When Hive hardforked from Steem, I was too busy with van life to even notice or care about Blurt - the other platform that came out of it. And when I did notice that I had a blurt account I was not interested - I thought Hive was the place to be.
I see now that I was wrong.
When @vincentnijman dropped the news about the Hive hardfork I saw Hive's appeal quickly, considering the centralization takeover that had been going on on Steem.
But ever since then something about Hive felt off to me. Could not quite put my finger on it. I kept wondering who are those witnesses and who keeps voting for them? Why don't the names ever change? And what about the voting wars whose basic mechanics were still present on Hive?
The more I thought about it the weirder it got. Where many here had effectively been looking for a free speech haven, where anything goes and people simply choose their tribe and their feed - Hive and Steem had taken the route of
Enabling censorship under false pretenses
The downvote button. Here is a little post on Blurt that makes the case against downvoting and why a downvote-enabled platform will inevitably end up in centralized structures of control and oppression.
Why Downvotes Contradict Decentralization - A Mathematical Perspective
The large accounts on this platform and on Steem call it "fighting spam, abuse and plagiarism", but it became clear that that was not what was actually happening. What happened was censorship under politically correct pretense.
There are ample cases where hefty downvotes were dished out involving political matters. Character assassinations. And the deliberate destruction of people's reputation on Hive because of the way they chose to run their blog or what they saw fit to share with their audience. And somebody didn't like it.
Here is a take from Frot, whom I miss dearly these days. He was one of my favorites on here.
MY EVER CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH HIVE
After Frot I was ultra dismayed when the gang hit @kennyskitchen in the Covid time after he started to call them out. Here is one of many many examples on his blog. IT is worth browsing through more of his posts.
They literally mobbed him off the platform. Kenny had done so much good on here and for Steem, he founded TribeSteemup that became a powerful collective of open-minded freethinkers, healers and nerds who cared about freedom, sovereignty and putting the power back in the hands of humanity - by learning about self-reliance, uncovering the hidden power structures of modern society, and exposing the crimes of the gang in the highest places running Earth's control systems.
Here is what @TribeSteemUp looks like today:
If you have read that mathematical explanation from the first link, you will see how even such a positive tribe that had a lot of backing from a large stakeholder was not strong enough to withstand the corrosive force of coordinated character assassination and flagging avalanches of a cartel with obviously bad intentions. The tribe disbanded and only a few remain on here.
There is a police force on this platform pretending to do good for Hive when all they really achieve is alienating people and making promising minds leave the platform. I am not the first one to say so. But I will definitely not be the last.
Then there are also other problems on Hive.
People like @valued-customer have written extensively about the misuse of DHF funds on Hive (that originate from the former Ninja mined stake on Steem), and how some receiving parties of those funds can show no audit as to where the funds went or keep going in perpetuity. And it seems the receiving parties don't care to show such proof either. They have the backing of their fellow gang members who keep voting for the proposal.
What can the small people do, right? It's just like in politics where you have NOTHING to say about anything.
It's like there is a black hole built into Hive that is sucking the majority of the energy. And I do not consent to keep supplying that energy in any form, especially now that I have seen so much abuse and injustice.
As George Carlin put it: "It's a big CLUB. And you ain't in it!"
Authoritarian measures change people's behavior
This all fit rather well to my eerie experiences and intuitions about Hive not being quite right. I had one absolutely spooky interaction with the self-professed thought- and conduct police on here and it was about as creepy as meeting a politician under a bridge at night.
One of the main things I did notice over time here, especially now in hindsight, is that I SELF-CENSORED. It is always a fine line between diplomatic laying out of what I found vs. frantic spewing of words that could be misinterpreted as harmful to someone.
But really: If I am honest - why do I even care? I am not responsible for hurting someone else's feelings. If we start running the world like that we will have a merciless dictatorship of thought, which is what all control-freak gangs terrorizing their fellow men have been working on for decades, centuries and probably millennia: Conform and shut up!
I self-censored NOT because I may have some payouts for a post reduced, I think I did so because I knew that if I am stepping on someone's giant toes around here, I will get put onto a black list of automatic downvotes until my account is hidden from view, and all my comments.
I do not want to keep using a platform where that risk constantly hangs over anything I have ever written - ultimately decided on by some dodgy people with shady behavior, on a whim. If I wanted THAT I'd still be voting for politicians or using facebook.
I don't choose friends who haven't done their homework when it comes to the system matrix either.
I don't care to hang out with people who believe TV fictions and hold that narrative against me when I talk to them. It is a waste of everybody's time and energy.
I feel for the sleepy normies, and I wish them all the best. But I will not dumb my words or content down in order to appeal to their immaturity, or mince my words in order to not trigger some insane self-professed police man making sure everybody gets back into line.
But I now see I have often done so. More often than I am proud of. Fear of retaliation, just like in a shitty office job where your boss is a giant ass but you think you need the salary.
Had I really spoken my mind here to the fullest extent, I may have already been forced into the downvote crosshairs. But why even bother having an alleged "free speech platform" if I avoid speaking my mind?
So, why now?
Call it "preemptive damage control".
I am following my inner call, and I am working on something big. I will release a dub of a video soon, that the powers that shouldn't be would prefer not to go viral in English. So I predict, the downvotes will come my way if that work gets enough attention on here. No clue if it will. Just a hunch because I know about its significance. And about the downvote madness on hive connected to the covid narrative.
The very existence of a downvote function - for whatever arbitrary politically correct reason - creates precisely the sort of society I do not want to be part of. It is the reason I am powering down my hive stake, and will henceforth put any capital not into Hive but into Blurt - where such a downvote function and self-professed opinion police force does not exist. And where people say what they think even if somebody else will feel hurt. Too bad.
Am I asking you to consider doing the same? I think I am. Do consider where you put your mental energy and what you want this place to be vs. what this place has shown itself to be at times.
I will keep posting here until some higher up decides on a whim to nuke my posts and all the reputation I have built on here over the years. But I will no longer hold back for the fear of being censored, we got enough of that crap in the larger society out there and need not put effort into places that can have a few people decide that your entire group, blog or account should be flagged to invisibility tomorrow.
I am prepared for it happening here, it is what has happened to countless others before me who did the moral thing and loudly objected to the abuse of the few large stakeholders on this platform. Most of them are now on Blurt and speak their mind freely.
I will not create any more buy orders for hive nor hope for its glorious future like I have for years - it is a giant deception and I am really grateful I finally saw through it. If Hive ever does become huge and the downvote censorship gang is still in charge here - I do not care about missing out on the financial gains one bit! If centralized thought-control is the only way to run a network I don't want any part in it.
So to the few people on here whose presence I shall dearly miss on Blurt - Do consider signing up. If your hive account existed when hardforked over from Steem you will already have an account on blurt, and if not I can help you get set up - just hit me up. For those active on both networks I will prioritize dropping my comments over on Blurt, and not on your Hive account any longer.
Posting on both networks is easy and takes you about 2 minutes longer, if that's what you choose to do. Blurt feels like Steemit before all the nonsense started.
Dirty laundry or just paranoia?
I want to leave you with some links that share a bit on the story that unfolded and the mental things that came my way some people seemingly would prefer nobody on hive knew. I did not know, but it was enough to shake me awake and make a choice, because all my past intuitions and mental impulses suddenly made sense again. Everything is in consonance again now, and though Blurt is small and sort of cute, it does vibe highly for those interested in free and open discourse.
If you want to read up on the thriller and decide for yourself what all the fuzz is about, start here:
My Response to paradigmprospector's question
As for the necessity of getting rid of the downvote function, read Daniel's post here:
"Ten Ways Hive is Destroying Itself and Driving Investment Towards Blurt!"
Since all of this is still on-chain (except for Daniel's main post, oddly enough) you can find a lot of shenanigans by digging through the search function on peakd or by using the downvote trending feature on https://hivealive.io/untrending from time to time.
Since I am preparing for the ultimate monetary system tear-down and it's housecleaning time anyway, this may be the perfect time to start anew on blurt, and to let my crew on hive know that this place will not be a priority to me any longer.
I want a place to post my content that is TRULY censorship-resistant, especially considering what I have planned and what the plandemic has taught us. Not only paying lip-service to free speech but embodying it in a place where it is welcome and wanted.
Needless to say, this is NOT financial advice. I am just sharing my moral imperative here in good faith so that you may make a better informed choice about what you are going to do.
The following is an INCOMPLETE list of people I want to share this with. If you do not care or simply want to keep things as they are that is of course up to you.
Please feel free to tag friends in the comments who you think may want to consider this for themselves.
@deirdyweirdy @clareartista @vincentnijman @selfhelp4trolls @takhar @atma.love @movingman @inthenow @charlissy @theouterlight @trucklife-family @whywhy @julianhorack @calendulacraft @akdx @fenngen @dreamtales @samstonehill @riverflows