You have a very warped view of what is happening here, from my position - at least your views are not reflective of what I see at all. Firstly, 'my group' is not 'my group', it is just people who share a common interest. If you see a football fan being violent it would be wrong to then point to children in the crowd and say 'look, this group are violent' as if everyone who you can fit together into a category are the same or even vaguely similar. Seeking the truth in society is not a 'niche', it is simply what enquiring minds do. Enquiring minds do not always agree.
I had no intention to turn you into a villain, I am simply applying your own logic to yourself - something that is extremely valuable in self analysis and creative thinking.
I agree that large communities need to be structured so as to optimise content discovery and to maximise the value of people's time when they interact in them. Layer 2 communities are likely going to be the solution to most of these problems, as I have said many times. What you seemed to be suggesting was to keep trending all posts, except the specific categories that you personally think shouldn't be there. That is the opposite of empowering people through categorisation and intelligent content discovery.
I have never heard the term 'internal content' before, so I am not 100% sure what you mean by it, but the way you said it originally made it sounds like you were referring to information that you personally perceive to be not of interest to 'everyone' - but I would argue that that definition applies to pretty much all information except 'there's a giant meteor that's about to destroy the planet' level of information.
This content isn't 'challenging' so please stop acting like a hero and champion of the people.
The only reason I have ever been given for the downvoting is 'You don't know anything about science' from Pharesim, which considering no downvoter has ever even attempted to challenge the science I have shared publicly, leads me to conclude that the content is a challenge to some people's personal beliefs (aka challenging).
A few folks on your list of 'freedom fighters' have been loud and in support of completely dismantling the entire reward pool, taking it all away, from everyone.
I have only ever heard anyone advocating for moving rewards from layer 1 to layer 2, which makes a lot of sense. It is likely to happen organically over time anyway.
At least one was also big into selling votes for the longest time, and all that did was drive thousands of good, organic talent away, forever, in order to replace it all with one of the biggest disasters I've even seen in the history of content distribution online.
I have no idea who you are talking about here. I was on a crusade to stop bid bots for years. The main vote sellers I know of are today top 20 witnesses and I don't engage with them.
Actually, you misinterpreted my logic. And now it seems like you want to 'win' a conversation. I don't see how this is helping. Thanks for the downvote. I suppose I should freak out now?
The content isn't 'challenging' because one of the most common events on this platform is people speaking out against it or other members here. It's the small town mentality with neighbors gawking over the fence and gossiping at the gas station. Platform politics in general has always been one of the easiest ways to get attention around here. The most common post on chain is people talking about the platform in some way. To the outside, that has always made this platform appear to be your standard echo chamber and the content only appeals to this small group within. The localized internal platform gossip earning top dollar is a direct slap in the face to all those talented enough to create amazing content while earning very little and going unnoticed, then eventually leaving. The internal content for the most part does nothing to boost morale. It's not challenging. It's lazy, especially when it's all talk and no action, which is the most common result.
Plus yourself and a few others want to dismantle the reward pool, tuck everyone off in some barren wasteland to work for unproven second layer options, effectively deplatforming the glaring majority of talent and offering them no clear future.
As for the former vote sellers you're in support of, let me just say I'm glad that's all in the past and people changed their ways, for the better.
I don't think anyone would say that a single word 'boring' is worth more than many accounts receive in a month. I have never said I am against downvotes for spam or even for rewards disagreements completely. I am against massive downvoting and downvoting for ideological reasons that amount to suppression of information.
I think the specificity of the topic has gotten lost. I was referring to the content that gets downvoted as being challenging (e.g. COVID/politics content). I was not saying that discussing downvoting in posts is challenging in itself.
I don't think witnesses discussing publicly the mechanics of the platform is 'small town gossip', personally. It's a necessary part of the active engagement of a decentralised system such as Hive.
Ok, I understand more of what you are saying now. To be clear though, most of what I have been downvoted on and that has been removed from trending is not the kind of content you are describing, it is general interest content of the kind that gets big traffic elsewhere online. You might not like it or agree with it, but it is not echo chamber material per se.
Lol. It is highly likely that layer 2 will become the norm whether I say and do anything or not. this is how the designers of the system see things progressing almost unanimously as far as I am aware. layer 2 offers the opportunity for communities to be empowered and to achieve their goals in the best possible way, without cross bleed and annoyance occurring with people who aren't interested in their topics. In one thread here I have Taraz nagging me for not having created a layer 2 token and here I have you nagging me for even thinking about a layer 2 token. lol.
Again, I don't know who you are referring to - I am not aware of anyone I am friends with having done that.
I don't really care about the downvote or expect to be rewarded for being bored. That upvote was well beyond my control and unexpected. I have spent a lot of time here but that's beside the point. I just saw irony and a bit of humor in the downvote, who it was coming from, combined with the context.
It's fine if you want to laugh about that portion. If you find humor in my investment becoming useless to me and the fact I'd be forced out as a content creator, that's fine. There's no clear future. You supporting that but not the downvotes you receive is an incredibly fancy way of contradicting yourself.
COVID content isn't challenging. Nearly every human on the planet was able to form an opinion in that regard. It's something everyone has in common and the market, no matter which team you want to play for, has already been established by someone else. Political content isn't a challenge either. All the groundwork is laid out; all one has to do is tell their team what they want to hear on a consistent basis. Super easy and generic. Sure, opinions are like assholes since everyone has one, but in COVID or politics, there's an automatic 50/50 shot at impressing someone or pissing off someone else. It's lazy, easy, highly predictable and by far the most common thing around. It's controlled by robots. Manipulative. Nearly everyone involved has some sort of hidden agenda. Far from original and for the most part helps keep society divided and at odds with one another. As a matter of fact, the last time we spoke I saw you straight up insulting someone for not thinking the way you think. But that sort of thing is normal in politics and to be expected. It's hateful, deceitful, and of course incredibly boring. Being an asshole is one of the easiest things any human can do.
Anyway, I agree with Taraz. You should create that second layer echo chamber. It'll solve all your problems. Guaranteed. Just like POB solved all the problems. Just like Blurt will solve all the problems. Basically like how any other knockoff of this concept solves problems. Sure, they're often mismanaged and quickly fail since what actually happens is all the haters find themselves locked inside one room and all they know how to do is hate, so that part doesn't change, but it's 'The Solution.' I think maybe Taraz is just challenging you and this group to go and put their money where the mouth is, knowing full well the reason you don't is because deep down you know it'll fail. That's my guess anyway. And of course once you strip out the base layer, the foundation is gone, so when these segregated tokenized communities do fail, they've nothing to fall back on, accelerating the failures and making them permanent. Even getting one off the ground without a universal base layer would be next to impossible. Basically everyone would have to start from scratch and all this progress over the past several years would have been for nothing. Akin to removing the planet so you can just have cities.