!! 1st !! imagine if that was a thing on hive haha.. I'll think of a thoughtful response in a sec

BTW.. Marky was on the Cryptomaniacs podcast! I gotta go re-listen to that

No

I wish there were pun threads like on Reddit, or when we go into reciting lyrics of songs based on something said. Those are pretty funny at times.

I used to do that alot.. soo goofy lol

I've scratched my head at why no-one would stick up for you. I mean you've always been fair with what you've downvoted (and also upvoted).

In all honesty I'm quite pissed off that because of this situation it's switched you off hive entirely -- when in reality you are one of the only whales that dares to support the whole hive ecosystem.

I get laughed at by my crypto-bro friends when I show them my project on one of the lowest liquidity markets known to man. You could probably launch "turd" token on some obscure EVM chain and it'd have at least 3x the action us guys down on hive-engine see.

We get zero support down here and mostly we're all fighting off of scraps. That being said, you're usually around to buy into some of the stuff you see as good.

That sentiment has changed now, though, and sadly, because there's at least two projects on here I know you'd take a gamble in but the hive ecosystem has worn you down to a nub.

My personal issues aside, I'm annoyed, because my general assessment of you is a good guy, that wants to see others do good. Something I admire about you is that you require excellence, and if that means not jerking off the next mediocre guy so that you can get jerked off then you take that hit, then that's of good moral character.

I vehemently disagree with people that think otherwise.

I don't need anyone to stick up for me, I won't lose sleep. Just want people to know the truth and not the bullshit being spread.

I know, but some of us, you know, want to stick up for you - and big strong Marky will have to accept that sometimes it's ok that others want to help him too.

Thank you

Good riddance you cancerous PO(marky)S! You nuked hundreds, if not thousands of good and honest members off of this platform... Includung @drutter, @cryptopie myself (simply for sticking up to Drutter) and many many many many many many many others.
I love watching karma unfold its eternal beauty!!!!
You reap what you sow DF... Live with it !!!!!

https://img.blurt.world/blurtimage/outofthematrix/56ff8e866faacb8cb064c22168fd8554d1905789.jpg

https://img.blurt.world/blurtimage/outofthematrix/b395a79e57c8051ab9144f0cc095eb39ce4cb1a4.jpg

https://img.blurt.world/blurtimage/outofthematrix/cd812ec443374f2987c837b65af944c853b5a992.jpg

https://img.blurt.world/blurtimage/outofthematrix/912d3e307d75572f9c9aa31f3d02da518170411b.jpg

And the truth shall set you free. Keep doing that. The end.

I cant help but read your comment in what I remember your accent to be lol!

>I've scratched my head at why no-one would stick up for you.

You are wrong here. Marky have a huge fanbase from antiabuse who supports him.

Back the blue, until they do it to you.
Chain bloat busting the nodes is a thing of the past.
The day of the content nazi is coming to an end, imo.

I've been telling somebody about this lately and they just refused to believe it. Makes me wonder if I might be trapped in a Matrix with bugs.

well written

if this platform was truly decentralized it should be a community vote and not a single vote to either vote a person out abusing the rewards pool in this manner. Of course they could just start up another account and redo it all over again it's just a constant mess that so far has no real good solution and comes down a few good actions trying to combat a few bad actors with a lot of good people getting caught in the crossfire often times.

IDK what the solution is, or if there even is one but as a web3 platform that's the forefront of what is possible with social and crypto I think we need to constantly try new ideas. Some how not allowing curation trails and making people manually vote? There's a ton of options that can be explored and improved upon.

One of the largest issues however is as soon as you speak up if you're a smaller account (which mine isn't that small but could easily be muted/downvoted into nothing) is that if those big accounts don't agree with you and decide they don't like you you get slapped for it for no reason. It's one of the most discouraging things ever as an investor, someone who spends nearly a fully time job hour here on hive to build community, bring in people and just engage with others. There has to be a better way at controlling all of this and I feel it comes down to the voted witnesses to figure it out as they are a majority the core developers of hive?

...and main supporters of the Hivewatcher who obviously have let us down on every single point of their mission, besides downvoting me and others every time we call them out -_- so probably after this comment again. Fuck it, it has to be said.

💯

[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/unorgmilitia/EoEjEFFc2yXMGFVhUcRX2sae5dEf1UqbFt7cHVxhHHFKkNVjNq91qXZiQ9Q6QMWEf31.png]

you said " I powered down his stake " ... is there a conspiracy that you were actually the guy.. is this a rabbit hole?

I fouled this up, what I meant is newsflash powered down his stake, let me reword it. Fixed, I kind of got distracted writing it.

I wish I could proof read shit for people haha.. cos i'll catch that weird shit and point it out.. maby not so much grammatical errors or sentence structure..

Sorry for all the bullshit you've had to deal with marky

I think it's incredibly unfair that you've been targeted this way. I echo what @raymondspeaks says about you being a good guy, one of the few whales on this blockchain that are actually trying to do good for it instead of just joining the circle jerk. I'm really upset about the situation. I know I've told you as much in the Mancave, so you already know my feelings and nothing new here. As I said there, Hive is much poorer without all the good you've done here for the past 5 years.

I'm glad you made this post for everyone to see what's been going on. I hope some people with much more influence than me see it and decide to do something about it.

Marky trying to avoid questions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Owhv_wNag&pp=ygUJbW9iaWxlIGRq

It's hard to believe that you care about the little guys. I've seen you heavily upvote plenty of garbage and circle jerk other witnesses on bullshit post. I've been around since the Steemit days and have posted hundreds of blogs with original content and have never received an upvote from you. I'm not saying the other dude is in right, but I don't believe for a second that you care about the little guys.

Cause you didn’t get an upvote I don’t care about small authors. Ok… You can look at my vote history prior to 04/2022 it’s all public.

I never circlejerked votes. I do upvote witness posts and Hive technology posts because I support development. These posts are likely 1% of what I upvoted. They are rare and uncommon posts.

hahah and then you downvote me for having an opinion that differs from your own? I wasn't demeaning or disrespectful, but this speaks volumes about your character and your lack of ability to have intelligent conversation when someone doesn't agree with you. I sure hope @xeldal continues to put you in your place.

No I downvoted because of Xeldal's vote, have you not been paying attention?

He doesn't - He nukes them! Take a look at my acc!

Speaking from personal experience, every time you and I have spoken, you have shown nothing but respect to me and my projects.

On top of that, you were the first whale on Hive to start voting my stuff consistently and it helped me grow as a creator. Showed me that I'm appreciated as a creator and I'm adding something of value here on the blockchain.

I'm sorry you are dealing with all this, but I just wanted to show you that your actions didn't drive me away. In fact it kept me here when I thought I would never get noticed on chain.

Appreciate you man, especially your excellent taste in sci-fi series that ended after 1 season and should have been rebooted a decade go!

I appretiate your transparency. I admit that everytime that i received a downvote during this problem it made me feel weird… i went to you to ask about it and you answered me . Now you told the full story and I am grateful! Hopefully things will be fixed soon! But for now i am avoiding posting in communities that has xeldal in the trail

Seeing this feels like we are a decentralized shit and that is why we are not able to sell ourselves. May be time has come where the community should set some standards for who can get how much vote based on their content quality. It could be a varied range, just to ensure that there is some community eye. And it could even be evaluated in phased manner. Otherwise this whole mindset of earning would break the vibes of decentralization.

Leo is working on something like that with their curation trail. You might want to follow their progress, there are 7 attributes they look for if I member right.

This is why stake-vote-negation is actually a more elegant solution to counter malicious whales than downvotes. It was proposed all the way back in 2016 by Dan Larimer, but the community considered it a form of censorship and it was never implemented.

Stake vote negation would mean that it takes far less effort for a prosocial whale to counteract an antisocial whale, while at the same time it also means that users who have stake collectively can each commit part of their stake, without one or few having to sacrifice all their voting power or dedicate enormous time to counter selfish or malicious behaviour.

Stake vote negation would achieve the same thing as downvotes without all the collateral damage of people thinking they are being attacked personally for no reason. The kinds of abuse that are possible with it are also easily countered by delegation (which is essentially the inverse).

Can u elaborate on that? Is it reputation based or what?

Let's say you have 2 users each with 100,000 HP, Alice and Bob. Bob is voting selfishly, either his own posts or just randomly upvoting posts. Alice judges Bob's behaviour to be harmful enough that it is worth sacrificing some of her own rewards to counter Bob's.

Alice has tried talking to Bob, but didn't make any progress. In fact Bob started downvoting Alice's posts for merely suggesting that he should change his voting behaviour, which he says is censorship. Alice could in the current system downvote everything that Bob upvotes. We have seen how this plays out, it 'works' to a degree, but is pretty shitty for all involved, especially Carol the third party who posts paintings that she makes, who finds herself being upvoted by Bob and downvoted by Alice. As far as Carol is concerned, she is being told her posts are bad and abusive for no reason, and Alice is the bad guy.

Stake-vote-negation is a separate option from downvoting. Instead of having to direct her attention to everything Bob is doing, she applies a 30 day negation of 100,000 HP to Bob. That 100,000 HP is no longer counted for her own votes, but Bob also gets a -100,000 HP on his votes for 30 days. It's effectively timeout for both of them. Bob can still power down, he still gets the basic stake reward, but can't get the curation rewards he expects from his 100,000 HP.

Now to other users, Bob is just a minnow randomly voting on posts. Carol doesn't even notice that he is voting for her at all, nor does she notice Alice, who doesn't have to downvote her.

There are ways for stake-vote-negation itself to be abused. For example, a whale could maliciously negate the stake of random small users for no reason more than to troll the community. However this kind of abuse is itself quite easy to negate by other whales by providing delegations to users who experience this kind of abuse.

Stake vote negation also makes it easier for a bunch of smaller users to act collectively to police abuse. If there are 10 users, each with 20,000 HP, all 10 of them can each negate 10,000 HP of Bob's (100,000 in total). They can then keep posting on Hive like normal, but with only 10,000 HP of their own power for upvotes and curation. There isn't a need for one person to completely sacrifice their life on Hive.

Hmm, interesting. I guess it would in some ways be "worth it" if certain users really are a abusive and if there's users willing to sacrifice/park some of their HP to negate others. I like that there's a cost so others wouldn't just randomly negate other people's stake no matter if they're doing good or bad with it but there's also the question of those who don't care about the stake or curation returns, looking at some of xeldal's voting pattern lately and for a long time, for instance, he's been steady under 2-3% APR losing out on a lot of curation returns than if he'd just give up on his current ways and vote similarly to rancho instead on posts already doing well that others won't be able to effect their returns as much. It's almost like he's okay with it as long as it paints Marky/the platform in a bad picture.

Another idea I've been thinking about is if there'd be a downvote pool, or take half of the current one. I.e. Alice votes on Carol and Bob downvotes Alice's upvote but Carol still gets the author rewards that Alice sent her. This would be pretty limited (12.5% mana) so if certain accounts are really misbehaving/have misbehaved badly over a long period of time, there'd be more accounts able to negate their curation rewards without affecting authors. The thing about this idea, though, is that it opens up a lot more abuse vectors and accounts just trying to maximize curation rewards by utilizing their 12.5% mana to take from other's curation rewards even if unwarranted. Maybe instead of the "free" downvote pool it would cost upvote mana instead, so you'd still have to give up some curation returns but the rest of stakeholders got more instead by nulling the curation returns of the "bad behaving account". If their behavior changes the downvoter would naturally stop and go back to receiving more curation rewards while allowing the bad one turned good to earn curation rewards again. Dunno, there was a lot of talks in @dreamsteem's post so was just one idea I was experimenting with but too many loose ends.

The thing about stake-vote-negation is that it is pretty hard to find something simpler and more elegant. It works both to counter curation-related abuse and author-reward related abuse. It greatly reduces the mental overhead involved in policing abuse and it is not technically complex (it's basically just an inverse of delegation).

>It's almost like he's okay with it as long as it paints Marky/the platform in a bad picture.

Stake-vote-negation flips this on its head. Now Bob doesn't get seen as a nice guy just giving out upvotes randomly, but as just some neutered account. Alice doesn't come out as the bad guy.

The main problem with it in the Steem days no longer exists - that is that steemit being a mega-whale could have potentially negated every other player in the system and still had stake to spare. The stake has been much more widely distributed since and there is no longer a single whale account with that level of power that could potentially be abused.

I hadn't heard of negative delegation before. I can see some merit in it. Delegation is one of the secret weapons of Hive anyway. Any of the tools can be used for evil, but then the platform should be neutral and let people decide how it plays out.

It turns out, Carol was me the whole time.

BTW, it is @dreemsteem. You have a typo there.

> Alice votes on Carol and Bob downvotes Alice's upvote but Carol still gets the author rewards that Alice sent her.

I think the solution is the exact opposite - Carol gets nothing from Alice's vote but Alice still gets her curation reward.

Why? Not because of Alice (she is doomed anyway). That's because of Dan. Now that Carol's post that deserves $10 stands at zero, the good curator Dan is expected to upvote it, isn't he?

No, he is not. Maybe inside your head. Unfortunately, under the current rules, Dan is disincentivised to do so as he loses part of the curation rewards due to upvoting a post that was DVed. The same applies to upvoting any post that can get DVed in future. Carol is damaged by Bob not by chasing Alice away (she would upvote for less if she delegated negative HP to Bob in the fictional world anyway), but by chasing away her other - current or potential - curators.

The current system sucks because a downovote has a huge footprint, something that upvotes do not have at all.

Happy 3-month anniversary everyone and talk to your favorite witness now.

So in future I need to get in touch with (circle jerking) whales even more?

Or my stake will just be negated
"However this kind of abuse is itself quite easy to negate by other whales by providing delegations to users who experience this kind of abuse."

great
sadly I only got a few delegations in my 5 years here
and A LOT OF ANGRY WHALES or ORCAS

There is no perfect solution. Larger stakeholders abusing smaller ones is already possible and already requires intervention from other large stakeholders. There is little reason to think that this would increase it, and in all likelihood it makes it easier for smaller stakeholders to group together to counter abuse, making for less reliance on larger ones.

Can Bob just delegate to one of his other accounts, and then just keep voting?

No. If that were possible it would not have been implemented correctly.

yeah, that's... a terrible idea.

I know some of the new people left when you stopped the 10% weight voting which was a shame. I modelled my voting bot on what your legacy, though mine isn't on 24/7 I still nicked quite a lot of your 'votees' and added them to my 'list'. It was a great idea and I hoped you would restore it someday (and not for the reason I was on it).

With the title of this post, and while reading it I suspected you were getting out. I see that's not the case, so one positive. Can things not be fixed with @xeldal? It would be great if the bigger guys could all work together and we could some good stuff such as retaining these new promising authors.

I think a lot of us know the good that you do that few others would step up to. Unfortunately, there are a lot who don't know or care to learn much of the bigger picture of what is going on/has went on in hive.

I can't claim to be a close follower of your activity, but what I know indicates you're not out to squash anyone, and just want to build a better blockchain by stamping out spam and vote farming garbage. You have my dolphin-level support!

This all makes me sad tbh! Someone with your skills and passion being made to feel like this and have to do this. Big up Marky and thanks for all your help and support and we hope you are still around in some way otherwise we will get in a right old mess!

You're not a bad dude. Just stepped in some shit. Happens to us all. Eventually you have to scrape that shit off though, and don't worry about the stains.

You and I had some disagreements way back. Didn't last. Put it in the past.

This place can be so fucked up sometimes. Transisto. I openly criticized his upvoting and downvoting patterns awhile back. Thought what he was doing was ridiculously counterintuitive at the time and it was messing with a lot of good people. Took twelve 100% downvotes for saying those words but then one day he shows up out the blue, leaves a little joke under one of my posts and walked away from it, left me alone. It's whatever now.

I've dealt with a mountain of shit here, dude. Could write a novel about it. Even Freedom downvoted me. Who else has that badge?

Give me a mountain of shit and I'll just climb it to get a better view.

So including myself, here's all these people showing signs they're able to put shit down and leave it in the past. I know you got it in you. I have no clue how xeldal's built though. Don't know them.

Yeah. These games people play here are making a mess. Not my job to clean it up.

Problem boils down to: People pushing buttons on social network.

Shrugs. I didn't go to school for that. I don't know wtf to do. But you'd think since we're all on a fancy schmancy blockchain there would be at least one expert.

>Even Freedom downvoted me

wow, do you have that post handy? 😱

It's in the past. It's not a big deal. Was a noob then and didn't know what the hell was going on. We were all noobs back then. Over six years later and all I can say now is it energized me, and I'm grateful for the experience.

That's amazing I didn't even know he voted in the past. I would make a NFT out of that XD

I converted it into a lot more than what any NFT would be worth; but I do get the joke.

those rhymes

💯👏🏻

https://youtu.be/hfvE1JXexXg

Great song to start my day with.

So many signs pointing at people being played. Whatever. Steep rise in coincidences...

It's still got that thing, huh? The bassline is killer.

Coincidences? Perhaps we're just waking up a bit more?

I wish we could be kinder to each other. I'll share some of my mistakes as I write around here. Only human. We shouldn't feel so awful about it. I haven't read the full explanation here but the bit I did read made sense. Numbers don't make much sense to me though.

Vibes. These make sense to me. And I trust that now.

CBT has a great perspective. It suggests we approach situations and people with the belief that nobody means to do harm.

Yes I do know some people aren't very healthy and do enjoy causing harm. But mostly... no. We don't. And I don't think harm was intended in this situation either. No way.

Mostly... people don't mean to cause harm. Sometimes we get triggered and we react without clarity. Only human. Who of us gets to judge anybody else? 🤔

Just this perspective can shift interactions so much.

Busy listening to this now... doubt I'll make it through without weeping a bit.

https://youtu.be/y8AWFf7EAc4

Gawdamned this song.

I love Hive btw. We need to get together and make this work please.

I have nowhere else to go I'd rather be.

This is the only community I've found who is courageous enough to address things and engage with the tough stuff. We may just need to work on some stuff. Which is to be expected since we're trying to figure out a new path. We will, however, need to hear each other to do that. They convicted Galilleo. Just saying. The majority isn't always "right". So tolerance and open-mindedness is the key.

Also. Marky's cool. I have no doubt that pisses some folks off as well. It's that pack thing again. We can figure this out 👍🏻

And by we I mean you. Because I'm old and tired.

Nope. I cried liddle bit. I hope Marky's okay. I'm worried about him tbh.

I've been there and it hurts 💔

I've already sent my apology for being an insensitive dick.

I'm going to lay low for a couple of days. All this activity has worn me down a bit. Catch you later alligator.

@nonameslefttouse edited *sigh

I think he'll be fine.

And yeah. This shit wears people out. It's always a lot of talking and politics that don't really go anywhere. Everyone has an answer though no questions were asked. Still, you're right, people do dig in and it's not always for nothing.

I'm trying to stay out of it. Casual observer at this point or I'll just become jaded.

Time off is always good.

>Still, you're right, people do dig in and it's not always for nothing.

It's never for nothing. It's how we learn and grow. By airing stuff, talking about it etc

It is painful and uncomfortable though. I think it brings stuff up for everyone personally and it's why we so often avoid it. But... it's really the only way to find common ground and a way we can work and stick together.

I've just been burning the midnight oil again as well. I need to slow the fuck down to a roar for a day or so. I get grumpy when I'm tired. Can you tell?[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

Sure, these situations make people vulnerable. Fights and arguments never really have a winner or loser unless you're watching a prize fight or a movie. Always boils down to two opposing forces fighting their way out of the one thing they have in common: the situation they find themselves in.

It's an opportunity to build character.

It's their show though. Their ring. I don't feel like paying for a seat.

I prefer to say conversations.

If we can set ourselves aside a bit more they would be conversations.

Thing is... when conflict enters the equation people's old wounds can be touched and then things become complicated.

Denial. Projection. Very difficult to navigate.

Or detachment. Aversion. Craving. We practice not getting stuck into these and it's far simpler to negotiate, understand each other and compromise.

It's quite amazing how often we have the same goals anyway. Just different approaches to achieving them!

I'm busy making some joy. I hope.

So I was thinking (and sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes this isn't a good thing :D )

Why not have a front end that doesn't show votes or earnings??

This might help us remember how to be individuals and not follow the pack. It'd also encourage authenticity because people won't simply vomit up stuff they know will be acceptable and upvoted.

And they won't avoid having the hard conversations that get ignored mostly.

See?

Authentic free speech because human ego is removed 👌🏻

Send thoughts :)

[Edited] They still earn but a lump sum once a month or fortnite so they don't know what posts earned and what didn't. Truth and authenticity. But can see downvotes so content can be monitored by the community.

Nothing is stopping anyone from building that. However, you can't tell all these other frontends to become that. You'd need your own token for that payment system to work.

Here's an example of a frontend on Hive that doesn't display downvotes or use downvotes for its token, and ditched the rep system.

https://www.vybrainium.com/trending

Can even see my post still "trending" there.

I know that :) I'm all into personal sovereignty y'know! Honest!

Have a post pending on just this topic :D

Thanks for the heads up. Keen to visit and try![IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

For years, people have been free to build suitable solutions to their problems here and then tie their product into Hive’s broader consumer base to enjoy the benefits. However, their product must be self-sustainable in order to succeed. It might be difficult to attract interest in a token that represents only a few superficial variances and personal preferences, stemming from an instance of Hive platform politics.

History somewhat proves that and I shared an example above. People who don't want downvotes had absolutely no interest in a downvote free platform once it came to fruition. And it's not the first time.

A solid tokenized community that wants to be successful tied into Hive would depend on exclusive content attractive to an already well established market combined with a mass of consumers willing to stake tokens in order to support it. It can be bent and shaped into whatever they want but their success is their own responsibility.

Well... that's what freedom and personal sovereignity is all about :)

"I'll do it myself" is my go to these days. I don't have an infinity ring so no need to panic.

I still don't get the tokens tbh. Haven't taken the time to look at that properly.

So I'm understanding a bit more now. Thanks for that.

Perhaps one of the front ends could simply add an option for users to hide earnings and votes. For themsleves. Of course. Wonder how that would pan out.

I just try not to focus on them. But, at times, it's distracting.

As a creative, if you've put days of work into something and it doesn't get much attention or earn it can be disheartening. Better not to know, I think.

Just let that go and keep on making.

Perhaps earnings only showing if a post receives over 50 Hive might be better. Or 100.

Anyway. Lots on my plate here. I'm trying to change the world in other areas and numbers aren't my Forte.

I just wish we weren't so swayed by da money. It seems to cause more trouble than it's worth. Literally :D

When it comes to anything superficial, sweeping it under the rug won't help. Superficial types will find something else to look at.

When I post, I look at my view count on PeakD, which doesn't cover all the views but you can look at how many are using each frontend then calculate in your head a rough estimate. When those views are down, I try to come back with something bigger because I think it's my fault. Not going to blame the ground I stand on for the reason my feet ache.

Superficial nonsense is partially contributing to some of the drama here. People don't see dude as a human, they see him as a "whale." Creating distance and making it easier to diss him. Nearly all stakeholders here are dehumanized or dehumanize themselves when they look at their wallets then try to tell others they're small and insignificant for instance.

It's messed up but sweeping it under the rug won't change anything. Maybe make a MIRROR token and everyone can have a look.

Don't shoot me. That last part was a joke.

I'd support that token :D !!

It's not as simple as we'd like it to be though...

It's the nature of the mind to protect itself so...

We do the best we can with what we have until we know better. The end.

Hope you have a happy, peaceful Saturday and get some sunshine in ❣️[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

>People who don't want downvotes had absolutely no interest in a downvote free platform once it came to fruition. And it's not the first time.

Presumably because the majority went on as usual and they didn't stand ground and walk through the fire of the possible shift

Change takes an inordinate amount of time. People resist it like the plague. Even if they hate their current situation. They'd rather avoid the fear of not knowing for a bit and be uncomfortable.

Aren't we humans interesting creatures?

Bring back the Stoics!

Off to sleep now. Brb :)

One guy was excessively self voting his comments and got downvoted. Threw a fit over a few bucks and refused to make money the easy way by using that stake to vote for others instead. Had no interest in playing fair. So he chose to leave to the promised land. A place with no downvotes. Making sure to burn all his bridges.

Took his money with him and lost nearly all of it. Downvoted himself harder than anyone could.

The things that make you go, "Hmmmm."

I like to think that we make our own "fate" / karma and all that.

We really do because our actions have consequences.

You can't blame anything outside of yourself. Really. Especially if your actions are dodgy / not in accordance with the way things work or whatever. It may be that subconsciously one doesn't like themselves if they're behaving like a c*nt and so sabotages themselves. Perhaps its a natural "law" and some kind of intrinsic "balance" that keeps realigning / perhaps there are gods. We will never know.

I have less than R1 in my bank acc today. I got stuck into a creative burst yesterday and forgot to invoice a client and am still living from hand to mouth. I'm chipper as fuck. Listening to DJ Biscuit and it's a beautiful day. I have a roof over my head. Thank f*ck. Food in the fridge. Simple food but it's there. Internet and I managed to patch my dodgy laptop so I can actually work a bit and make stuff again.

The sun is shining and the landscape outside is glorious.

How "blessed" am I, huh? :D

I've seen people with packed fridges who are eating themselves to death. In big homes with fancy cars. Who think they don't have enough.

It's internal. I've done the work. I know this to be a fact! It's all perspective.

To shift a perspective is not an easy thing!

What I have really integrated recently (and this took YEARS of practice now) is non-judgement. And proper detachment. (Both will always be a work in progress, but I've now had days where I'm fine despite all around me without having to "work it". If one can really "get" this understanding... meh... this whole show is as it is.

Now the only question is when to take action at all! :D

Money is an addiction. The end.[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

So I was thinking (and sometimes this is a good thing and sometimes this isn't a good thing :D )

Why not have a front end that doesn't show votes or earnings??

This might help us remember how to be individuals and not follow the pack. It'd also encourage authenticity because people won't simply vomit up stuff they know will be acceptable and upvoted.

And they won't avoid having the hard conversations that get ignored mostly.

See?

Authentic free speech because human ego is removed 👌🏻

Send thoughts :)

[Edited] They still earn but a lump sum once a month or fortnite so they don't know what posts earned and what didn't. Truth and authenticity. But can see downvotes so content can be monitored by the community.

Watcha think @themarkymark

Would this make less admin for you re the abuse thing? Nobody would know who to auto upvote

The community can still keep an eye on the downvotes. Win win.

Remove the money. Visually anyway. And remove the pack mentality. We may progress and start walking web3?

Personal sovereignty. It takes not going with the flow even when it's uncomfortable to find and do this. And it's fucking scary in the beginning. Funny thing... mostly the folks who want change initially get crucified. Y'know.

Hope you're up and about and listening to some good tunes ❣️

> Why not have a front end that doesn't show votes or earnings??

This has been talked about a bunch of times, but in the end most people are going to look at their earnings.

I know they will. And I know people will admire and follow those who earn big.

And I know why.

Working on that right now, actually.

Sending warmth and thanks for taking time to respond as always. 👍 (Respect for your walk, brother)[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

Somehow whales' downvote policies and anti-abuse efforts always include a lot of personal bias towards content. So it ends up being used for censorship under the name of rightfulness.
Even though maybe setting out with the best intent, all those who raise the flag of anti-abuse eventually end up nuking accounts they disagree with. And so did you.

It is really complicated to get a perspective; I had the case with @pfunk, who (like you) is quite an important part of our eco-system, but then suddenly goes on a binge of hate & nuking an account he hates (and I found interesting). I am not getting into azicorn (or however you spell him), spaminator, gtg & all.....

I assume that you do have your victims too. Some small accounts that have nothing to defend themselves. So sorry, but here's a taste of your own medicine.

In my humble opinion, anti-abuse policies is one of the things doing the most damage to Hive; the 'good ones' are fucking it up.

Important footnote: I did not spend hours researching your voting behaviour; this is cumulative impression after 6 years on steem/hive.

Exactly Marky, thanks for proving my point with your downvote, which is in line with your personal bias about content.

I'll tell you right now your voice matters. Your views matter. I'm not taking a position on anything you've said. However, out of respect, your response here about the downvote is indicative of someone who has just been manipulated by this drama.

Reality dictates Marky was simply countering xeldal's votes. Is it a stupid reality for everyone else? Yes. Who's to blame? Both of them equally, nobody else, and especially not you or your views.

Don't let the drama fuck with you. Stay focused. Since you were duped into responding in that manner, that could discourage others from speaking their mind, and both of these people are to blame for that, equally, and not anyone else. They are one and united. It is their problem. Xeldal knew in advance you'd be downvoted.

The moment everyone rises above all this shit and sees it for what it truly is, is the moment the drama loses control over the minds of others. Once that's gone it's just two fish flopping around and everyone can focus and get back to their lives.

I do agree with you; but the drama does fuck with my feed; find new source of information, gone again because nuked, repeat.

And I am curious about the function/principle that makes people with power (and good will) so out of touch with people ;)

Out of touch? Maybe, but a clash is actually people coming together.

He already said he counters all Xeldal vote.

Colateral I guess. Like all Hive has become colateral ;)

Did you even read his post? He explained why he's downvoting.

Jordan Peterson made that point very clear, moderated communication is always less valuable than free speech. All you want to do is adding personal filters agains information overflow and malicious actors.

Maybe he got that right.

I took personal exception to that Russian shill's bullshit after Russia's further invasion. He is a propagandist for belligerence. I have little tolerance for it.

others found him valid and that should be respected.

but never mind, I sound like an old teacher ;)

I have watched you do so much good for Hive over the years. I wish I knew a solution, but at least I can boost your post and send you an Ecency Points tip! No one can take that away.
[IMAGE: https://images.ecency.com/DQmRrRSNPBDkSnNFwUrzshz4gQZH717JczxeeCKQv479P2y/1684239909886.gif]

You could just fuck off to the DV-free Blurt, but I see you are not too popular over there as it's been a haven for those you drove away. But then they don't like me much either :)

I know from experience that dealing with abuse can be thankless, but it needs doing. Concentrating massive votes on a few accounts can be considered abuse given the limited reward pool and it can also make Hive look bad if low-effort posts make a lot. I have certainly seen some nasty things said about you that I feel are not deserved. Of course people feel bad when they make less than they hoped, but Hive earnings are not guaranteed until payout and the community gets to decide.

The big accounts get to determine who trends (if anyone cares about that) and they can rake in curation rewards for little work, but we want to see quality matter.

I feel Hive has been damaged by infighting and feuds. It's never going to be a perfectly happy utopia, but people who bully others scare users away who will spread bad vibes. But it is a form of anarchy and people can do what they want. That's great, but we all benefit if Hive does better and that means trying to retain users.

Thanks for caring.

How does it feel to get all this out? It may not set the record straight, but the record is now here.

I didn’t want to respond to all the comments because like I said they will always be right and I dull always be wrong so it would be endless going nowhere. t lesdt with this irs something people can refer to.

Wow, that is a pretty tough situation to be in man. I heard about it second hand, but not all the ins and outs of it.

I'm sorry to hear that things have gotten to a point where you feel you can't post, vote for, or be apart of certain projects without attracting unwanted negetive attention.

Yay! 🤗Your content has been boosted with Ecency Points, by @melinda010100. Use Ecency daily to boost your growth on platform! Support EcencyVote for new ProposalDelegate HP and earn more

LMAO YOU GOT BEAT AT YOUR GAME CLOWN.

(probably.. I didn't really fully read your VICTIMHOOD GARBAGE.)

HOLD ANOTHER AMA.

Before I saw this post, I shared this on-chain. I believe this will make my points clear no only to use but to HIVE:

>A whale like marky was also a victim for last one year. Not many were interested cause it wasn't ALOT of peoples rewards. His fault was loving hive and protecting the reward pool.

>I really wish you all the best but a centralize solution is not what Hive needs and especially with beneficiary and delegations plus funding involved in my pov. I wish all hivers will think together but not starting from xeldal counter votes but from beetoons days slowly coming towards tdtv and then currently going hawk.

>Everyone deserves equal support either a whale or a fish. Whales are even more important as they play a big role. Does anyone try to help markymark curate freely again by distributing the hits on his counter votes or anyone talked about supporting his posts to counter the effects? I hope it's solved but do people also care about marky or just one side of the picture?

I would like to make it clear to you and hive, there r people who like the work of "Themarkymark". I left this under your post also with hopes to see a smile on your face. You did antiabuse duties where even HW failed. You faces political pressure where others stopped you continued to fight. These days will pass like the previous tough days. I trust and believe in you marky. Much Love for your services for hive.

Thank you very much for an informative share.

I have not been on Hive very long. However, I am wise enough to see that Hive blockchain platform has flaws just like all social platforms. The common denominator in the flaws are human emotions. Or, management of emotions and egos. Hard enough to manage our own imperfections let alone trying to build technology to control emotional responses from people with much authority, power, influence, etc.

In the short time that I have been testing the Hive platform as a viable path from a web2 to web3 biz I have found several areas that is not very conducive to growth for someone getting started. Sure there is lots of people telling you how well they are doing on Hive. Heck, everyday I see content about someone sharing how well they are doing. Is that quality content? How do people define quality content? What is the WHY? of Hive? What is the vision statement for the Hive community and how well is it communicated. I understand that technology moves quickly but that is not new. Same as defining processes supported by a set of standards and various bodies of knowledge. Not new. We have a rewards system that is intended to be fair to everyone but clearly there is abuse. There is always abuse when some players in the games have too much influence on the outcome of the game. Most people are not very well trained in managing lots of power. And some people are dishonest and take advantage of weakness in a system. People issues. I share one of my favorite Venn diagram and methodology to solving problems. After reading this post and all the replies so far, it looks clear to me the issue is a people issue. The expectation of people in the system is not clear or well defined. Some people have earned great influence, so much so that when they pool their efforts they can greatly control outcomes that have nothing to do with the overall wellness of our community.

https://www.smartsheet.com/content/people-process-technology
[IMAGE: https://images.hive.blog/DQmTt5sYirB3CBZXAZ5BPUCr41zch832dCsuWHCKg3VidPF/hive_ppt.png]
In the diagram I have marked the sweet spot that shows the three circle of impact in balance. I believe the people impact is in transition. Sometimes it aligns with process and technology impacts and sometimes it is overly influenced away from the overall purpose of the system. ie The Vision. The Why of the community. People disagree about the why because it is not well defined? When this happens some people respond against the system or against other players within the system. An emotional response. Noise that needs filtering or just negative energy that needs to be converted and not promoted.

Now what could be a solution or an improvement to an existing system to help protect everyone in the system from abuse by people with too much power?

I don't think another person with lots of power is the answer. Pooling resources in a way to make a bigger gun is not a solution. The system already shows signs of abuse from pooling of resources.

The downvote to me looks like a big gun. Why do you have to downvote anything. We can respond with better content if we don't like the content. Or you can ignore it. We should not overlook the power of avoidance. I prefer speaking out and making a statement and not sitting on the sideline. Take on the bullies. However, sometimes the bullying is a childish behaviour that the adult has not outgrown. Maybe there is a mental capacity concern. Or sometimes it is part of making mistakes so you can learn a lesson. Who knows? We are imperfect beings capable of making an emotional decision in a millisecond and then spend hours, days and a lifetime trying to use logic to justify an emotional response.

A bigger gun does not solve a problem it creates a bigger problem.

What if you got rid of the downvote?
Would that not help avoid the escalation of attacks and address the negative impact and fallout onto our community?

> I don't think another person with lots of power is the answer. Pooling resources in a way to make a bigger gun is not a solution. The system already shows signs of abuse from pooling of resources.

True

> What if you got rid of the downvote?
Would that not help avoid the escalation of attacks and address the negative impact and fallout onto our community?

Way better, but @elmerlin is probably the best person to talk to on this. He's super smart and has the ability to see the whole picture.

>I have deep regrets of getting into anti-abuse in the first place, it has made my time here fairly miserable and has had no benefit to me. I don't have a proposal for it, I don't get paid doing it, and it has caused endless headaches.

Every antiabuse person's story. Now I think I know your other alt. :)
A specific face appeared on antiabuse land around the same time you disappeared. Is that you? ;)
just joking.

>I am getting endless notifications on F.R.I.D.A.Y. with comments that are completely inaccurate or unaware of why this is happening.

And there r multiple people in multiple discords answering questions from your POV.

> because I still care about Hive and am willing to stick my neck out.

I have seen what you do for our chain for so long and I believe that if the good Hivers who would be willing to defend you could (had the stake to do so) would, but sadly we are too broke to actually have any influence on the voting stuff. I don't want to see you go =( Let us know if there is any way or form we could help!

I know I'm relatively new to the blockchain here, and to date, I haven't downvoted anything, I think, though I probably should have.

To start, I have always considered the human race basically self-centered and as a human, will not exclude myself from that assessment, regardless of other people's respect for me. Somebody hits me with a big upvote, I am probably about as greedy as anyone else. So, someone comes into this as a money grabber, I expect it. Heck, I'll even upvote my own content on it's last pay day, if I happen to catch it before it pays out because... why not? The question for me is, are they doing it to commit a fraud, theft, launder, or some other financial criminal act, knowing they likely can get away with it without the censorship? There needs to be a way to protect the blockchain from these types of misuses and believe me, I am willing to bet they already exist. I'm just usually too busy looking for much better content that I think deserves a little attention.

Haters gonna hate. Don't know why, but I have always loved that phrase. I also don't hate haters, but rather find them a source of entertainment. I'm the kinda guy that see someone hating and threatening to burn the world down and the only thing that goes through my mind is, where's my gas can?

shit. lost track of time and now i'm gonna be late for work! XD Later. probably wasn't finished with this thought train. Stick arounf, buddy. You got support.

Only 15 minutes late to work. XD. Anyway, thought train derailed, so hopefully this was enough. Sufficed to say, I'm jealous of the big voted posts, hope to get there one day and know their has GOT to be players playing the system. Such is life. Am I gonna let it all ruin my day? Nope. Just gonna give out that next upvote to something I like and hope someone likes or respects what I got to say.

I’ve been on the hive for some time now. I have never been a victim of either of these issues. But I have heard from people never to get involved in the matters of Markymark. So I was listening to one podcast on Twitter when @theycallmean mentioned your name. That prompted me and I was like, “How all these bad vibes but @theycalmedan can is still a guy who believes in you?” That left me to doubt the credibility of what was being said.

There wasn’t any way to communicate well to see what caused everything. Many just explained as you keep downing what he upvotes. The information from they all lacked was, why were you doing that? It was never stated and I never found a way to get to know.

Today is a lovely day I just chanced by this and said, “Now is the time to get my records straight rather than take the wrong decision without knowing.” After reading, I see the light. Seeing someone pull down the home you built with sweat is painful. I'm glad you shared this; everyone who reads this will have a general knowledge of the information they have been hearing.
Now my statement is @themarkymark isn’t a villain. He is just an average human being protecting a property he believes so much in.

Thanks for sharing this. Love from @abdul01 from Ghana.

https://reddit.com/r/internetdrama/comments/13j8mda/whale_downvote_war_on_decentralized_social_media/
https://reddit.com/r/WinStupidPrizes/comments/13jv4bc/my_last_post_get_a_chance_to_win_10/
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @demotruk ) sharing the post on Reddit as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.

I hope there will be a solution to this issue. It really sucks that people who contribute so much to Hive are forced to leave. Would be great if there was a special group of people who could advocate for you and make you guys to come to an agreement. Otherwise whoever has a bigger power those can rule and there is no way to control this kind of behavior🤷‍♀️

This wouldn't be a problem if the 1000mv vote limit was respected.

Interesting!

Hmmm, yeah we're Humans, we can find a better way than downvotes for smart curation. Downvotes create irrational cycles of grief and diminish the DAU pool significantly.

I can see Stakes allocated/rejected (up/downvoted) to Communities, the voting inside of the community decides the mining rewards of the PoB and the community has to use social skills to moderate or has to mute users from using it. Downvotes on a personal level can stay but they should not cause any consequences for the PoB mining, only positive Drama left.

I have to question the purpose of a down vote. Sure I can guess something. Is it suppose to mimic a jester when you don't get good vibes from content that was shared? Can you down vote without posting a reply? Was it intended as a way to show public humiliations? I like to think positive so cause more negative energy doesn't make sense to me.

Very good question. The main reason for downvotes is, that you get to counter people who post comments and just vote nothing but their own comments up. That way all their curation and voting rewards are spent on worthless comments made by themselves and the ProofOfBrain mechanics are completely fallen apart. But it also meant that was the most effective way to "mine" new Coins for yourself. There were several other abuse ways based on this very same concept, none in any way healthy for the platform.

The Downvotes were implemented to create a counter to exactly that. Everything else is just a natural evolution occurring beyond the crude implementation of the Vote/Downvote system.

The original Chain was launched without the current Downvotes, they were added in the late stages of the STEEM Blockchain, not long before the Hostile Takeover and the Fork into Hive. To be fair, there have been Downvotes from the start, but Upvoting and Downvoting had been the exact same Mana Pool, which made them useless from a practical perspective and we could observe them basically never used for anti-abuse. They got useful and common after getting their own Voting Mana pool. There's a side story with a step in between and free downvotes, but that's long gone and I'll just skip that.

Was this helpful for you? You can ask me to dig deeper if you want.

Very helpful. Thank you very much. Sometimes things evolve in a complicated way and after awhile people start to question the purpose and value. I like win-win situations. Thanks again.

Sure, you are very welcome, glad I could help.

the irony of this post. I'm blessed to have been the 1% downvoted for personal reasons I guess.

Ah, I forgot to mention, but since I engage with EVERY SINGE POST made by you on Twitter (in case I see it of course & am active at that time), I salute your ethos and I don't think that you have ever followed bad or low-level motives.

It's good that you took the time to explain this, thanks.

Part of the problem has been that you don't explain yourself after having taken action that frustrates other people - regardless of the details of the hive voting situation, which just adds to the frustration, negative image and the chances of conflict.. this is something to learn from imo.

When I previously asked you who was downvoting you to zero and why, you assumed that everyone already knew and just didn't answer. I didn't know (even though I run the downvote monitoring page Untrending at HiveAlive too!) and I imagine most people don't - unless you point it out.

This situation is an example of the way that actions within a community often have a knock-on effect to others and when a war erupts of some kind, other people get drawn in who would otherwise never pay any attention. This is unavoidable in a community like Hive, as long as stake effects voting - so it is all of our responsibilities to do what we can to create harmony. It's also an example of how the right to vote freely is something that people will stand up for, to the point of harming their own interests. This needs to be considered when downvoting.

I don't doubt that Marky has prevented plenty of scammers from extracting rewards using bot nets etc. - however, for me personally, I only ever encountered him when his system had wrongly identified someone, cancelled them and then found it was not possible to get him to rectify the situation. So it is wrong to view this situation as purely one where a perfect Hive user is the victim of nasty bullies. Even if the intentions are pure, the implementation was not and the image created as a result was not responded to in order to improve public reputation.

Comments on specific points made:

• @Transisto vs Marky: We ideally need a new option for post rewards that sends the author reward back to the rewards pool, while the stakeholder still gets the curation reward. Another option is the addition of an automatic (reduced) stakeholder reward that everyone gets paid for unused curation power. This might motivate people to not engage in upvoting pointless posts that breaks the proof of brain post discovery and post ordering system that is built in to Hive. I don't know how many of the podcast posts Transisto voted on but I do know that quality curation takes at least 1-2 hours every single day. This is a huge amount of time for people to be putting into the system to get their curation reward and it is totally predictable that people will just upvote whatever post they see sometimes in order to be able to do something else that day. When smaller accounts do this, no-one notices - but larger accounts are very obvious.

• @TDVTV posts: I agree that the original setup for Vigilante.TV was not good - in that content was effectively being stolen to some extent, with the original creators not getting the rewards. However, since they improved the system to prevent this from happening, the only problem left is that sometimes posts get uploaded to both 3speak and also to vigilante.tv, so there are duplicates on the blockchain. I don't personally see this as the fault of the content creators who are just wanting their content to be viewed by the most people. I also don't think this situation calls for downvotes because I don't see people upvoting both duplicate posts - people either vote for one or the other.

• Marky vs @Xeldal / @Enki: I can't speak for Xeldal or Enki as I don't know who they are and have never spoken to them. However, it looks to me like they are responding to the downvotes which appear to be limiting the reach (censoring) posts that cover triggering and controversial political topics that get routinely censored on web 2 platforms. I don't agree with nuking anyone's posts for such things, however, I can see the motivation for Xeldal's downvotes since (to my knowledge) there was no public discussion of why the downvotes were happening or what could be done about it. Punishment is not a necessary part of learning and if there is no discussion then zero learning can take place - the only outcome likely then is retaliation.

• @kencode: Ken's new site @cast.garden has also been nuked by various downvoters and I don't think he has had an explanation as to why. The content there is provided by account owners who get paid and is often decent quality. Though I don't see Marky's downvotes there, it's more Curangel and steemcleaners. Just another batch of antagonisation through DVs that isn't explained. I think effectively slandering @jeffberwick is not such a great move, but let's see what Ken has to add about that. In any case, I don't think Ken's concern about Jeff is any kind of justification for negating his complaints about the downvoting his projects receive.

Conclusion:

I accept that you don't like doing all the downvoting, I wouldn't and I think only a sociopathic person would 'enjoy' it tbh.

There are various proposals being planned to improve the downvoting situation on Hive and some will be made public soon. Other than that, this seems like an opportunity to learn the lessons from Avatar 2 - where an outcast whale becomes a hero through compassionate communication with one of the characters in movie. More communication with an intent for empathy solves problems.

[IMAGE: https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/ura-soul/23xKoprWsfCkjxY21okGY51hnaqm8uQJUNqB5xEkoYk1mXGgVpW7F57xPbzpFA91wRzts.png]

> however, for me personally, I only ever encountered him when his system had wrongly identified someone, cancelled them and then found it was not possible to get him to rectify the situation

And what user was this? I call bs.

We already spoke about it in the informationwar Discord a long time later and you half apologised, as I recall. Though I think we later talked and you said you didn't remember.

I think it was more than one user, but the first one was thebasesproject - here's a link to a comment from one of your bots on Steem (afaik): https://peakd.com/bases/@badcontent/re-steppingstonestoawarenesswithmichaelshrimpton-sr22gc7mlb-20180807t214554

What actually happened with that account is that the large youtube archive the guy had was being imported to Hive via the Steempress import function and there was no rate limiting, so a large number was imported without any delay between them - which triggered the bot. I communicated at the time and nothing was done. I then mentioned it years later and afaik nothing was done. The account owner just left the network.

This was brought to me well after it happened and spamming the amount of posts was a reasonable and logic reason for it to be identified as a spammer.

I do remember Steempress having issues with some users and the ones identified I resolved on my end. Out of the 70k+ users I blacklisted you would be hard pressed to find 5-10 examples.

When I identified a problem I made it right but it was so rare it almost never happened. I did everything by hand and double checked everything I did.

Iirc I notified you pretty quickly after it happened the first time. I can only speak from my own limited experience.

Did you double check my account before you destroyed it, you dumb downvoting PO narcissistic S?

╭∩╮(-_-)╭∩╮

You've been digging deep into this for a long time.

Yes, it was unavoidable, since I got nuked and see this phenomena as a huge problem for Hive, generally.

It's not really a problem if it's part of the system. What is problematic is that it offboarded way more people already than what is left today.

If a decently wired human has 1Million reasons to do something and one good reason to not do it, we will always step aside and don't do it. That's just how we work, the frontal context has nearly no other job. Keeps us alive, and keeps people away after getting downvoted by some random other Hiver.

Systems can absolutely generate problems and this is an example of something that needs to be improved upon to minimise the problems.

Human conditioning in people who have not healed and 'rewired' themselves includes a bias towards rejection of 'bad' things when compared to attraction towards 'good' things, so yes - a failure to understand this will result in an onboarding problem for Hive.

Well, you can only die once but have tons of great experiences in ways that you might now even know of yet, assuming you don't walk off that cliff.

Your comments make me want to be healed and rewired somehow.

A bias towards avoidance due to fear is not really such a great survival strategy. If you don't have good experiences and feel good then you will lose the will to live and become more open to disease. Part of the healing process involves release of judgements held in the mind, that 'seem' true but that aren't. The other main part involves releasing of held emotions that are locking patterns in place and keeping so much of our internal world hidden from our internal observation point.

This is a good introductory book on the topic: Feelings Matter

So what you're telling me is that I might get a level on my mental game by breaking the emotional gridlocks that have been created due to unconscious fear in pursuit of unreasonable danger avoidance?

That's a certain amount of the topic, but there is a lot more to it. Essentially I am describing how to make the unconscious self become conscious - which increases all personal capacities and potential significantly. The more you can lovingly and unconditionally accept all your emotions (which means allowing them to be felt, understood and expressed as sound/movement) the more you can clear out the backlog of denied and held energy that prevents balance.

Reminds me of an enlightenment. Sometimes we need a traumatic incident to trigger the necessary change to rebalance energy fields. Every systems have flaws. When you don't believe it or it is not great enough it will cause more problems so all system needs built in safeguards that should not be neglected. I am glad to see a lot of information coming out. With a better understanding of the environment I am able to address potential risks in moving my biz from web2 to wed3. Has to be a great concern to many if the system fails because safeguards were not in place or worse, neglected.

Yes, light is understanding and information :)
The idea is to be enlightened enough to design the systems to take everything into consideration in advance, but usually things need to be adjusted later, yes. We will make suggestions for changes to the layer 1 code at some point which may improve these issues.

@thevil :D hahah, That Walletname is really something

> There are various proposals being planned to improve the downvoting situation on Hive and some will be made public soon.

Is this for real this time?

> @kencode: Ken's new site @cast.garden has also been nuked by various downvoters and I don't think he has had an explanation as to why.

I mentioned this and got a response:
https://peakd.com/hive/@hivewatcher/rtvn5k

지도 다운보트 쳐 맞으니 졸라 얌전하고 비굴한 글이나 쓰고 자빠졌네

OK ... so, I was pulled in only this January because Xeldal started voting up and you started voting down, and I appreciate the context of your side of the issue. Thank you for sharing. I come down hard sometimes, but I try to be fair, and in fairness, I see what you have been trying to do.

Yet you do realize, as a highly intelligent person, that as long as you are DVing people who CANNOT know this history, you are going to be backed into the bad guy corner, right? I'm not going to stop writing. @xeldal is apparently not going to stop upvoting. In a bear market, those upvotes are especially welcome to MANY, and AGAIN, everyone Xeldal upvotes is not spam. I'm not. You know that. But I get it; you are doing your best to keep someone you feel is supporting spam from growing. Yet in expanding these DVs outside ACTUAL spam, you have made the decision to introduce yourself, NOW, to dozens if not hundreds of people as one who takes potential resources away from good content in a time in which people truly need all they can earn. I care enough to read and understand better, but I also have the luxury of sitting in a home that's paid for, with plenty of basic resources at hand.

@xeldal, I have read your posts from way back -- you also are a highly intelligent person. You also have an opportunity here to stop this madness that is hurting people that are not spamming and should not be involved in this matter. Just how much is it worth it to you to keep your part of this going while innocent Hivers are getting hurt in the middle? I don't know your side of the story as well, but I'm sure you have one and it is rich with history -- but for TODAY, I can think of something you can do today to help everyone. I would think withholding the $42 DV you and @enki tend to drop on Mark would help a lot to end this whale war. I would think you upvoting whatever you want and not DVing everything Mark upvotes would help a lot. Both of you can be heroes for Hive today -- NOW -- or you can both keep up the madness and hurt Hive's short-term and long-term chances. What's that $42 DV worth to you and Enki today, Xeldal?

GENTLEMEN, whales, and global countrymen all -- PLEASE make peace, so that Hive can flourish and not be crippled. Everyone has a side to the story. Everyone is responsible for what they do from here on out. If tomorrow is the same as today, you will have chosen that. If tomorrow is better than today, and Hive's innocent content creators can breathe easier again, you will have chosen that. It is entirely up to you.

> Yet in expanding these DVs outside ACTUAL spam, you have made the decision to introduce yourself, NOW, to dozens if not hundreds of people as one who takes potential resources away from good content in a time in which people truly need all they can earn.

You fail to factor in the thousands of downvotes a week I prevented and the thousands of upvotes a week I no longer give when I stopped voting on authors. I can assure you it accounts for way more than the small percentage I have downvoted.

I'll take your word for it, Mark. I'm not disputing your version of longer-term events because I don't have evidence either way ... but the other Hivers you are DVing don't know either. They know what is happening to them NOW. I'm not spam and you and Freeborn rolled through again today on me -- even if it is just to take off Xeldal's votes, y'all treat me like I'm blacklisted here, and it has a psychological ill effect. You just think I should take it on the chin, and I can while even caring enough to try to understand your side of the story ... but the point here is, the New Hivers that come in here need not be burdened with having to manage years of context to understand why they should be discouraged, coming in the door. Hivers creating good content shouldn't either, Mark.

Remember WHO YOU ARE, Mark. I read your whole post. Look back at all the good you have done. Is this fight with Xeldal the absolute best thing you can do, going forward? Does it even fit with your total reputation? THINK, Mark -- think! If I BELIEVE YOUR POST, you're better than being reduced to just a whale war ... why would you allow your broadest legacy to be DVs in a bear market when you KNOW that people have been surviving because of Hive starting in the pandemic? Xeldal is powering DOWN; he's not going to get significantly bigger even if you let his non-spam upvotes go. I'm not saying "don't fight against abuse." I'm not saying, "Just take the abuse because nobody cares anyway." Despite the fact of our unfortunate introduction, I do give a darn about you because you are a human being in a tough, tough spot. I'm saying, the way out is up to you.

Mathematically, you know you might end this positively by voting UP what you agree is the good stuff Xeldal votes, right? That stops you from DVing each other, and suddenly, good content makes both of you and everyone else so profitable that spam becomes less attractive for everyone. EVERYBODY DOING GOOD GROWS, and spammers get less. You know with your skills, you can inform people that the best thing to do with real spam is to MUTE IT, the most underused ability on the chain -- certain abusers are getting muted out by whole communities, and that may be the wave of the future!

There has GOT TO BE A WAY, Mark. You are highly intelligent, highly skilled. You still have options and choices, NOW, to fix this thing. You do not have to be trapped ... but that which is your choice is YOUR CHOICE, not mine, not Xeldal's. You make your reputation, DAILY, with people who have not been here as long and cannot know all that has happened. You can stop being called the bad guy TODAY, and from here forward. It is UP TO YOU.

@themarkymark

> and the thousands of upvotes a week I no longer give when I stopped voting on authors

This is one of the detrimental effects of DV wars that saddens me the most. Because DVs cost the DV'er nothing, yet they cost good-faith curators, sometimes considerably, it drives good-faith curators away from certain accounts, authors, topics, or away from manual curation altogether, as in your case.

Hive was a much better place when you felt free to distribute your upvotes in what you saw as a meaningful way. The value of Hive has diminished as a result of this conflict between you and newsflash, then xeldal. I'm not talking about market cap value. I am talking about the informative-content and decentralized-governance value (via manual curation) that you personally used to willingly provide to the chain (which, quite honestly, was in no way 'worth your time' in monetary terms).

Prior to this DV war, you were consistently adding value to the chain. I have no doubt that you could have been making more (in monetary terms) by just focusing on coding and projects, rather than writing and curating. That's why this is so sad and frustrating to me. Even when you were reaping author and curator rewards, you were 'losing' money, in terms of opportunity costs. But you were willing to do it and the entire chain was better off because of that. With you walking away, your continued efforts at growing the pie are being taken away from all of us.

> yet they cost good-faith curators, sometimes considerably, it drives good-faith curators away from certain accounts, authors, topics, or away from manual curation altogether, as in your case

This is by design. Rewards are supposed to go according to stakeholder consensus. If there is disagreement, then rewards go somewhere else. In cases where the disagreement is consistent, it's a waste of your vote power to continue voting there, because it isn't going to be part of a consensus and get paid. You need to vote elsewhere if you don't want to lose out.

If people could just send rewards unilaterally, without regard to consensus or disagreement, it would just be tipping (which people can also do, without concern over downvotes).

Thanks for the engagement. I truly appreciate it!

> If people could just send rewards unilaterally, without regard to consensus or disagreement, it would just be tipping (which people can also do, without concern over downvotes).

Yes, I am all for systems that facilitate consensus and that are at their core community-driven. With that said, when a single whale account can repeatedly nuke posts to zero, just because they personally disagree with the content or dislike the author or with one or more of the curators, it is not 'consensus'; it is merely the weaponization of stake. If the community genuinely prefers a Hobbesian state of nature for the blockchain, then so be it. (And if such is the case and if it becomes clear to me that such is the case, then I will likely do as marky and 'walk away' from day-to-day involvement.)

However, if one prefers a Lockean state of nature, as do I, then some changes are warranted.

As a relative newcomer to Hive (I've been here for a little over two years), I see the ease with which DVs can currently be weaponized as a serious drawback to the future growth and health of the ecosystem.

Greater transparency can and will improve the situation, without the need for any protocol changes, and I am actively working with some well-respected members of this community to accomplish those ends. However, we should also seriously consider potential protocol changes. I will be presenting some ideas in that regard, and hopefully something meaningful will come from the ensuing dialogue.

I get the fact that adequate tools are needed to combat spam and fraud and the like. I also appreciate (and agree with) the importance of consensus with respect to reward pool distribution. My thoughts and concerns (regarding the current system) are threefold:

First, I genuinely fear that the ease with which DVs can be weaponized can and will blow up in our faces if and when Hive gains some of the widespread recognition it deserves.

Second, if under the current anti-abuse system we are unable to maintain the active participation of valuable longstanding contributors, like marky, that should be a wakeup call, imho. (Even if marky is okay with 'walking away', I am not okay with that. Not when I believe we can do better. Not when I believe we can achieve a both/and rather than either/or solution, if we put our minds to it.)

Third, although I am convinced that 'free DVs' have their place and likely 'saved the day' when malicious actions by a few were threatening the continued viability (and thus the very existence) of the blockchain, it is an extremely blunt instrument as currently configured. In light of my first two concerns, I refuse to simply shrug my shoulders and move on. I have been and will remain diligent to explore new ideas, to dialogue and brainstorm with any who care to join me. I have no doubt we can hone the tools at our disposal to provide much more precision with much less collateral damage.

We'll have to agree to disagree. A single whale CAN nuke SOME posts. But they have to prioritize which posts, and that's consensus. The ones they're nuking do not have consensus. The others that necessarily survive with successful payouts are consensus.

Nothing is going to blow up in our face if Hive gains widespread adoption because there will be too many posts and too much engagement for any peculiar preferences of an individual to make a difference. We pay a lot of attention to it now because the whole thing is small so every controversial outcome becomes a big deal.

On every platform on the internet, ever, there a variety of bad outcomes, but they're usually small and not at such a systemic level that it destroys the platform. People's accounts get hacked, get locked for mistaken reasons (and sometimes never unlocked, etc.). There is also blatant copyright infringement (someone posted an entire Disney movie on Twitter in HD the other day and it stayed there for a few days before being removed), impersonation, aggressive disinformation campaigns, etc. Perfection isn't achievable. Same here.

> We'll have to agree to disagree. A single whale CAN nuke SOME posts. But they have to prioritize which posts, and that's consensus. The ones they're nuking do not have consensus. The others that necessarily survive with successful payouts are consensus.

Erm... do you mind to paraphrase that a bit, mate? Please, define WTF is "community" consensus under the premise that you are describing.

If someone chooses to downvote something, it gets less rewards. The more stake downvoting it (whether from one person or multiple), the more stake disagreement there is, and the less rewards it gets.

At the same time, OTHER posts which do NOT get downvotes (or get relatively little stake downvoting, even if some), get more rewards. Those are the ones where the community has broadly agreed to direct rewards.

You can think of a downvote as a sort of veto on payouts. Anyone (or multiple people) can stand up and object, essentially veto that payout, though strength of that veto depends on stake.

Ok, I suppose your premise might be a bit better understood now. But what I find very very weird and highly misleading is the fact that you would have used the word "consensus" in all that malarkey about the downvotes. Since clearly there's not any consensus at all when through an arbitrary downvote you end up snatching and sweeping with the rewards of the authors and all the curators of a post.

The consensus is all the stuff that doesn't get downvoted (or is downvoted less).

Someone can arbitrarily downvote a few things, but they have to choose what to downvote. No one has enough downvotes to blanket everything, or even most (maybe more like 1% in extreme cases).

> The consensus is all the stuff that doesn't get downvoted (or is downvoted less).

We'll have to agree to disagree here. That's not "consensus" in the slightest. Stuff that doesn't get downvoted or is downvoted less can happen for multiple and varied reasons.

Reasons as if the content of that "stuff" has not been seen by anyone or only seen by a minimal audience of true peers with the sufficient awareness and low HP stake as to know beforehand of their lack of power & influence and the uselessness of their downvotes to disagree, censor or cause harm to all those who show ideas contrary to their way of thinking.

Or that stuff so bland, so innocuous, so useless, so from a docile and servile herd that only seeks to fawn, flatter and please to the most powerful stakeholders with high HP stake to ingratiate themselves with them and earn favors and privileges for the stupid things they are forced to publish in order not to be questioned, punished and eventually ostracized if they dare to publish really interesting and important "stuff" with a minimum dose of controversy and critical thinking that really will motivate and make people think.

In my opinion only that kind of "stuff" is what doesn't get downvoted or is downvoted less. And it also has nothing to do with consensus at all.

> Someone can arbitrarily downvote a few things, but they have to choose what to downvote.

I really don't know what do you refer to or what do you want to mean with that of "they have to choose what to downvote."

Over here it is clear, evident and notorious that all those addicted to spread downvotes are only those wealthy individuals with high HP, influence and power to try to manipulate, alter and skew the volume of the content published on the platform by its users only in favor of their own agenda and petty interests. No one else downvote shit here anywhere.

Many of you use downvotes as a retaliation tool. Others as a way to force their own whimsical, political, economic or philosophical agenda on others. And many others as a mere form of malevolent amusement by causing damage, confusion and disappointment in poorer people who does not think in the same way as you. That's what I see as the closest thing to a "consensus" of what is really happening here.

> No one has enough downvotes to blanket everything, or even most (maybe more like 1% in extreme cases).

Yeah, if you have read carefully everything I've said in this comment. Define me now what the hell are extreme cases?

Cheers!!

> Reasons as if the content of that "stuff" has not been seen by anyone or only seen by a minimal audience

That's extremely unlikely for anything with large payout.

> I really don't know what do you refer to or what do you want to mean with that of "they have to choose what to downvote."

It's really very simple. People have only a limited number of downvotes and most don't even use all of those. Only a VERY, VERY small amount of content ever gets downvoted. For some reason you are fixated on that and ignoring the large majority that does not get downvoted, and therefore in effect gets a nod from the stakeholder base because for whatever reason no one objects to it.

> I've said in this comment. Define me now what the hell are extreme cases?

Extreme cases are the very, very largest stakeholders with a few percent of the stake (I'm one of the largest and I have a little over 1%). But with downvotes you only get 25% vote power, so someone with 1% of the stake can only downvote 0.25% of the upvotes.

The majority of stuff can't be downvoted heavily, and in practice it's far more than that (90-95%+ that is NOT downvoted). People have to choose. When they choose something to downvote, that is a VERY strong indication of disagreement. You don't have to agree there should be disagrement, but recognize it for what it is.

Once again, I do thank you for your engagement.

And, yes, I do agree that we disagree. My goal here, though, is to discern and discover some meaningful feasible space wherein we do agree, or at least where we can agree.

> A single whale CAN nuke SOME posts.

On this, we both agree.

> But they have to prioritize which posts, and that's consensus. The ones they're nuking do not have consensus. The others that necessarily survive with successful payouts are consensus.

So what you're saying here is that any post that gets passed over by 'any and all whale DVs' has thusly received the consensus blessing of all whales and thus is allowed to bathe in the HIVE inflation reward pool.

I think it's important that we define our terms. When I use the term 'consensus', this is what I mean:
> Consensus decision making is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. ... [A] group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with. This ensures that all opinions, ideas and concerns are taken into account.
(italics added) Source

Given that definition (which you are, of course, free to disagree with), one could say that a form of consensus is being reached on those posts that are passed over. However, one cannot say that any form of consensus is being reached on those posts that are being nuked. Consensus is thwarted because there is no viable (i.e. sustainable) mechanism wherein dissenting voices (i.e. those who believe a nuked post DOES warrant a portion of the reward pool) can have their "opinions ideas and concerns ... taken into account."

In other words, we do not have consensus on the overall distribution of the reward pool. What we have is a semblance of consensus that, in reality, gives unchecked veto power to each and every whale. Each and every whale is free to single out individual accounts and/or ideas that they dislike, and completely and totally remove them from participation in the reward pool.

And, whereas other whales are essentially defenseless in combatting the unilateral nuking of individual accounts and/or ideas, this enables each whale who chooses to exercise this power to systematically eliminate his/her enemies by simply being focused and persistent.

This is exemplified by the situation with @themarkymark, @newsflash, and @xeldal. The current protocol affords no mechanism wherein the innumerable accounts who value marky's contributions can have their voices heard.

A better consensus mechanism for the overall distribution of the reward pool is what I am and will continue vying for. A change to the mechanism so that true consensus can be more readily achieved.

No protocol will be perfect. However, I am convinced that we can do better.

This is consistent with the sentiments @theycallmedan mentioned in this post in August 2021.

I have some additional ideas that I believe will further improve on Dan's proposed Counter-DV concept, which I hope to share soon.

Here are two relevant excerpts from Dan's post:
> While downvotes are necessary for PoB to function in a decentralized way, and by adding 2.5 free downvotes, we have given plenty of ammo to the "good guys" - but inadvertently, we also gave plenty of ammo to the "bad guys." Keep in mind; we are spreading a governance token here; no one large entity should be able to censor governance distribution on a select group of people, IE "targetted bulling" - emotions should never lead to the ability to suffocate another's rewards in perpetuity without a good ability to defend vs. it.

> The main issue is to counter downvote abuse has an opportunity cost to the upvoter trying to help. Under the new flat ruleset of curation rewards, the only thing that can lower your known rate of return is downvotes. Again, asking someone to do good, and in return, they get diluted is not a good business deal, and no one will take it up constantly, nor should they. Good people acting good for the sake of good at the cost of dilution end up becoming irrelevant power-wise; thus, their acts of good are useless in terms of having an effect. We saw what happened when you removed the opportunity cost of downvoting; people used them to help the platform.
>
> So I propose a few options.
>
> One free upvote per day that can only be used on a post that is already downvoted and can't surpass the downvote amount. The post cannot be voted on twice, meaning everyone who voted before the downvote can't revote the post with the free upvote.
>
> For example, say a post is nuked to zero, the exploiter cant use the free upvote because the exploiter already self-voted and cant self-vote the same post twice, so all the bad actors trying to exploit a post cant re-exploit it.
>
> However, if the post is nuked to zero by bad actors, outside good actors can come in and use their free upvote to counter.
>
> A bad actor has no good outside votes, only self-votes; therefore, the only thing that can be downvoted is the attacker's own vote; therefore, they cannot use the free vote to counter. Since the free upvote can only be used on a downvoted post, you can't use it to earn anything, IE it's not like a free spam post upvote per day for attackers.
>
> This is doing the same thing we did with free downvotes except for upvotes; it removes the opportunity cost to reverse downvote abuse. In practice, we know if you let good people do good without being penalized, they will do good.
>
> EDIT* 8/11/21 - thanks to @smooth who rightfully pointed out an obvious attack vector here that I somehow overlooked. "You can split your stake into two accounts, post with both, upvote one post with each account, and then use the other account to counter downvotes." - This makes this defense actually more of an attack vector by giving abusers the ability to recoup losses. - But there may be a way to do it in a different way and accomplish the same goal. Further from smooth: "I think it would be possible to take the downvote curation reward penalty only from those upvotes chronologically before the downvote, so upvotes to counter the downvote wouldn't be penalized."

> So what you're saying here is that any post that gets passed over by 'any and all whale DVs' has thusly received the consensus blessing of all whales and thus is allowed to bathe in the HIVE inflation reward pool.

No, non-whales can and do downvote as well, and can have a large impact on rewards especially the moderate payouts that don't have whale upvotes.

If whales upvote and bestow a large windfall on a post (in fact even a single whale can), then it's fitting that other whales can also downvote that same post, no?

> This is exemplified by the situation with @themarkymark, @newsflash, and @xeldal.

The problem I have with your argument is that @newsflash (at least previously, if I understand correctly that it powered down) and @xeldal are extremely large stake accounts. They have a large, one could even say enormous (relatively speaking) investment in the chain. If, for whatever reason 'good' or 'bad', they happen not to believe that @themarkymark should receive rewards, it's pretty unlikely that @themarkymark receiving rewards could ever be said to have consensus. You can adjust things around the edges somewhat, but that fundamental fact is hard to avoid.

> No protocol will be perfect. However, I am convinced that we can do better.

I don't disagree with any of that!

> innumerable accounts who value marky's contributions

For what it is worth, number of accounts does not matter at all. A swarm of 10000 low stake bot accounts should have little to no influence. I prefer to speak of stake or some other demonstrably effective reputation mechanism (extremely hard), and not 'accounts'.

As I understand it, @newsflash and @xeldal targeted @themarkymark as retaliation. They decided to "go after" @themarkymark because of his voting behavior on other posts that they didn't like. This is a negative outcome whether it succeeds or not: @themarkymark, as with anyone else, should be free to express his position positive or negative on posts without fear of retaliation. The most likely solution to retaliation that I see as plausible is making votes anonymous. It's widely done in the real world in part for this reason (also because it inhibits vote buying). Technically this is difficult in a decentralized chain but certainly not impossible. It's more likely to practically achievable after moving social voting to a layer two app rather than trying to build more and more complexity into the base chain.

> If, for whatever reason 'good' or 'bad', they happen not to believe that @themarkymark should receive rewards, it's pretty unlikely that @themarkymark receiving rewards could ever be said to have consensus. You can adjust things around the edges somewhat, but that fundamental fact is hard to avoid.

True. If I adamantly assert that a given post deserves high rewards and you adamantly assert that it deserves zero, then there can NEVER be a true consensus (according to the definition I provided above) on that given post, because I will never 'accept' your desired outcome and you will never accept my desired outcome.

The challenge is, can we adjust the mechanisms to allow 'disputes' such as the one between marky and newsflash/xeldal to be determined more widely rather than just mano-a-mano.

The current system affords supporters of marky only two options: [1] upvote marky's posts and consistently lose curation rewards or [2] employ downvotes against other posts, with the express aim of inflicting curation-rewards damage to the original downvoter(s), to try to dissuade them from persisting in their attacks on marky's posts.

A Counter-DV option (like the one originally suggested by @theycallmedan in the aforementioned post) would allow others to costlessly pile on Counter-DVs (in accordance with and limited by their respective stakes). This might then invite others to pile on DVs. In the end, we get a truly stake-weighted near-consensus on those 'contentious' posts.

My suggestion with respect to Counter-DVs would be to have them either be weaker than DVs and/or less frequent. As such, the total 'value' of DVs able to be implemented would be greater than the total value of Counter-DVs. This allows DVs to be the dominant mechanism for combatting online abuse. However, it provides a mechanism for disagreement over rewards to be more balanced, because stakeholders can costlessly throw their stake into the decision-making process, both for and against rewards going to a single post.

> For what it is worth, number of accounts does not matter at all. A swarm of 10000 low stake bot accounts should have little to no influence. I prefer to speak of stake or some other demonstrably effective reputation mechanism (extremely hard), and not 'accounts'.

Agreed. When I said 'accounts' I was referring to real people with real skin in the game. And stake-weighted skin in the game is as good a 'reputation' metric as any, imho.

The problem with the current system is that those voting 'for' a contentious post (via upvotes) do so at their own loss, whereas those voting 'against' (via DVs) do so at no loss to themselves and force a loss upon their enemies.

We need some balance in this regard.

> If whales upvote and bestow a large windfall on a post (in fact even a single whale can), then it's fitting that other whales can also downvote that same post, no?

Yes, that is fitting, provided there is some community-wide balancing mechanism, rather than a mere unilateral downvote.

Let's consider two extreme cases, under the scenario where Counter-DVs are free and are worth 50% of a full DV, but no self-supporting Counter-DVs are allowed.

First, Alice publishes a one-sentence post saying "Good Morning!" Bob (a whale who knows Alice or maybe is Alice) upvotes the post with his $100 full upvote. Charlie sees this as entirely inappropriate and issues a -$100 full downvote, fully negating Bob's upvote. Bob cannot reverse Charlie's DV, and no one else in the community is willing to support Bob's clearly inappropriate behavior.

Second, Alice publishes a well-written post. Bob (a whale who knows Alice or maybe is Alice) upvotes the post with his $100 full upvote. Charlie sees this as entirely inappropriate and issues a -$100 full downvote, fully negating Bob's upvote. Bob cannot reverse Charlie's DV, but asks for help from the community. Ten accounts see Bob's request but agree with Charlie and pile on an additional -$50 worth of DVs. Twenty accounts agree with Bob and pile on $100 worth of Counter-DVs. The net result is that Charlie's attempt to zero out Bob's upvote on Alice's post was partially effective. Instead of the post receiving $100, it only received $50. However, it took $300 worth of voting stake (Bob's $100 upvote plus the twenty accounts giving $100 in Counter-DVs, which required $200 in combined upvote power) to award Alice $25 in author rewards and Bob $25 in curation rewards (which represent 50% of what Bob would've received had he upvoted a non-contentious post).

Although the second scenario does not technically meet the definition of 'consensus' (because Charlie's plan to zero the post, which he was adamant about, failed, as did Bob's plan to award $50 to Alice and $50 to himself), it is much closer to a 'consensus decision' because it represented the stake-weighted combined actions of 32 accountholders instead of just 2.

To me, this comes much closer to 'consensus decision-making' even though it does not strictly meet the definition of consensus.

> The current system affords supporters of marky only two options:

No there are two others ones completely different from what you mentioned:

1. Support themarkymark with tipping, witness votes, DHF, or some other mechanism, rather than believing that you should be able to direct a shared consensus reward pool to themarkymark (in effect, spending newsflash's and xeldal's money in a manner that directly contradicts their wishes).
2. Support some other posters instead of themarkymark, who you ALSO believe should be rewarded and where other stakeholders either agree or are neutral. There are lots of fish in the sea.

> 32 account holders instead of just 2.

Again, I don't agree at all that number of account holders is relevant. A 10000 account botnet is not more convincing to me than even a single highly invested stakeholder.

> ... in effect, spending newsflash's and xeldal's money in a manner that directly contradicts their wishes

Perhaps this is the core of our disagreement.

The only mechanisms for newsflash and xeldal to literally 'spend their money' would be through tips or direct payments. With that said, I assume that you did not intend the literal meaning of the phrase 'spend their money'.

In the non-literal sense, the mechanism for newsflash and xeldal to 'spend their money' is through their upvotes not through their downvotes. This is the only way the phrase 'spend their money' can make any sense (to me) beyond the literal sense.

> Again, I don't agree at all that number of account holders is relevant. A 10000 account botnet is not more convincing to me than even a single highly invested stakeholder.

I should have used the phrase "$450 worth of upvote potential instead of just $200" in lieu of "32 account holders instead of just 2."

> The only mechanisms for newsflash and xeldal to literally 'spend their money' would be through tips or direct payments.

The reward pool is a shared resource. It's funded by inflation of stake which is a tax on all stakeholders. When consensus decides to spend money, it is effectively spending ALL of the stakeholders' money, of course more of the larger stakeholders, less of the smaller, as with any sort of pool with unequal shares.

There are only certain types of expenditures that make sense to come out of that sort of shared pool. They're generally expenditures that, in some broad sense at least, the community of stakeholders agrees should be made. In such a mechanism large stakeholders are going to have a large say. Of course, it's not absolute.

If you want upvotes where other stakeholder won't have a say in opposing that payout, including VERY LARGE stakeholders not having a VERY LARGE say (I could be mistaken but I think every account we are talking about here is top 20 if not top 10 or maybe even top 5), that's called a tip. It can and should be done without a shared pool.

Bitclout/Deso is similar to Hive where it is a content publishing platform, but there is no reward pool/inflation and everything is tips.

No one tips outside of the ones who got a massive share of the initial supply and they mostly just pass it along to their group. The default "single click" tip is $0.01, which is used a bit, but still is fairly rare.

With inflation, users will be happy to distribute rewards as it doesn't cost anything, for a tip culture to be successful, we are going to need millions of users with very influential users at the top. Tips are always going to be less than 1% of the user base, probably more like 0.1% or less. I have no incentive to open my wallet and send a tip for some pictures of flowers or a post telling me about the top posts today on Leo Finance.

I didn't mean to suggest I expected a lot of tipping.

It appears you folks are at the tipping point of this conversation.

I suspected not just my thoughts on tipping.

Okay, I see your perspective, although I do not entirely share it.

Unfortunately, it seems I have failed to lucidly communicate my perspective.

I sincerely believe our perspectives are not all that different, nor are they fundamentally incompatible with each other.

We both wholeheartedly support stake-weighted governance over the reward pool, with a desire for something close to true consensus as the overarching mechanism.

Maybe I will find a way to be more lucid in my explanations in the near future. Or maybe I’m trying you’re patience too much. If so, I do apologize.

Nonetheless, I do appreciate the time you’ve taken to listen and respond.

Happy to engage and likewise appreciate your engagement.

> Yes, I am all for systems that facilitate consensus and that are at their core community-driven. With that said, when a single whale account can repeatedly nuke posts to zero, just because they personally disagree with the content or dislike the author or with one or more of the curators, it is not 'consensus'; it is merely the weaponization of stake.

Consensus can also counter those downvotes if they so chose to. In the end, the votes are a community effort. The real problem is most people won't be bothered to, or even care.

That's just going to be human nature at work and a you problem not a me problem issue. You also have the fact a third party won't fully understand what is going on and won't be easy to make an educated decision on which side to support. They will have to further invest time, which many won't want to.

Destroying an innocent person's income is in no way shape or form acceptable. Collateral damage is abuse.
And it shouldnt ever happen on Hive.

The dvwar is literally the pot meeting the kettle. Why can you not see that?

I'm simply removing one person's vote, nothing more. In fact by me not voting authors, I have removed way way more downvotes and "lost income". If I vote you right now, you will get downvoted. I also used to upvote you, but now I don't due to that fact.

But do we know this is STILL true, @themarkymark? I have suggested how you test it -- it could be that @xeldal is willing to let this go.

1. Find a non-spam author Xeldal upvoted -- upvote that author. See if he removes his vote because you are there. Maybe start with some New Hivers he is upvoting. Make their day.

2. Find a good content creator. Upvote that person before @xeldal gets there and see if he DVs. In fact, I'll volunteer so no one else who doesn't know what is going on has to go through the foolery.

What you have gone through, you have gone through -- it is a LOT, Mark -- but I keep telling you that you have the power to change things yourself. You are wrecking your reputation on Hive because the average person on Hive does not give two dead flies about what happened three years back when they see lost potential earnings and your name on that loss, and will NEVER READ THROUGH THIS POST. Those few who do will get your side of the story ... and that of those voices for peace who addressed both you and Xeldal in an attempt to end this. If you want to keep doubling down so you can be right in your own eyes, that's a choice ... but only one. Others have been highlighted, so, if content creators leave or never get started here because of your choice from TODAY, we will know your why, but also that other ways were possible that could have built a better future for Hive. I am attempting to reason with you, but I am also highlighting for the chain, for both you and @xeldal, that if Hive fails and reasons are sought, that there are people who chose to be reasonable and people who chose to follow their personal agendas, rolling over people who did not deserve to be pulled into this when other options were available. You can do nothing about where Xeldal chooses to write his name in that record. You only can choose where you write yours.

Surprised this hasn't been down voted yet 😂

It's auto-downvote, so it'll happen ~~ on days 4-5.

Ahhh. Makes sense

yeah... that's just how it works. Those fucks people are all using the same code. I pledged to be nicer, can't call people names.

Smack, I just realized we'll never get Hive Punks 2 or Hive Pandas or stuff like that now.

[IMAGE: https://media.tenor.com/VJ3qklTSpc8AAAAC/throw-up-vomit.gif]

I was never going to do a Hive Punks 2, it isn't fair to those who bought Punks to have another set of Punks being released.

I did have planned a game @plunderpunks which was a Pirate themed game that used Punks as well as a few other ideas.

ahhh I knew it...

But you could have enabled burning Punks for Punks v2, everyone would have been cool with that.

There was some thoughts similar to that, as well as a few other ideas. There was in fact an idea for Hive Punks: Next Generation but it would play out much differently and would be an optional migration for owners.

That would have been so EPIC. I know Dan bought a bunch and was waiting for something like that.

@themarkymark

Thanks for sharing.

I have long hated the way DVs can so easily end up being weaponized. And, I've always hated the collateral damage that can result from a DV war between whales.

I noticed a year ago that your posts were being consistently nuked and that you had greatly curtailed your posting frequency as a result. As a fellow nerd, I always enjoyed your posts and found them informative and helpful. As such, I was sad to see them become so infrequent.

I have done a LOT of contemplation about the various issues related to on-chain abuse and past and current anti-abuse efforts. I have also dialogued a LOT with a lot of great Hivers about this issue, many who generally agree with me and some, like yourself, who have generally expressed disagreement with my points of view.

In any event, I plan to publish a post soon that will detail multiple different approaches that might help mitigate the problem of DV weaponization, while maintaining adequate protection against other forms of on-chain abuse, such as bot-nets, comment farming, spam and the like.

I am optimistic and hopeful that we can improve the situation considerably, with some relatively minor changes.

> I have done a LOT of contemplation about the various issues related to on-chain abuse and past and current anti-abuse efforts. I have also dialogued a LOT with a lot of great Hivers about this issue, many who generally agree with me and some, like yourself, who have generally expressed disagreement with my points of view.

Despite my situation, I still believe downvotes are needed. My situation is very rare and is a tiny fraction of typical downvotes. There are only so many childish whales available. As I said in private a few times there are far more malicious upvotes than malicious downvotes, at least to a scale of 10,000:1 or even 100,000:1. Most "solutions" to this issue are easily countered by just making more accounts. Finally there are already tools available to counter this type of abuse, they just frequently are not used.

> As I said in private a few times there are far more malicious upvotes than malicious downvotes, at least to a scale of 10,000:1 or even 100,000:1.

I respect that perspective (even if I am not fully convinced regarding the relative scope or impact). Even so, I believe there are some better methods we can employ, that will get us much closer to a both/and solution to help mitigate both types of abuse.

You should start a discussion with your ideas in MM with the devs. A lot of ideas have been brought up before, but most are very easily circumvented.

Fair enough. I’ll do that.

Wen post?

I recently noticed that you were dropping hints elsewhere on the chain.

Well, at marky's suggestion I will be presenting them to a group of devs for critique and stress testing first.

Hopefully I'll have something meaningful still worth presenting after that.

I got a laugh out of that, in a good way. Things can and will get picked apart. Of course, it needs to happen.

Alright. I'll go back to working on my patience.

I do agree with you, bro!

https://leofinance.io/threads/view/abu78/re-abu78-ecftkde2
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people ( abu78 ) sharing the post on LeoThreads,LikeTu,dBuzz.

I wrote a little piece several weeks ago called, value is not created it is transferred. This pretty much sums up what these types of posters are doing. They are accumulating and transferring actual wealth to themselves regardless of their content value. The downside to this is as they cash out their rewards for income with their worthless content and they reduce the value of the existing remaining assets. This in and of itself doesn't sound like a very big deal but when you are combing hundreds of dollars a day in actual value off of the community without actually contributing to it, it's the community that has to pay for it because the value that they inserted into the community for community growth is being removed by someone who's not actually contributing.

Now I support the idea of a no censorship environment, so muting these individuals is not the answer. But, there does need to be a justifiable and effective way to make illicit behavior unsuccessful. The easiest way to do this would be to create sets of programmed laws that govern how an upvote or downvote can be used. For example, No single account can receive any more than 5% of your votes. This means that a person must vote for 19 other authors before they can vote again for the same author. Unfortunately, the comber would likely simply create 20 accounts to curate with the bots. How I would programically counter that is make vote power a calculation of the uniqueness of your last 100 votes. 100 unique votes equals 100% vote power, so repeatedly voting on the same authors reduces your max vote power. There are ways to programically control misuse without singling out abuses or censorship. Making abuse programically harder to do forces combers to adapt or seek easier opportunities.

Last post? xeldal? Friday? fk its all too much! Hey is it time to sell Gods Unchained chests yet?

if you do go, I'll miss ya marky 😃

> is it time to sell Gods Unchained chests yet?

Been selling off cards as fast as I can (which is really slow)

Wonderfully explained. Quality posts are key for the growth of hive overall.

It’s amazing that you have labour end to explain everything. That’s happening behind the curtains.

I hope you and the other wells can find a way of core existing.

Much love and respect for the deep dive posts you put out explaining how some technical things work on hive.

With great power comes great responsibility. When you are one of the big ones to promote or prevent whatever, you will be asked for responses.

Even if it frustrates you to give the same answers over and over again, forcing you to repeat yourself constantly, everyone who receives your down-votes expects an explanation. Each case is an individual case and wishes to be treated as such.

The frustration that someone does not accept your answers or justifications is quite understandable. But it does not absolve you from having a debate with anyone who wishes to do so, as much as it tires you insofar as you have taken the first step (DV). So if it tires you and you do not feel like and you do not enjoy it, the logical consequence would be to stop your downvotes (or to reduce them to a level that is bearable for you).

It is already very tiring to have a debate with an individual in which that individual subjectively shows no insight. However, this is not a matter that needs to be judged conclusively as long as communication is desired. Only when all attempts at communication do not lead to a satisfactory result for all participants and someone refuses to communicate, ignores arguments instead of taking them up, could DV be the final action. However, this should be preceded by all possible alternatives.

Downvotes would therefore a.) only need to be distributed by you in the quantity that you yourself can handle b.) want to be debated on a case-by-case basis.

So if you can only handle one account, then it's just one. If there are several, that's fine too. But if their number exceeds your capacity, it is up to you to adapt your behaviour to your capacities.

It is, in my view, illogical to equate downvotes with upvotes because they are two different things. Many of your upvotes do not undo one of your downvotes and vice versa because they are distributed among different users. Each act stands on its own.

Frustration fatigue is not an argument and therefore cannot apply.
Impersonal downvotes cannot exist simply because ultimately your judgement of whether a user produces shit cannot be completely objective. It always has subjective parts and only if you want to assure yourself of the impression that an imagined majority (or importance of certain users) agrees with you and you perceive such as a convention, you can keep the image of "good" about yourself.

Reason is brought to you in the measure in which you send out reason. Unreasonableness is brought to you in as much as you yourself are unreasonable.

If you wish peace or agreement with Xeldal, it must be clear to Xeldal. It presupposes his willingness to be in contact and communication with you.

If he or someone else perceived you as wanting revenge or wanting to be right, it can be that this person will want you to take his revenge for some time longer. Eventually it'll stop (except automation is in play and the involved never come back, die or busy themselves elsewhere).

Is this an emotion which you yourself never felt, never had, never acted out?
If you rarely acted out such emotions they soon will stop against you if you decide to become serene.

First off I'd say don't you fucking dare disappear because of differing opinions or perspectives.

That's most unWeb3 of you. Plus... Deadpool wouldn't give two fucks about what people think. So... there's that.

I'm running against the clock here. And against less than half days of having electricity now as well, so I'm bookmarking this to read when I can give it my full attention.

Not because I care about politics or ego and the inevitable misunderstanding these cause. But because I happen to like you immensely and find you fucking funny. Which is why I like you immensely. Also. You have a good heart underneath all that Avatar. And I'm a liddle bit of an actual expert on this shit. Now. Although I'd never call myself a ninja. Or a guru. 👍🏻

So... without needing to know your reasons for your decisions... which by all standards of a free and conscious (! Knock knock !) community you are entitled to have I'd simply say this...

If there is one thing I do not abide it is a pack mentality and bullying. I'm into courage, you see.

Because this is where any authentic kind of Fre3dom resides.

Nobody can know anything for sure. That's not how this experience of being human "works". And if someone out there actually believes they're 100 percent "right" about any of this I'd LOVE to hear their argument.

In person. With an open minded and tolerant dialogue. Please. I'm dead curious to know how that's possible at all.

So stay. Please. This way we can all possibly learn from each other.

With respect. And love. Stay you. ❤️

Being human is okay, in my book. And we all are only human. And we all get to accept this plain fact, take what works for us, change what doesn't and keep on keeping on.

You know... it's not very ladylike but I've had this well known saying rolling around inside my head for some weeks now.

"As if my shit doesn't stink too."

Y'know?

Good thing I'm not a lady because I think it fits in circumstances like these?

p.s No "Ask Me Anthing" for ages and I have a burning question... *tap tap

So take some time to rest and reboot because bullying hurts and is very harmful to mental health!

While you find your inner peace again...

https://youtu.be/TVEhDrJzM8E

Downvoting is nothing but a tool to be abused by the whales against the plebs since nobody (but marky) uses the downvote system for its intended purpose (with enough stake to make it useful).

And another thing! 😆

If you have a goal and the methods you're using to achieve that goal don't work...

you learn what doesn't work by experience, you adjust your methods and you carry on working towards your goal. Mmmmkay? No shame in being bold or learning. Ever!

What you don't do is bail because you're afraid. Ever!

Now get your goddamned Deadpool face back on and keep on trying to change the world.

Please.

"It's unfortunate that some people tend to downvote simply because they want to respond in a way that suits their own preferences, especially when they come across a comment they don't like.

After reading this post. I realized that the same fraudulent activities happening on Bitcointalk where users gives large amount of merits to multiple account is still happening on hive. I have also noticed some hive accounts without posting activities, but has lot of Hive power and HBD stored.
Its is so sad to see that even the decentralized system is no longer transparent. Completely filled with corruption and hatred.

I remember how a user down voted most of my post for nothing, which i decide to start afresh.
I will save this particular post from @themarkymark for future reference, lots of activities even worst than this is still happening.

@themarkymark Sr. Please please don't say it's my last post, I am really sorry what happened with you or with all others, Sr. We need unity we need solutions to problems and issues.we don't find fight please I just want to hear you don't going to leave hive blockchain

I am not sure your are just going to stop publishing content or Curating posts or you are going to power down your account for leaving hive, I personally think it should not happened I also requested to all hive users please help you and all other involved in it to find a solution

I am waiting for your reply please don't leave hive, think positively you are not an ordinary user. Developers or witnesses like you are a backbone of Hive blockchain

I cant believe this is still a problem. These people started that crap before with @blocktrades and other users were just collateral damage. Anything that @blocktrades supported or any user supported @blocktrades they got targeted by @berniesanders and his minions @transisto @tamim @newsflash. Maybe they all same person 🤣

It is really childish that both of you are doing such shit in such a place where you guys are the whales and many new people expect a lot of support and good behavior from all of you!
Without the combined support of the whale curators, it is very difficult to protect the reward-grabbing strategies. While there is extreme nepotism is clearly noticeable in most of the bigger communities, then how this work I don't know!
Many garbage posts are being over curated and many good authors are leaving the place and you guys are representing the e community as a mess.
I appreciate your previous works, keep doing that with mutual understanding and stay away from each other, while so much nepotism exists, then let some whales grab the rewards pool, which is not only your responsibility to protect that, or no one has assigned you for that I think.
make Hive a better one, you can't fix it alone, so it is better to do some constructive work.
Thanks for your clarification, hope you will take part in some good works here.

> I have deep regrets of getting into anti-abuse in the first place, it has made my time here fairly miserable and has had no benefit to me.

Bah! the same old same old.

https://cartoons-a-plenty.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/upload-17.jpg

You looking good. How you lose two fingers?

I lost two fingers? Ah! that's just joker's shit made by the super smart Midjourney. };)

Ahh thought you were showing off your new outfit.

Well maybe. But today I didn't want to show my new outfit publicly yet, because I had the impression that I was missing something. ;p

https://queerinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/IMG_5998-1536x1536.jpg

Just a note, @themarkymark, and ALL ... @xeldal and @enki voted you UP. That means that they are perhaps ready to let this go -- please also observe that fact, @acidyo, @kencode, and others. That suggests that Xeldal and Enki may be willing to LET THIS GO, Mark. Probably the best way to test that would be to go vote something UP, and see what happens. You CAN KNOW if the war can be over ... maybe you are one decision from "live and let live." Or not. Still, up to you.

I think you are missing the point.

And I think you are refusing to see mine. I know from your post that you were doing your very best to control abuse, and you paid a heavy price for it. That wasn't fair. If you need vindication for everything that happened in that past before you will let this go, that is YOUR CHOICE. But AGAIN ... Hive's good creators and new creators are going through looking like they are the same as ACTUAL spammers because of those daily DVs. That's up to today... I'm speaking to you about a better tomorrow for everyone.

How do you know that FROM NOW, you cannot return to posting and curating? AGAIN, the two whales you say are abusive to you HAVE STOPPED, at least on this post. Can the past be made up for here? No. Hive has a seven-day rule. Can you curate again without being bothered -- only one way to find out, and that's to DO THAT. Will Xeldal and Enki return to DVing you and upvoting spam when you stop pursuing them? Maybe. Maybe not. No guarantees ... but how will you know if you don't test it?

So, maybe you don't care -- this may be your last post. Fine. I will be posting tomorrow as I am today, and I will be trying to uplift Hive and Hivers tomorrow. You used to be GRAND at doing that. I understand that you feel that was taken from you by several larger whales ... but if they are willing to lay down their arms, you can get back to doing what you were GRAND at doing, IF YOU WILL. So many people in these comments have been supportive, and have said THEY REMEMBER, Mark. I believe them.

I most certainly know you are going to do whatever you think best. Whatever you decide, I have now documented for the chain that Xeldal and Enki have budged a little. I asked them not to DV you if they were interested in this ending TODAY, NOW, for the FUTURE. They haven't DVed you; they upvoted you. There's movement on one side of this, Mark. There's hope for Hive and Hivers that this can end -- and I want that EVEN FOR YOU, Mark. Really. But AGAIN, it's up to you. You were not DVed by ANY WHALE today... the next step would be to return to curating and see what happens. The past we cannot do anything about... but we have TODAY, and we may be graced with TOMORROW.

There was a point to my No Agenda art posts and there was a point to being able to show artists there was a way to earn.

As a result of the downvote war you got into with @transisto over this I stopped work on the project (I have plenty else to do). As you know I never got into a personal downvote war with you over this and I just decided to move my efforts in other ways.

Today the successful artists chosen for No Agenda show art receive a cut of the streaming Lightning payments which go to that show if they register and get a Lightning address usually with a custodial Lightning system like Alby or Wallet of Satoshi. Hive could and should have been fulfilling this role but with artists owning their own keys. I didn't have the time to push it and especially against negative push back.

The bulk of the amount earned by that account was given to the No Agenda show but there's probably some sitting in the account I need to tidy up.

Sorry it worked out this way, I certainly wasn't "milking" the reward pool but I understand why people couldn't see the long term goal. I'd hope that the community considers me to be a productive member and if anyone thinks I'm a leech taking out more than I put in, I'd like them to come out and tell me.

I wasn’t under the impression you were farming yourself. It was simply automated no value posts 20+/day getting up to $100 in rewards a post. I disagree the reward pool should be used like that.

I paid for it as I no longer can curate or post.

I suggested to make them declined rewards to eliminate the issue but I know that didn't solve your problem of raising funds.

You're not a leech.

I've come to offer some outside perspective and I want to make it abundantly clear that I'm not taking any position on this current drama whatsoever.

Quite a few people, including actual artists who are present on this platform couldn't make much sense out of those rewards. If you look around, you'll notice quite a few people talking about things like retention.

Naturally, someone working on an actual post for actual consumers on Hive might look at what boils down to a constant stream of advertisements getting no engagement while receiving a pile of cash, compare it to their results including receiving far more engagement, feel undervalued, become frustrated and possibly leave in the worst-case scenario.

I'm sure that some healthy communication would have solved the issue. I assume many would have been satisfied with something like a compilation post seeing high value and even trending status, which would have resulted in getting actual eyes on the project rather than alienating people and turning eyes away. This could have also led to consistent funding for the project.

Unfortunately, based on my previous encounters, the simple act of communicating with one of the individuals involved, in the worst-case scenario, could lead to all previous and future work being downvoted rather than rationalized results and productive conclusions.

This is why I personally ignored it, knowing full well that it would devolve into a disaster.

Again, I'll still vouch for you. You're a good dude. Not a leech. Shit happens. I just want to add I think it would have been awesome if that project brought some artists over and they were present here, earning, like I and several others have for nearly seven years.

Thanks, yeah it was going to be too much work to sell Hive as the place for No Agenda art going forward, would have been good for everyone though.[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

Perhaps a No Agenda tokenized community tied into Hive covering more than just the art but of course also including the art would be the way to go. Then it goes both ways where you have No Agenda consumer base coming to Hive, and Hive consumer base coming to No Agenda. Keep in mind that both consumers and creators are rewarded on Hive, which would naturally attract more consumers to any brand if executed well. This can be done with any brand. The content naturally struggles without the presence of its market.

And yes, I know you're a busy guy and me suggesting that is no different than walking up to your desk and dropping a one meter tall stack of papers.

Don't worry. It doesn't have to be done by Friday.

Yeah, the expression here in Israel is para-para literally cow-cow... we'll wait ill all the cows have walked past. I've got other things to do.[IMAGE: https://i.imgur.com/XsrNmcl.png]

!BBH

@themarkymark! Your Content Is Awesome so I just sent 1 $BBH (Bitcoin Backed Hive) to your account on behalf of @fiberfrau. (1/5)

DPOS playing out, there are no good guys and bad guys, just a lot of people using their stake they way they want to see the platform grow or pay.

Thank you for the explanation, I've been seeing these comments and posts too but am basically oblivious to this and any other whale wars. I did wonder where you went about a year ago though, as I had enjoyed interacting with you. I also appreciate your support back then (thanks so much for that :) ).

@dreemsteem you might be curious about this post?

Thank you for the update, i've missed your random posts, gaming, crypto, tech and the like - what a strange how do you do and thank you for explaining it - it's good to see the support once again. Mind you it's sad that this can happen, and as we've been here a while, we've seen it from an account that we used to be IRL friends with, it's disheartening - stay true dude

thought you were the bad guy but yeah you are not the bad guy

why did they start minusing the posts?

can you find out why the posts are minus?

Please why do you keep on down voting my posts

Woah, damn. I really wish hive would get to a big enough size, similar to youtube.

The dream of communities regulating hive and punishing this giant whales that are just out of reach even for hive witnesses!

Hopefully your doing better now. And turning off the social media and just enjoying life is fine and normal. Don't let those jerks get to you.

Grrrr you can have a free borgor.

Why the fuck do you downvote me?

I am brand new to Hive and I am just learning how things work here. Your post was a HUGE HELP in understanding how it works.

probably not the best post to use as a reference.

You are right. But as you may have read in my Intro Post, I prefer getting to know the dark side of things. This post does serve as a window to the dark side!

God says you reap what you sow.

And without wanting to offend you: If you flagged No Agenda because of high curation, that's one thing, but if you did it because of content that doesn't fit your worldview, then that would be unjust in my eyes.

And since God sees everything, he also allows exactly what you yourself have sown to be paid back... if the act was against God's order. For many think that their standard of justice is the law, but they have not yet reckoned with the most resisting power.

Whether you want to accept that in the end is a question of self-reflection.
They know the exact reason within themselves and, of course, God does too.

It was automated posts just posting an image 20 times a day getting votes upwards of $100. I explained this. It has nothing to do with world view.

Thank you for taking the trouble to explain it to me again.

Why do you downvote me?

Hey king! We need you, you're a such valuable member of the HIVE community and we need your help to bring the most advanced NFT market to HIVE that will integrate all the games and offer a new level experience to the NFT traders on all our blockchain. We're running a proposal and your vote is necessary to reach the goal. Thanks in advance king!

I feel like downvoting as an concept (at least in the context of Hive type platforms) is really a failed experiment. Especially since there is money involved. People will always feel like once they see an upvote on their content, that money belongs to them even though technically it doesn't. It's just human nature.

Downvotes can be intellectually interpreted in a perfectly logical way, but emotionally it's really straightforward: "Someone gave me money, and another person went out of their way to take it away from me."

It doesn't matter how the down-voter reasons it out or even if the vote was completely justified, because the receiver of that vote only feels spite. So it becomes sort of a 'rock and a hard place' situation.

This is why I don't get involved with down-voting content except on really rare occasions. I becomes more treacherous territory as your account size grows, I'd say.

You were a thoughtful and honest curator and your absence is certainly felt. I'm still doing OK without your upvotes, curation trail, and all that stuff but knowing that some characters I don't respect won this conflict and your hands are tied when it comes to curration irritates me a lot.