Khrom, a good summary of the downvote economy (aka Cabal) on Hive. It happened to me, just like you say. Whales protecting their profits, pretending to protect the platform itself. A trick mafias - and governments - around the world use, all through history, and today. Many people keep falling for it!
I was making $100 a post (after MANY years of ten cent documentaries and deep dives) on Hive during the late 2021 bull market, sometimes more. It was validation and reward after years of full-time work, sacrifice, and monetary investment. It was a small payout considering all that, but it was mine, and it felt good. That's when they hit, Skidmarky and his alternate accounts along with a few scummy cohorts, nuking everything to 0 (even comments) and pounding my rep down toward 0. I consider my posts my portfolio and my legacy, so to have it grayed out would be extremely hurtful (and they know this). So I essentially can't comment there anymore, and only post when I have something important to say (because each post sends me lower and lower in rep). Instead of $100 a post (which would be even higher now that I have more followers and we're in the next bull cycle) I'm now making $0. Think of the tens of thousands of dollars, plus opportunity cost and interest, that I'm being robbed of. If HIVE spikes again, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars, not tens of thousands. That's a crime, and it will only go unpunished for so long. All their actions are recorded, every post and comment and reply and vote and mouse click, all permantly part of the blockchain forever, to later be analyzed by advanced AI in search of "cold case" crimes to be solved. It won't take but a minute to analyze and judge everything on these chains. A lot of reparations are going to be due, either to individuals or their estates (but I don't think it's going to take that long).
Keep in mind, Blurt has other issues, even though we have no downvote feature. For example, insiders control the blockchain and wallets, so it's as centralized as something can be. It's a company with costs and profits, employees and equipment. It can disappear. Corruption is possible (and indeed ongoing). We have people with power responsible for ensuring nobody is abusing the reward pool, who are themselves the biggest abusers of the reward pool. We have one whale, and even though he's great, it's a lopsided and anti-competitive environment that is not healthy in the long term. And we currently have 0 members who are able to make money here on Blurt (other than the insiders mentioned). I've put in $20000 and 2.5 years of daily work, and here I am with $3500 worth of tokens now. I've pulled out nothing. And it's not that my content sucks - I'm one of the leading earners here. I'm also one of the top curators. But there's no way I can pull anything out, or I'll go to zero, not to mention it would slam the BLURT token price back to all-time lows. I'm not saying Blurt sucks, whatsoever, but we have to be careful not to sing praises without admitting we are horribly broken, and currently not viable. There's hope for the place, but it currently isn't what it needs to be. Let's keep trying!
(reBlurted)
Yes, you are right about many things, although these are issues mainly resulting from the size of the community and the number of investors and the nature of the people developing blurt. There are just a handful of us for now. People from the founding team such as @saboin mainly take care that it all doesn't fall apart and slowly tinker with some development of basic functionality, but considering the pace of development of everything today, this is not enough. You say that they work in the system like a company, but you have to realize that what they do is a part-time regular job after a full-time regular job so i understand that.
@nalexadre did a lot, but it's all 90% a hobby. Only now, after years, have I learned enough to turn this knowledge into something useful, so I can do something about it. You say that your investments brought losses, while my and others' time investments, for now at the pace it is now, at the current price of blurt, will pay off in 10 years. This is assuming that we stop doing anything more.
Nevertheless, you also have to look at it differently:
Recently, new people have appeared who started developing something, such as @agorise, and his project has very good prospects.
Blurt started his adventure in the middle of the previous bull market and the critical period when we needed a boost fell on the bear market. Additionally, there was a scandal, which did not help. The fact that we survived until the next bull market and that the price is rising again, and interest in the platform is growing again, considering what kind of rivals we have and how 90% of new tokens end, is a huge success that bodes very well. If we managed in the bear market when you have the Very Hard level, then in the bull market we will go to the EASY level.
In my opinion, the biggest threat right now would be if another huge investor with a hive mentality appeared and wanted to pull us towards some censorship solutions. for decentralization to occur, it has to happen that we will have, for example, several hundred people like you who have an average rate and with these several hundred you can only afford additional whales because then such a person does not have as much power to, for example, reshuffle the list of witnesses on their own. So in my opinion it is good that we do not have too many large investors. We must strive to create a strong and numerous "middle class" on blurt.