bump.
I read a post of yours I think it was today, and it made me remember this post. I thought to myself, Well shit, that's buried in the weeds won't find it can't remember the title."
Then I went away for a while and came back and looked under my bookmarks, by accident, and I saw this post. Matrix in action. I really like the frame of thought with this post. A good reminder to the community.
In the post you think you read today, which by now was probably yesterday (just to bring more confusion into this) you saw the lighthearted lines about the online content creator being deplatformed everywhere else, coming here, and asking for donations with a goal of a quarter million dollars. True story. It's Dan Dicks from Press for Truth, but it doesn't even matter who, what, where, or when.
Some of these people reach these goals when this happens, but then what? They're still deplatformed. These folks with massive followings and no place to call home can easily recommend their consumers power up some Hive. These creators can have their own community, and their own Hive Engine token as well. So the money comes in from their adoring fans, creates a revenue stream for the creator and also guarantees they have a platform forever. Now, not only is the consumer supporting their favorite online persona, but also investing to guarantee that persona has a platform, forever.
If you had a quarter million fans and asked for a dollar donation from each to stay afloat, you might make a quarter million dollars. If you explained to these people how Hive works, tens of thousands of those people might be willing to spend $20, $50, $100. The money isn't in your pocket, it's still in theirs; still set to earn. Of course the goal isn't to earn more and more with each individual post, the goal is create demand for the tokens here, pushing their values up over time, consistently. Thousands of creators with millions of fans can do that, and guarantee a future together. Fans take part ownership in the content they like. Fans become the investors this Hive platform can't seem to find. That's the main point I should be driving home.
As you can see though, my head continuously explodes when I go off on this tangent. What seems to make so much sense in my mind becomes all jumbled up and rambly when I try to put it into words.
As you can see though, my head continuously explodes when I go off on this tangent. What seems to make so much sense in my mind becomes all jumbled up and rambly when I try to put it into words.
Ya I'm the same way.
Ya it makes a lot of sense. Maybe have a HBO style front end that teaches users the value add. "Support your fav creator with Hive" and have a buy button right there. Make the UI slick and the upvote fancy. And memes and NFTs and you have a whole new way to interact with content creators. The same can be said for content producers, power up hive, upvote some comments of your loyal supporters, grow organically. Hold contest etc.
I see a single entity (like an online magazine with a few contributors, popular vlogger/video channel, musician) setting up a community and their own token. I see their consumers flocking to the content, as they would anywhere else. These consumers are spending time and money, engaging, rewarding each other while also supporting the creators. These consumers are staking tokens for the sole purpose of supporting who they want, so I would automate the vote, that option should come standard with the UI. They should have the option to be able to drop the weight of all 10 votes in one shot, so if someone does drop a 20 into Hive, it doesn't take 20 years to end up in the creator's wallet. I don't want to see the consumer's spending habits change. They're always throwing money at content now, a few times per year, little bit here and there. This time, instead of throwing it away, burning through their stacks, they're actually doing something productive with it, and their time as well. Some are quite loyal on Youtube, always leaving comments. The creators sometimes leave a lame ass heart next to those, showing their appreciation. The commentator loves it, feels special, over a heart. A lame ass heart. That could have been an upvote. A fraction of a Hive token earned, combined with the creator's token, that can be redeemed for discounts on merch, exclusive content, etc.
I cringe any time I see one of these deplatformed types and even those producing content without issues asking for donations. If that dude I mentioned managed to pool together a quarter million worth of staked Hive, and with a rising token value and skin in the game, he'd be setting himself up to earn far more over time, without the help of current stakeholders. Thousands of content producers and millions of consumers working together in this fashion... that's kind of where I thought we'd be by now. The big names have been showing up over the years and not one ever brought a paying following with them. Instead they litter their content over a gazillion platforms and scrape off pennies from the floor. Their consumers aren't even a part of their thought process in some cases. They don't even need them in some cases, like the dude I mentioned, who rarely even gets a comment under his work here. That's what happens though when the platform is marketed as a place to get paid. You get used and abused.
Fucking rambling again. LOL!
It seems that the content creator follows an inefficient model. It's like you have 5 rocks, one being gold, and you jump lump them all together and sell for a much marked down price. Creators never had anything like steem/hive before, so it does take awhile to click. For me it took a long time to click and it's still clicking.
We got sidetracked a bit due to bidbots, it went from tipping creators with your stake to tipping yourself with your stake. But with the new EIP, vote selling isnt a thing and we are seeing people vote other people, for better or worse.
It would be really cool to have a "curator" style front end that put the emphasis on the vision you laid out.
I'm curious, and I know you're prob tired of hearing of "tweaks" but as a content creator, how do you like the current voting system. Talks of doing what Leo did and moving to a flat curation extended window. This way, lets say a very popular author comes over and explains hive gets users to power up etc. Now he is getting a lot of auto votes, but the curators are competing so much they are voting at 3mins and ruining curations rewards for all. I think the flat curation could solve the getting shafted crackhead feeling.
I'm at a place where I'm not looking to tweak "layer 1" that much, more so moving to a new frontier called layer 2. But before I completely get my focus off of layer 1 I'd like at least one last community effort to see what can be improved. The EIP really changed this place forever, and that was really the first main community-oriented change outside of INC back in the day. I'd like to take what we learned and see if we can do it one more time as a community.
This post was more recent, again talking about consumers. I don't think many saw this one. Every time I start thinking about changes and tweaks, I look at what we have, what might be coming, and what's missing. What we have depends on consumers, what's coming depends on consumers, and what we're missing are consumers.
The problem with total freedom is when you give it to someone, they don't know what to do with it. Early on a few things clicked for me, then the thoughts morphed into something tuned, still with room to improve.
When it comes to voting, for one, I don't want to be penalized when upvoting comments. I held on to these tokens because I saw the benefits of catering to consumers early on. Drinks are free at my place. I thought there'd be a lot of competition, so offering perks to consumers would be necessary. That would lead to a positive feedback loop where other creators see and ensure they too have tokens staked in order to be competitive. Should have led to more with skin in the game resulting in less selling pressure, protecting my investment. I've never been a fan of this five minute window nonsense and the penalties. I was all for the 50/50 split because it was offering consumers more. Leo is probably taking the right stance. But as a content creator with skin in the game, voting and supporting other creators should be the last of my personal responsibilities. Can't play every position on the field all at the same time. Those going around acting like drunk referees, downvoting creators because they didn't go out and downvote, that was obnoxious behavior. Free downvotes were introduced because instances of actual abuse were running rampant and nobody wanted to do anything about it, or it cost them money. They were not to be used to place salary caps on honest creators. More on that here.
The EIP has yet to mature. Much of that has to do with Sun's interference. Many of the positive changes required more people in the mix in order to be able to see the full potential. The only problem I have now with changes is the common trend where things are changed then not pushed out to the general public to see if it worked. Improvements or the new direction isn't marketed. Instead the community shrinks, people panic, then start messing with the knobs again. The most important step is always skipped, and that's bringing the masses here. Of course, any time I say "attract more people", many automatically assume I'm talking about content creators. I swear, any time I say, "We need to attract more consumers," I'm met with, "You're right! We need to attract more creators!"
Shifting to a linear curve makes sense in that it doesn't disproportionally favor large accounts, which is how the voting system works currently. We want the smallest accounts to feel like their vote matters to get them hooked and keep them hooked. Plus I would vote for getting rid of any sort of voting window on a post, which is exactly the way LEO is doing things. It doesn't matter when you vote, you get half your vote and the author gets the rest. It prevents autovote piling and lets people vote more on the things they like. It's more akin to a tipping system. The drawback to this change is more potential for vote selling. Also, I think we need to change the powerdown period to 4 weeks instead of 13. Also also, the DAO needs an overhaul with some kind of checks and balance system put in place. Or, at the very least we should be able to downvote proposals we don't think should be getting funded. Also also also, we should expand the top 20 witnesses to something larger in order to further decentralize things, a nice round number like 100 for example, at the least.