This is an article I wrote for Hive.
I was inspired to write it by conversations on the Matrix chat, where I invite those who haven't joined yet:
https://matrix.to/#/#blurt.org
I believe it’s important for it to be shared here on Blurt as well, as a warning and to help people understand why the downvote feature is so harmful and why it's not worth supporting networks that include this functionality. Perhaps some users haven’t come here from Hive, or maybe not everyone knows how it works and will only understand it through this article.
It’s worth taking the time to read and get acquainted with this content. That’s all for the introduction. I invite you to read on.
Imagine this story... perhaps it sounds familiar...
You create your content. You put in the effort, engage, and devote a lot of your time to building your blog and gathering readers. People upvote, share, and finally, you've created a gem! A strong article. The SEO of the domain where you publish skyrockets, attracting new users to the platform. You look at the counter. Your post shows $200 from hundreds of readers! You're happy, wondering how to spend the money you earned after months or even years of work, and you go to sleep satisfied. You wake up... look again... $0?! What happened?! Nothing extraordinary. Someone who doesn't like you and has a lot of money invested in Hive simply downvoted you.
Why? It's simple! Because they want that $200, all that activity on the platform, and your efforts to increase the value of THEIR stake, not yours. They want YOUR work to benefit THEM and only THEM. After all, if YOU cash out those tokens on the exchange, not THEM, the value of THEIR stake will drop by a few satoshis, not yours!
Does it matter that the value of their stake stays the same or even grows because YOU, through your work and dedication, make the platform stronger? That YOU attract new investors and new users to the domains connected to the network's frontends?
No, it doesn’t matter. Your efforts and activity that keep this whole enterprise running, ensuring other users return, engage, and use the network, thereby increasing its value, mean nothing.
Oh well, just accept it. In the end, you're just a slave working for investors for free. Nothing has changed, just like in web2. Nothing at all! Surely, you didn’t think that web3 on Hive was anything more than a slogan to deceive you, right? What’s wrong with you, man?
You got angry and wrote what you think about it? That was your last mistake!
From now on, not just that post, but every subsequent one you write will earn exactly $0. Worse yet, your reputation shrinks until it hits negative values. From that point on, your entire blog becomes invisible, and everything you publish appears as hidden!
This is how Hive users are robbed of their work every single day, enriching a few at the expense of many with the help of a rotten feature that the creators of this network implemented from the very beginning:
"The Downvote Button"
And all this under the banner of a platform that advertises itself as decentralized, censorship-free, web3.
The scam behind this idea is simple yet clever. For a place on the internet to thrive and make money, it needs users. For users to come, there must be interesting activity, people, engagement, reach, and utility. But how do you convince popular authors and influencers from other platforms to start using your tool and not pay them?
Simple! For those we don’t want to pay, we just take away their payment under the pretext of "protecting the reward pool, abuse, or spam."
This is how Steem was created and later Hive. A place where the earnings of authors and users are controlled by a small group of oligarchs, just like in any other centralized web2 corner. The difference is that the scale of abuse and demonetization has reached a higher level, with no rules or regulations left. Profiles are destroyed without warnings or a chance to seek justice. What’s your problem? Nobody “deleted” anything. The content is still “available,” right?
The Downvote Economy is a clever and brilliant system in its simplicity. The psychological effect is simple: if you want to earn, behave, write, and think the way we want, or we’ll destroy your account and reputation, and your reach will collapse. Did you earn "too much" in our opinion? We'll "adjust" your earnings, and if you resist, you’ll have it even worse. Play along with our tune? Then we’ll let you earn a little and maybe even withdraw it... but only during a bear market, not the bull run.
You’re not allowed to "ruin" the whales' token price!
It’s no different from deleting posts and banning accounts on Facebook. The only difference here is that your data supposedly can’t be deleted and remains your property. Great. Except that even though it’s still your property, being downvoted and shadowbanned renders it as useful as keeping it in your drawer or on a private disk
The difference is that if you haven’t published your work on Hive yet, creating your own blog elsewhere will get you more views, better SEO, and attract more users there.
This way, you’ll earn more from your content in places where there’s no censorship or downvotes, like Blurt, where you’ll receive payment from people who truly value your work. Your earnings won’t be erased by someone looking to profit off your creativity or someone who dislikes you or your content. The decision will be in the hands of investors who appreciate your work, fans who bought tokens to support creators like you, and people who see value in what you do and share.
Real web3 is not just about data ownership, fast transactions, and thousands of apps signed with your key. Above all, it’s about:
- decentralized finance,
- the impossibility of controlling the flow of money from one hand to another,
- no centralized supervisory structures,
- no possibility of censorship,
- and unrestricted opportunities to use the network, its reach, and express yourself and your views, based on what interests people and what they find right, not what’s deemed acceptable by narrow groups of technocrats, bankers, and "philanthropists."
You won’t find any of these qualities on Hive, so if you were looking for them here, save yourself the trouble.
Enjoy the ride, those of you who love being manipulated by this system. For everyone else, I invite you to Blurt. Let’s build a network together where web3 isn’t just an empty slogan to lure the naive.
Regards,
From an active user of these networks since 2018, now a Blurt Witness who saw the truth and decided, together with others, to help fix what was broken in the network we all beloved!
You can help reblog it on hive
And help people who doesn't understand yet how it works to understand and think.
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.
"What’s wrong with you, man?" - hilarious! I love your sense of humour :)
I think most of the Hive whales are Americans, right? Well afaik, Trump has recently recalled an Executive Order making online censorship illegal (like downvoting to take the blogger's income). cite:
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/
I bet the feds are gonna love to know who those downvote whales are, not just for their monetary benefit, but for the sake of the Executive Order itself.
I would like to believe in it, unfortunately I worry that I would experience another - 5th disappointment in my life with another savior from the political group who was supposed to save us. Those who really tried are already biting the dust soo there are thre options. Trump wil die until he get presidency, trump is a Troy horse or it's a miracle ;)
10000000000000% fact check true.
Every
single
word
of
it!
Just fair warning your post may become the subject of a future podcast. Lol.
With full credit given to you, of course.
Your post after many days is appreciated by blurt users.
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You can check posts ranking on https://blurt.pl/en/promo.php
Help dig up good content from the depths of the Blurt network. Support others by voting for content you find valuable regardless of publication date!.
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Your post after many days is appreciated by blurt users.
Post has received 2 votes in this week. Reward from comment will be credited to your and support your work!(Don't worry if it didn't get your vote right away. The app regenerates its VP.)
You can check posts ranking on https://blurt.pl/en/promo.php
Help dig up good content from the depths of the Blurt network. Support others by voting for content you find valuable regardless of publication date!.
Are you creating something valuable and selling your services? Or maybe you are looking for something for yourself? Feel free to add your ads to blurt market! Help build the exchange platform on blurt: https://blurt.pl/en/market.php.