I agree, engagement is something different on Hive compared to other social media platforms where numbers matter more, and probably some people treat them the same way, especially if they have a significant following on multiple platforms.
Congratulations @acidyo! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain And have been rewarded with New badge(s)
Your next target is to reach 94000 replies.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out our last posts:
The interaction between Hive users is always important to know that we are real people to understand
!PIZZA
Hive.Pizza upvoted this post.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@danzocal(2/10) tipped @acidyo
Learn more at https://hive.pizza.
I do manual upvotes only for this reason. I also check accounts's activities and wallets. I'm not a role model by any means, but I do like to support accounts that focus on providing value as opposed to those who search for ways of cracking the game or whatever. Some might find formulas for vote/follower farming, but they'll only work for so long. Less HIVE gets created every 250,000 blocks and one day, the only ways of getting it will be to run nodes or provide a service that someone is willing to pay you in HIVE or HBD for.
The Hive faucet won't last forever
I thought no one noticed. I know her and in her early days she did a lot of networking, but she “crack the game” and doesn't care anymore.
Others who "crack the game" are the ones who do curation reports every day. Earning rewards with other people's content. But this is so normalized that I don't understand either. Some are even in the TOP of rewards.
Hi, I post about what I like, crafts, drawings, games and things that I've learned and that catch my attention. I didn't think much about rewards before, but if you vote for me it would be good, hahaha so I can have more alpha vials, if I'm going to be a player in holozing I think it would be good to collect more. I love Hive ahh and I've bought makeup and products for my hair. The rewards are great, but I'm more excited to play and if I can generate something, great, if not I'm still passionate about playing. I love your project a lot because I feel like I'm part of it.
And I like to make my own comments and write my own posts, it's part of me, another person is not the same, although many have a manager because they are very busy people. and you need a lot of help, so maybe it would be understandable.
Lot of famous people use social media managers on web2 who do all job for them, make posts, replies and so on... No surprise here on hive someone would ask you to do the same for you (and does for others)
Upvotes and downvotes are a mine field, downvotes have been cast on lot of splinterlands posts to counter the 24h window vote abuse by some whale, in that case it's understandable the reason the guy cast it, but it's crap to receive it because you are not doing the abuse... Upvotes often you see worthless posts taking easy 10$ just because there are big autovotes set on that person, then you see quality posts taking little