RE: When Is a Censor Not A Censor? The Wider Implication of Downvote/Cancel Culture on Hive.
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
Most of the other arguments are kind of void when you take into account how blatant autovoting is ongoing and not handled with care. You could say everyone not on big autovotes is getting censored with your example.
That would make some sense except that this is a stake weighted platform by design and the people placing the autovotes have done so voluntarily based on their choice to support the authors. In effect they are saying that they trust the 'brain' of the author to create the content they want to support. Sometimes they might remove the autovotes if the person changes. I understand what you are saying but the nature of proof of brain is not inherently invalidated by auto upvoting - though I agree that full manual curation would be a significant improvement.
To then take the meaning of censor from some older definition instead of the one people are facing in this day and age all over web2 feels like you're just trying really hard to make your points feel more important.
I have been finishing a huge book for years which is on the topic of English language. When seen in the context of the bigger picture, it is very clear that understanding the origins of words makes a huge difference to our understanding of ourselves and why things are as they are. The deeper intentions behind words are often lost and many important truths about human interaction can be picked up by finding the underlying essence of words. Etymology is even a specific field in Yoga and others schools for this reason - it's an ancient spiritual understanding that word roots are important for individual and societal balance. If I 'judge' that your words are unethical 'in real life', I might not censor you in that I can't stop you speaking, but I might make sure you miss out on opportunities in your life in ways that I have power over - this is a form of covert censorship and power limitation that is in some cases even more effective than deleting your tweets. It's all censorship and the underlying etymology of the word makes this clear.
I'd argue a lot of people are more willing to check out a post if there's downvotes on it and especially the comments to see if anything was said about it.
If they see the post then they might do, but the main mechanism we have currently for making posts visible is upvoting. One way around this would be to stop downvotes from having an effect on the trending pages, but to still remove post rewards.
I don't know about others but I barely check trending.
I look at both. When I first started I was only checking trending as I didn't follow anyone and wanted to get a sense of the type of community involved on Steem. The majority of my post is as much about marketing as anything else. Perception is key and the trending page is the prime focus for potential new users and investors. I know for 100% sure that most of the people I have pointed to Hive or Steem have rejected it for exactly the reasons I am highlighting - they look at trending, ask why things are so weird and skewed, laugh and go somewhere else!
Who knows even if the 25% is written in stone or will be changed later to reflect on how much it is being used/needed.
I'm not sure which 25% you are referring to here.
I haven't seen many actual malicious downvotes happening ever since Steem, there I spent a lot of time and potential rewards manually countering said downvotes
It comes down to what you personally define to be malicious. I'd say that consistently zeroing most of someone's posts, even when they cover completely different topics to those you have stated you have a problem with, would be considered malicious by most people. That's what is happening to my posts at present, plus others. Attempts to discuss the issues or mediate were met with aggression, superiority and avoidance.
Your post is being maliciously downvoted? Come on.
It comes down to how you define malicious downvoting. If downvoting is being done on the basis of the content of the post, then surely it wouldn't be done on posts which are quite different. If the downvoter does so repeatedly and not only doesn't explain but does as much as possible to avoid properly explaining, I'd call that as malicious as downvoting can be.
Or they just disagree with the rewards and constant autovotes? Shouldn't you also expect comments by the big autovoters similar to how you're expecting comments on downvotes? I'm pretty sure smooth isn't a malicious downvoter from the downvotes I've seen him cast over the year.
I'm not referring to smooth, I'm referring to the chain of 60+ downvoters that have zeroed most of my posts in the last week. I've spoken to some of them and they have removed the downvotes and were surprised to find their accounts being used in this way.
I follow a couple of upvote chains which select who they follow based on the opinion of the people running them. It is a delegation of responsibility based on trust and shared goals - just as when stake is delegated. I don't expect people who delegate me to also comment or even pay attention to what I use the stake for and I don't expect recipients of my delegation to do as I say either.
Upvotes are inherently a statement of agreement about the content of a post and a desire to see it gain attention. Downvotes are 'maybe' the opposite, but maybe not. If I know that I have constant upvotes coming in then I know I can take time out of my working week to make quality posts. If that is removed at some point randomly then I can't. It's a simple courtesy to explain why you decided to downvote in a major way that can actually affect and influence someone's working day. It seems to me that the more money people have, the less they consider these things. The least they can do is not hide behind a thin veneer of 'service to others'!
So it all comes down to rewards then, you'd post if the autovotes continue to land but if they're removed you wouldn't. Somehow you think that's the same as your content/account/ideas being deleted and blocked from the platform completely which is an actual real problem on web2.
It's weird cause when I was being downvoted by 50m+ korean steempower for months for standing up to downvoting overrewarded garbage the first thing that came to mind wasn't that I was being censored. People could still see my posts, interact with them, etc. Of course some weren't as loud due to fear of also being targeted but I wouldn't say that's censorship either way, at least not the kind that's haunting web2 right now where it's a real problem. We might have to find another word for it cause this one doesn't do it justice imo.
I posted for years with zero autovotes or even upvotes for quite a while. When it comes to life and ddeath level of important topics I will post whether I get upvoted or not, but when I only have so much time available, the knowledge that I will likely get regular upvote support helps me feel comfortable in setting significant time aside to make posts. I can literally sit and build my own business, that benefits me mostly or I can share what I know in posts so as to help potentially many people. After many years of helping others for free and having very little to show for it, Hive/Steem is a welcome change that makes info sharing much more practical economically for me/us. I take the upvotes as appreciation from others who want me to carry on doing it. I don't rely on it but I do respond to it. If I were posting about cat memes or recipes I wouldn't be that bothered, but I am often sharing heavily censored information that can save lives. The downvotes seem to come from people who disagree and claim that the posts are actually harmful - yet they have provided zero evidence of this.
No, it's not as much of a problem as Web2.0's censorship - but at the same time there are so many more users on Web2.0 that getting followers and discovered can be a lot easier than Hive at times. Ultimately, both systems are a particularly convoluted way of communicating with people you haven't met before. There are probably much better ways of doing this that neither web2 or web3 provide.
I have been very actively and deliberately censored on Web2.0 sites for around 15 years. The first social network I used, Tribe.net, was literally bought out by Cisco and turned into a shithole of weird gay porn and random shite because the messages being shared there were too effective at disrupting the societal domination of large corporations. This was Web1.0, not even 2.0. Trust me, I know what full censorship is.
I understand that what takes place in Hive can seem to be less like censorship of that kind and in a sense it is. However, Hive is a decentralised space where anyone who does the 'obscuring' of posts via downvoting has the opportunity to engage publicly to discuss the issue. Facebook is hated partially because of their ridiculous control of posts/accounts without even providing a legitimate reason most of the time. Downvoting without attempt to engage feels very close to that kind of approach, but things don't need to be that way. For some reason, people seem to think that completely removing social interaction from social networks is a rational approach, when clearly it isn't and will not yield sustainable growth.
This is so not true. There's way more content creators trying to make it and consumers only consuming content from the top 0.01% than actively going out and being incentivized to find new content creators. As a curator with a project focusing on newcomers I can attest that.
Not sure why you compare it to facebook, they don't have downvotes/dislikes as far as I know. A better comparison would be Reddit, where I agree that it's way worse being downvoted or having bots downvoted you for months and you never find out who or why.
Who is saying this? Just because some prefer not to comment on their downvotes it's not always necessary or hard to figure out knowing who the downvoter was, what they usually downvote and given the content you're providing or your own history with downvotes. It's way better than the example I gave above and as we all know, me personally at least, is that not saying anything saves everyone a lot more time as trying to explain your downvotes only causes endless discussions.
So now that the post on downvoting has been downvoted to zero - along with all my other posts, again with no comment or explanation by the downvoters.. I guess this still doesn't count as malicious downvoting because.. reasons. I have a question - what IS malicious downvoting? Does it exist?
Bro, it's Chaos at this point... Get you some sps, and buy some vouchers... its not too late! jk but seriously though its chaos bro. You do understand that Ned was a really progressive liberal, BFFs with Anthony Bourdain and all. No surprise the small circle of legacy holders from steem and now on hive are not jiving with your stuff well maybe the poker players are that found steem and btc useful hopping borders in europe to play poker but still let us know what you find in terms of an alt way to do crypto with content. I loved what you had to say about threespeak and I might vote for their proposal after all.
Or just following people and checking your feed?
that is only possible for a small percentage of the users of hive that already follow a given profile. these people have already expressed interest the profile and so are following the posts. In general, we have to somehow discover the profiles that we want to follow and the way that is baked in to proof of brain is to do that through the posts percolating to the top of trending/hot via upvotes. Accounts which have the most stake inherently get more follows because people want their votes, so making network reach dependent mostly on follows is a decision that most hurts the smallest accounts and most benefits the largest.
There's also this thing called communities where people could actively look in new/hot/trending for posts of a niche they're interested in, that is if you wouldn't post in a general content community such as proof of brain that pretty much just nullifies the point of communities.
Yes, communities can be useful - I generally crosspost in my own ones, starting in proof of brain as I get strong interest and support from that community. Busy community trending pages will still bury zeroed posts though.