"... you appreciate that opinion/ideological/unexplained downvoting causes psychological resistance ..."
I am quoting what I responded to for the "psychological effects" of being downvoted.
"Technically, when you see a big red "you've received a downvote" notification from an app you're using, that might end up in a negative psychological effect, which might cause the person to lose enthusiasm to continue doing whatever they're doing on the platform. Is it because free downvotes exist? I don't think so. Even before free downvotes, even though it could be less than now, people did use the downvote feature."
In the next post, your reply:
"[downvotes returning the reward to the pool] ...and this means that the downvoter will gain a boost on their own posts as a result of the downvoting."
and again, my reply:
"From my observation, a lot of people who downvote quite regularly are "curators", in other words, they focus on curation and/or other aspects of Hive as opposed to writing posts themselves. So I don't think they downvote specifically to increase their gains."
Regarding experimenting with free downvotes, my main point was the "data" -- I am not a statistician, I don't know how free downvotes affected and how their effect would be should the number be reduced. The data is interesting to see and I would love to have a simulation of it. This is again, my quote from my initial reply:
"Tests and data (potentially simulation) on how things would turn out if free downvotes were reduced to 1/day would definitely be useful. I don't know and can't really estimate if it will cause any substantial changes (both positive and negative) but it's nice to see nevertheless."
"In conclusion, I believe we can both agree that there are a lot of data that needs to be analysed ... However, our solution lies in the future. With a proper, preferably free (or minimal costs) L2."
Your paragraph starts with "In short, while he wasn't originally seeing downvoting as being a problem for free speech on Hive" this to me, looks like I completely changed my opinion on "downvoting being a problem for free speech on Hive." I do like to think that there is a difference between "supporting the reduction of free downvotes" and "looking forward to the data analysis." As I also wrote in my quote, I do not think it'll differ greatly, but with proper data that we can observe. Just like any other addition and removal in terms of features and settings on Hive, it can be put into community discussion for everyone to discuss.
Nevertheless, just as I pointed out in the aforementioned conversations, the end goal is always Layer 2. The solution for a lot of different problematic topics on Hive can easily be resolved with Layer 2 apps in the long run.
It took me a while to reply to you here as I wrote a long reply that got deleted by the UI, then many people contacted me and then I had to sleep ;)
I wrote in my original post here:
So I was highlighting that it sounded from your words that your desire to see data from such experiments was in part due to an interest in free speech issues. If you are saying, through later clarification due to my misunderstanding, that in fact you do not support the reduction of free downvotes - even if the data shows that this can be achieved without harming the ability of the network to fight spam and plagiarism - and you simply want to see the data for some other reason that won't influence your thinking on downvoting policy in future.. Then that's something I would appreciate if you would spell out, as - being as clear as I can be - the vote proxy here is for witnesses who are open to adjusting this policy on Hive, should data be produced that suggests it is a practical and valuable idea.
I notice that Azircon dropped his vote for you, presumably simply because I voted for you and because I am interested in a data driven decision to reduce the amount of free downvotes. I will leave it to observers to determine exactly what this means about Azircon's intentions for Hive.
I would also like to reiterate after reading @tarazkp's comments that, I initially mentioned that if the issue is viewership (i.e. downvoting causes people to be muted and/or make it harder to reach trending/hot) a potential solution is building a frontend that ignores all downvotes. This way, no downvote would affect a post and therefore, viewership issues would be resolved.
If the problem, however, is rewards... Hive rewards are never promised. Just as how someone may support a post on Hive, other people may dislike it. Henceforth the notion of upvoting and downvoting. If either side disagrees with the other, the solution is again, very simple. Buy Hive, stake it. Get more Hive Power, counter it. Some people call this "talking with your stake" and I find that quite intriguing.
This is for Layer 1, when HAF rolls around and Layer 2 apps start to increase their paces in terms of development (not to mention additional foundation HAF is going to provide) these aforementioned solutions will no longer be necessary since, in the end, I believe that the "social posting/blogging" aspect of Layer 1 will shift to Layer 2.
These are also included in my previous comments.
I agree that layer 2 offers a way to handle this situation and once layer 2 becomes more established, layer 1 may look drastically different, with the reward pool much reduced as people leave it to move money into layer 2 communities.
For me, the issue is both content reach/discovery and also rewards. POB is specifically designed and sold to join together post reach with rewards. Content creators in Web 2 (let alone web 3) are used to being able to monetise content in order to power their content creation efforts and this is part of why the reward pool is largely directed to content creators, by design. I shouldn't need to point this out, but it seems that some people like to warp the situation to suggest that anyone who suggests creator rewards are important is some kind of scrounging excrement. Youtube is what it is, in terms of size, in no small part due to it's focus on paying content creators and Steem was designed to capitalise on this idea too.
In order for POB to function, it requires that content creators are both visible and rewarded - based on community sentiment. In the early days of Steem it was agreed that whales would not drop heavy upvotes (or downvotes) that much (or ever) in order to give POB a chance to reflect genuine community consensus, but that has fallen away now - so that those involved have decided that pure stake is more useful to Hive as an indicator of community sentiment than is the actual voting patterns of large numbers of people. This has caused the age old dynamic of money vs. people to surface here and people are polarised as to which is the 'right' approach. Typically, those with the most money choose 'money' and everyone else chooses 'people'.
Despite how it may look to those who don't know me personally, I am actually in the camp of 'doing what is best to grow Hive' rather than 'doing what is going to get me the most short term rewards'. As someone who is specialised in both systems engineering and business/marketing, plus specifically in social networks, I am very aware that public perception is fundamental to the success of any social network and that actually people are more interested in social dynamics than they are money earning potential, overall - when it comes to adoption of social networks. However, since Hive absolutely merges these two things, the money aspect here automatically knocks into the social dynamics, meaning that the way that money influences the social dynamics on Hive is a fundamental factor in it's growth potential.
All of this is leading to the relatively simple point that we can't successfully disconnect post discovery/reach from the rewards and economics of the system. Not only are they totally connected at the blockchain level, but people are tired of being exploited on Web 2.0 and they are not generally going to accept being told to use Hive UIs that simply ignore downvotes in order to accomodate whales who profit heavily from their content generation behind the scenes, but who are actually downvoting them constantly for their own reasons. People do regularly scoff at this idea and mock the idea of participating in such a system.
I am just doing what I can to advocate for system design and community cohesion that makes the best use of the reward pool from a growth and marketing perspective. Having been on the receiving end of heavy ideological downvoting now for months, I can appreciate what so many people here have been telling me for years in private - that the downvoting can be a huge problem when used in ways that are not optimal for growth (a polite way of saying it). I see reducing the amount of free downvotes as being a simple, low cost way to explore solutions to this (a quick fix) that may actually work. This has never been adjusted in all the time it has been active and I think it is high time.
I have mentioned this for the last 4 years I have been around this particular conversation of downvotes and censorship, including visibility - none have done it.
Upvotes aren't very good at gaining visibility anyway - unless upvoted into Trending (that most don't read). What is good for visibility is having accounts that have built trust and followership themselves, share the posts with others, on and off the platform. Also, creating the type of content that people want to engage with often and keep coming back to day after day to see what else is interesting.
Precisely. It is in negotiation for 7 days and it is not "owned" until the blockchain automatically pays it out into a wallet address, at which point it is "owned" and a person can do as they like with it.
This has been done on Hive via Vybranium.
As I said when I heard the other week. Finally! Then the complaints about second-layer tokens not having value started.
As I have said many, many times - Not earning Hive as reward has nothing to do with censorship. All the information is there - you just have to build for it, rather than expect others to do it for you.
I have explained many times, but you may not have read my words. The dictionary definition of 'censor' as a verb includes:
source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censor
The definition of Suppress includes:
source: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suppress
The purpose of downvotes in the context of the reward pool is to inhibit the growth of the post (and the account that made the post) - ergo, downvoting is suppression, by design.
If you object to content based on it's message rather than because it violates legal rules on copyright or other such reasons, and you downvote it, then according to dictionary definitions in English, you are participating in censorship. Many people don't pay attention to the etymology of language and so often don't appreciate the full meaning of the words they are using. This often results in pointless arguments that last years because people don't realise they are talking about different things.
When downvoting happens for ideological reasons, the growth of the account involved is limited in terms of reach and economic ability to grow in terms of content creation and production quality. Hive currently allows people to downvote to make that happen and I am just pointing out that according to the meaning of the word 'censorship', this activity is censorship. I am also pointing out that from a PR and marketing perspective, this activity hurts Hive .
People generally want valuable content generation, which includes intelligent debate and engagement when people disagree on important topics. The irony of certain individuals downvoting without comment or engagement and then even having the audacity to say they are downvoting due to a lack of engagement from other people is not lost on large numbers of observers who may not comment publicly for their own reasons.
Very well stated.
thanks!
It doesn't suppress what is said, it suppresses the HIVE allocated to it. Two different things.
Just like eating and drinking, those seemingly separate events are inextricably linked in the human person experiencing them, and not reckoning this - or intentionally using it to drive creators odious to whales from the platform - has strongly affected the growth of Hive and the value of it's token.
None could know better than you that creating content has a cost, and null or negative rewards for undertaking that investment will inevitably discourage creators from doing so.
IME, only my disregard for my financial circumstances due to my focus on investment in goodwill has prevented me from devoting my efforts to obsessively speaking on the issues that induce me to sperg out the opinions I cannot suppress elsewhere. I note I am nearly unique in that regard, and have watched dozens of folks more realistically responsive to incentives fly this coop.
I remain absolutely confident that Hive's ability to prevent plagiarism, scams, and spam can be maintained without enabling the incalculable harm that comes to our community from the historical and continuing censorship of creators of content odious to well staked individuals and the Hive oligarchy.
The suppression is of post reach/discovery - and thus suppression of the message - and also of the hive allocated, which thus then suppresses the economic growth of the channel/creator involved.