Today I started a 59,373 powerdown on my account
Hi Friends,
I been a part of the HIVE.io crew for a hot minute now, since the steemit days, but I just decided to almost fully power down my account the other day. It wasn't an easy decision, but I think it's the right thing to do cause of the downvote feature on HIVE.
Don't get me wrong, downvotes can be suitable for stopping spam and reward farming; yes, 100% agree with that, but I think it's caused and is causing way more harm than good. It's chased away so many cool and unique authors, and I think it's gonna hold the community back from really blowing up as a web 3.0 social media platform.
What if HIVE was Reddit??? That would be WAY cool... it's so huge.
But, come on... HIVE will never be like Reddit with the downvote feature still around. It doesn't matter how many second-level tokens we make and reward, the Downvotes will just keep people from really being themselves and posting what they want.
I am not talking about plagiarism and such, no I am talking about controversial ideas and dissenting voices.
Reddit's all about free speech and having a good time, Hive should be that way too... that would be epic to have some very engaging content, controversial topics, and people arguing and discussing... but HIVE's downvote feature puts a serious damper on that vibe. It's hard to really express yourself when you're constantly worried about getting downvoted to oblivion, something we have seen on this platform time and time again.
Sure, the second-level tokens are a good idea in theory, but I don't think they'll be enough to really make HIVE into the next Reddit. Not with that downvote feature hanging over our heads.
I don't want this to become a quitting rant, as I am not quitting, and I am sure this post will get its fair share of downvotes and people saying they are happy to see me go, and ok... sure... I will take it.
But, you know, life goes on, and I still see value in the HIVE token. The fact that you can do free transactions with it is pretty great and the second level ecosystem as well has so much potential for games and more, and I think that's going to keep being important.
Honestly, it's a bummer that the downvote feature's caused such a mess in the HIVE community, I sorta dream about where we would be without that feature, of still have it, but have it designed way more different (like this post I did about "Should Hive adopt a Quadratic or Square Root or a Double Square Root Voting system?", arguably a more fair system.
I do still believe that HIVE could succeed as a cryptocurrency, but I'm less hopeful about it being an excellent social media platform. This is my main reason for removing my 59,373 in HP over the next 13 weeks. Sure, a drop in the bucket and I will be forgotten in a month or 2, but hey...
But don't worry, I still value y'all's time, and I'll keep posting content, commenting on posts, and voting, even if I'm not fully powered up as a member of the community, just with way less HP. Vote for my content if you want, and if not, that is ok too.
Life's full of changes, you know? Gotta roll with the punches.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Hope you have a great day.
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I think the downvoting feature is important for spammers and plagurists. But, I've been speaking with people over the last couple of weeks and have heard about a lot of people who have been chased away from Hive.
Some because of spam and plagurism, but also a few who some large Hive members took a disliking too.
I don't know the best option, maybe do something like, have a downvote feature specifically for people harming the system.
But, maybe have a council of huge accounts who are there to DV anyone who abuses downvoting, and is potentially going to harras and chase people away.
We do need to grow, I don't like the use of AI and stuff like that though, as I think trying to monetize writing isn't fair on people who put a lot of work into theirs. I use AI art, but don't post it into an art community and pass it off as my own work.
That will be harmful to the system, because in a year or so of it being used, more and more people will come here when they hear about it and hear you can make money for extreamly low effort content.
Imagine what it'll be like, I've read a lot of the AI posts, and they're the most basic articles about basic things that we already know, imagine if the entire front page was spammed with that crap while good authors were burried. I wouldn't stick around if that was the case to be honest.
People use the argument that it's good for people with dyslexia, or language barriers, but in my mind the good thing to do is keep writing and practicing instead of giving up and using AI. Also, people say it's good for research, okay, if that's the case why are the majority of the posts about basic things that are fairly common knowledge? Why invest in crypto, how to buy it, what is it? I have read plenty of articles that were caught, and most of them are like that.
Uninspired and uninteresting topics, because the content is being produced by people who are litrally only interested in making a quick buck, and they don't care about the ecosytem or future of Hive and personally, I think people like that serve no value. Not everyone who uses it, of course, but most, and the proof is in the pudding, as soon as their posts are zero'd they're gone, most likely to make a new account.
I think we need downvotes, but we should have some kind of protection measure to use against abusers and bullies. Because I do agree, we'll never grow at this rate and Hives true value is in it's users.
Thats not entirely true, plenty of people gets banned or shadowbanned on Reddit for just sharing their views.
If not having a downvote feature, what would be the ideal way to counter spam and plag??
Ture, people do get shadowed ban; perhaps Reddit is not the perfect example.
There are other voting curves we can use, like the article I wrote here: Should Hive adopt a Quadratic or Square Root or a Double Square Root Voting system?.
Something more just and fair then we have now.
Or what if there was now downvoting? A few whales would come in, buy up millions of HIVE to make a profit off it, the price of hive would up, encouraging more people to join or speculate on the value of hive, and more people would want to join and post interesting content as well to get in on the action and we may see a good rise in post quality along with spam.
The point, the DV system is not good the way it is now.
Resistance is futile, powering down is the ONLY OPTION against constant Down-Votes!
What's the point of having high HIVE POWER if you can't use it effectively!
Good luck in whatever you do ... 👍
I just looked quickly at your argument with "bully" and it's as always people trying to milk reward pool one way or another complaining that people with stake decide to act against this behaviour.
Ressid was a cool place few years ago. Due to censorship weird policies it baceme cesspool.
And you speaking about that your behaviour is not forbidden by TOS is clearly not understanding basics of Hive.
I don't support ghostwriting too, because when I interact with somebody the content acts as intermediary between me and this person. Who I am contacting reading some paid words? I don't care about CoNtEnt qUaLItY... the main quality is authenticity. I'd go as far as downvoting, I'd probably unfollow an muted such account, but that's me.
It just doesn't pay of to cheat here. And I think this is one of the best qualities of Hive.
I agree that downvote is a serious problem when anyone use it wrong. Is anyone downvote your contents ?
Not sure all things happened, sorry Tim I'm been busy lately. I know how enthusiastic you are every time you introduce hive to people, I understand how hard when you made this decision; however please stay and create more content :)
He'll probably get someone to ghost write for him again and then play the victim card when people find out. Not the first time it's happened.
Reddit has a downvote feature lol
No it's not. You get downvoted there for disagreements too. You probably just don't see them cos... well they are downvoted to oblivion 🤣