The user Acidyo is now attacking our community account, @hive-140084.
Background
I'll provide some basic background: 9 days ago, he posted his concerns about delegation-for-vote projects (i.e. you delegate Hive Power, and in return you receive tokens that come with votes or you simply receive votes). Within that video, he singled me out as an example of using such projects, and painted me in quite a bad light. While he played innocent at the time, it was already clear that he was starting to target me.
I posted this response to his post, explaining how I use these projects to grow the FreeCompliments Community and its members, particularly those who provide quality posts. I also pointed out that older, bigger users like himself benefit more and drain more from the reward pool compared to newer users who might benefit from these types of projects.
We had a discussion about our points of views, and while I opted to try to agree to disagree, the conversation ended in Acidyo behaving like a child and being rude. The hypocrite doesn't like it when someone says that his actions may not be interpreted positively!
This morning, I discovered that he began downvoting my posts. This was annoying, but not such a huge deal.
Subsequently, I discovered that he also downvoted the FreeCompliments Community account. Now this angered me. He did not just target me personally, but now he's going after the community itself!
Based on our conversation, he has no intention of stopping.
There are many people he could have targeted, but by attacking someone who has been building on Hive and trying to help other members grow for 2.5 years, it's clear that Acidyo's intention is not to help Hive, but rather to help himself build "Acidyo's Hive." There are different means to the same end, but Acidyo has not grown up and realized this. It's either his way or the highway. He wants to grow his project OCD and curate only the way he wants to curate so that he can maintain control and continue benefitting from the reward pool.
It is also not the first time he has done this - it has happened before I entered the blockchain. This is the action of a selfish bully who wants to control the Hive chain and the reward pool. This is not the action of someone interested in seeing the blockchain thrive. His actions prove that he is a destructive force.
What does the @hive-140084 account actually do?
If you take a look at the delegation list for @hive-140084, you'll see that there are delegations, in order of decreasing size, to Ecency (this gives us Ecency points which are used to promote posts, and also for Ecency to give us a delegation which we use for curation purposes), followed by EDS-vote (this does give out a token which is associated with a small upvote), followed by cryptocompany (we collect the token, but as you can see, there are no votes from them at this time), ua-promoter (no votes from them, as they vote on Ukraine-related content), legionsupport (this does come with a token that's associated with a small upvote), tokenpimp (this is primarily for the PIMP token and has a very small upvote), leo.voter (we receive LEO tokens from this, not upvotes), neoxiancityvb (we receive NEOXAG tokens from this but haven't used them for voting).
Most of the rewards come from HSBI, followed by neoxiancityvb (which I'm funding from my own stash of NEOXAG tokens), followed by BroFi (notice there's no delegation), followed by legionsupport and eds-vote (these two combine to about $1). There are also a entire host of votes coming from people who are on the curation trail for the community and/or have the community account on automatic voting.
Thus, the community account is definitely not abusing delegation-to-vote projects. They make up a minority of the delegation power and earnings that hive-140084 receives. Meanwhile, Acidyo's downvote (along with one of his colleagues) is erasing double-to-triple that amount from every post.
It's also pertinent to mention that I have run all pertinent decisions by the community before implementing them, and have cleared this community's activities with the owners of projects. This has not been done on my own whim, but rather on a large consensus, which is how a community should function.
Aside from direct curation, earnings from hive-140084 are primarily directed towards giving out HSBI to our community members, as well as to our curator. Particularly for new and growing accounts, this motivates them to continue creating new content. It's an alternate form of curation that's not directly from hive-140084, but still helps them grow. Why would you want to destroy this?
What can we do about this?
As Acidyo is currently unwilling to stop attacking the community, I see only two options here: either we attack back in kind, or the FreeCompliments Community will simply have to cease its rewards. I'm aggressively willing to go in either direction because I am adamant about my integrity in using the aforementioned projects in a manner that's both beneficial to the community and to its members. I will be stubborn about this. If someone comes up with an alternate solution (aside from succumbing to Acidyo's whims), I will of course consider it because I am open to different solutions.
The option to retaliate is not one which I like, but downvoting in kind may trigger him to reconsider his own actions. For those interested, I am creating a downvote trail against his own project, OCD. I'm not actually starting it until I get consensus from the community.
The other option would involve me leaving the blockchain, which frankly may be a good option for my mental well-being. A single downvote from him per post isn't going to destroy me financially, but knowing that the community is under persistent attack is not something that I want to deal with on a long-term basis.
There are discussions going on among different projects right now about how to approach this entire situation. Thus, we can continue our current activity and see whether there will be a resolution. I don't entirely like this option because it's rather passive, and I feel we should be more active in defending the community.
One thing which virtually everybody can do is reblog this post. They should be aware of what Acidyo is doing - how destructive his actions are to the blockchain. While we should be helping each other build, he aims to destroy others in favor of himself. This is not what the Hive community should be about.
Additionally, if you disagree with his actions on principle but you delegate stake to OCD, poshtoken, or zingtoken, both of which are his projects, undelegate your stake. It's worth noting that these projects also engage in self-voting and draining the reward pool for hundreds of dollars per day. Pure hypocrisy!
Personally, if this is not resolved soon, I'll likely liquidate my funds and leave the blockchain on a social level (I'd only use the HBD savings feature). While most of the people here are wonderful, I've already been through the pain of losing the same community on Reddit once, albeit for a different reason, and this is not an episode I'd like to repeat again. Besides, once I complete residency and start my new job in a few months, time spent posting here would technically come at a large financial loss for me compared to working more at my job, a factor which I must weigh in my decision.
Conclusion
Our community is under attack by a Hive whale, Acidyo, who wishes to run Hive only in his own way, and in a manner that ultimately benefits him as an older stakeholder. We must decide how to approach this, as a community. I'd love to hear your opinions about our next course of action. I'm not making any snap decisions until I hear from you guys, since you are what makes FreeCompliments come to life.
Despite my anger, I'd also encourage you to not directly attack him in any way. We're better than this.