upvotes cost money
No, they don't. The genius of the platform is that the money that pays the creators upvoted doesn't come from our personal wallets, but from the rewards pool. That enabled curators to pay creators without that money coming out of their personal wallets.
Hive does several things well. Not all the things Hive does well are beneficial to Hive users. One thing Hive does well is concentrate governance in the ~36 whales that stepped up and mined Steem tokens in 2016, after the shenanigans Dan and Ned used to enable them to mine the Founder's stake that Ned later sold to Sun Yuchen that enabled him to completely centralize governance of the platform. On Hive this Founder's stake was converted to the DHF, that is slowly being mined by Blocktrades, Smooth, and the governing plutocracy because as user retention continues to fail, that is where the majority of money can be extracted from the platform.
It also facilitates censorship of dissent and functionally banning accounts by eradicating 100% of author rewards through incessant flagging of every post and comment by targeted accounts, storage of raw data on the blockchain, and the aforementioned feeless, 3 second transactions, and development by independent coders, although that can be suppressed just as easily as dissent. The open source code enables forking by anyone with the chops, and this has been done more than once, including to create Hive. None of these forks has eliminated the problematic plutocratic winner take all governance and DV's without introducing new and equally troubling problems.
Now that KYC for internet access, or even to fire up a computer, is being implemented across the world, the window of time in which a true free speech user owned platform could conquer social media, and thus the world, appears to be closing, and I fear Hive has run it's course. I sure hope I'm wrong, but no one has even argued that isn't happening, much less convinced me. Hive cannot offer free speech riding on a network infrastructure that forces biometric ID on everyone using it. Free speech is the fundamental value prospect Hive could have offered, but has failed to provide, and now the opportunity has all but been eliminated by mandatory biometric KYC to use the global network hardware owned by our would be masters.
I’m done basically. The red flags have been everywhere for years but in January 2025 I made a choice to power down 90% my stake and take advantage of pump to .68 cents. Glad I did, all I see is whales now giving exit packages to there friends 🤡. Now not even pretending to be for future work to promote but back pay for 6 years. I’m out. I’m gonna post a few more music posts I do on Tuesday’s but I’m basicly out now.
You have been valued account! I appreciate our interactions and all you posted over the years in #InformationWar community! Cheers friend!
This is a new level of it that even b4. Hive will be sub penny, I kept 5K powered up for giggles but I’m removing it all as protest now.
The genius of the platform
It is genius. It amazes me, as it amazes me when I turn on my car and it goes. I don't understand the mechanics of either. I only can report my experience. It's that experience that has a bearing on the attractiveness to other users.
When I go on Twitter (since Musk took over that is rare), I can like 50 posts and it does not cut into my ability to upvote more. I can like, comment, repost without limit. As a matter of fact the more I do that, the more likely I am to get noticed and to get 'followers'. Engagement leads to more engagement. The design of that platform is to get people to engage, to like, repost and comment.
Hive is different. The design induces the user to be selective in engagement. There is a wallet with a finite amount of 'mana'. Every time a user votes, mana is depleted. The finite nature of mana is an automatic constraint on engagement. I refer to mana as money because that is the currency on Hive. If we want lively engagement here, wouldn't it be good to have a system where users could 'like' a post and that action wouldn't deplete mana? The very fact of depletion is a disincentive to engagement.
We need more engagement. We need people to feel the charge--the surge of dopamine they get when they are on other social media platforms and they get 'liked'. It's that charge that holds them and brings them back.
If the token is not the primary lure, then a rise and fall in prices will not have a dramatic effect on user base.
also, new hivers don't have enough RC so rarely upvote posts, saving all their precious RC so they can post. but at least they comment or re-blog. to me, that is like them upvoting my posts.
Just another way to control them. It's meant to give them an appetite to grow their stake. All it does is choke off engagement. Engagement is the lifeblood of a social networking platform. At its heart, Hive is different from other crypto because it is based on a social networking platform. All the content in the world is useless unless there are people who read it and respond to it. Choking that off ultimately kills the coin.
I think :))
Fiat is not the primary reason I do work for my neighbors. I spent hours on my knees today in the mud double digging and stripping weeds from the garden of a little old lady without pay. I primarily do work for my neighbors so that they prosper, and they have goodwill for me. If I need something folks I have served from my heart are unlikely to leave me in need. But, I cannot always work without pay. I have to have gas to get my truck to jobsites, to get materials for jobs I do, and all the things I do I don't ask somebody to cover because they're minor things. Not getting paid for any jobs, even though getting paid isn't my primary reason for working, will have a dramatic effect on my ability to do work.
There are people here who's primary goal is earning tokens. There are other people, like me, for whom earning tokens isn't my primary interest. Because there are both, and many other, motivations for using Hive, rising and falling prices does have a dramatic effect on the userbase. It also has dramatic effects for reasons unrelated to personal income for many here. @geneeverett has pointed out the collapse of Hive's token price is a red flag that causes him to lose confidence in the sustainability of the platform. That also affects me similarly. There are other reasons than personal finance that Hive token price affects Hive users.
I cannot agree that the token not being the primary lure will preclude dramatic effect on the userbase when prices rise and fall for the above reasons, and more I spared you my excessive verbosity besides.
"The design of that platform is to get people to engage, to like, repost and comment."
After Musk acquired Twatter, I tried it again. When I upvoted and reposted Twits' tweets, I got throttled. There is a political agenda that affected you and I differently. The more you posted and engaged, the more you were encouraged to post and engage. The more I posted and engaged, the harder I was throttled until my account was suspended, and I gave up in disgust.
Your experience is not ubiquitous. Other experiences may not be apparent to you, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
The earning of rewards on posts is dependent on people upvoting those posts with their VP. If there was no VP, there would be no rewards for posts, and the fundamental value proposition that Steem introduced in 2016, that social media platforms that profited richly from people using those platforms to post and engage one another could be replaced with Steem that enabled the creators of social media posts to earn by being paid by their audiences, rather than advertising making platform owners rich, and paying the creators of the content that made them rich nothing. While that was largely a deception, because the ~36 whales that have maintained governance of the platform since they minded their whale stakes in 2016 capture >90% of the inflation from the rewards pool, leaving the rest of us competing for the remaining <5%, many people are intent on receiving rewards, some even almost exclusively intent on those rewards - such as the ~36 whales that govern the platform.
I do not stop engaging when I do not receive tokens for that engagement. I am not primarily here for tokens. But there would be no here for me to engage with were there no tokens rewarding engagement, so I do care about the price rising and falling, because it brings people here, or chases them away from here. There are thousands of accounts I lament the loss of that have left for one reason or another since I encountered them here. I don't lament the loss of their tokens, but the loss of their acuity, insight, and wisdom, acerbic wit, and knowledge they shared here while they were here. I bet you can name a few, at least, who have departed you would prefer to be able to interact with here.
I said nothing like this. Price is not reason at all. I think I was pretty clear.
What I said was '@geneeverett has pointed out the collapse of Hive's token price is a red flag that causes him to lose confidence in the sustainability of the platform.'
You specifically mentioned selling at $.68. You referred to red flags. How did I misinterpret your remarks?
I don't think the price is the main problem.
If buying Hive doesn’t have a clear value proposition outside of getting more power, I think people should seriously try to brainstorm a new value proposition.
IMO simply having power is not attractive to most people in the same way it was even 20 years ago.
I am going to pin this post again because I think this post serves as a good place for people to come by brainstorm together.
Not sure if you saw My Hive Retirement Party post but I hope you stop by that post for the “party”
It was really nice getting to know you.
Sorry I muted you a while back, I was getting overwhelmed with information and I needed a break. Not really a you problem either I just needed a break and if you leave me comments I read them. 😅
I don't fret about other people much. I have enough trouble managing me. I am happy to have got to have such vibrant, wide-ranging discussions with you, because you have a unique outlook and active mind that causes me to have to think more, harder, and in new directions. I hope you have benefited from my own discussions as I have from yours. That is my purpose here, to enable people to better understand things that matter to them, and I don't think we discussed anything you didn't care about.
Be well!
Thank you sir! We had a lot of interesting conversations! You are an interesting person to say the least.
I know we didn't agree on everything but those are the kind of people I like to talk to. I’ve never been a fan of sycophants.
I hope you be well too and I wish you the best!