One of the original ideas behind Hive was to redistribute some of the revenue generated from social media content away from Facebook and back to a wider array of independent investors and, to an extent, the content creators themselves.
The rational being that on social media as usual, such as Facebook, people put up content for free and then the centralised authority extracts the value of that content by crunching people's personal data and selling that to advertising companies, who then advertise at said content creators.
In this (let's call it) 'social media revenue generation 1.0 model' the value of content is a function of how much advertisers can make from well-positioned ads which encourage click-throughs, sales and profits.
A site like Facbeook has value merely by being an interactive platform on which people engage with each other - the longer they spend online posting and commenting the more exposure they will have to advertising.
Most of the content on Facebook itself has zero value, and most people posting that content would recognise this - people post their life updates for their own satisfaction and to keep people updated, they don't think of that content as having any financial value.
And in truth, the individual data in itself doesn't have value until it's combined with billions of other pieces of data, crunched through an algorithm and becomes big data, which can then be sold, and in the 1.0 model used against the content creators.
(NB as a quick aside which isn't the main point of this post, of course some people have come to think of their content as having actual value in itself, such as instagram models who gain endorsements, but that's a topic for later, here I'm really just focussing on 'day to day life update and link sharing' type content - Facebook's mainstay if you like.)
It's completely bizarre if you think about it - more than a Billion people posting away, with no thought of their content having any value - and disempowering themselves in the process - in fact you could even say they are PAYING Facebook to advertise at them with their time spent posting and then paying again when they buy the shit they don't need as a result of being subjected to hours worth of advertising online.
So take your pick as to the value of MOST of the content on Facebook (both subjectively for sane people and thus objectively). The value is either
- $0
- Or < $0 (because posting is costing you time and money following your buying shit you don't need after watching the ads used against you derived from your data input).
Hive combats this exploitation through extraction
One of the original purposes of Hive (among other things) was to combat this extraction of revenue from content creators and their viewers.
It does this in at least two fundamental ways:
- Firstly there is no centralised company requesting that you input your personal data, you can be entirely anonymous or give false information (in your profile). (To be honest I could stop here, this alone is sufficient to render Hive data crunching for profit too risky for most companies).
- Secondly all the data that people choose to post is publicly available on the chain, meaning anyone with the coding skills can access it (of course that doesn't mean the code someone writes to crunch the data won't itself have value, but the DATA itself is available for free to anyone).
- Third (and this is important) anyone can fork the chain and create a new one, or less drastically a niche community with their own front end.
What all of these together mean is that there is the potential on Hive to have advertising free social media where we just post and engage as we see fit, without any behind the scenes manipulation of our personal data being sold to advertisers whose adverts then disempower us.
NB Number three above is crucial because it's possible (as happened when Hive was (shudders) Steem that the most invested stakeholders collude to sell advertising on the platform, or that one front-end owner sells advertising - granted this won't be the same intensely targeted advertising you get with Facebook (because of gaps in personal data) but even if this happened, there's a facility to fork or 'community' the ads out and for people to migrate if they so choose.
(Ironically the opposite has happened with @leofiance for example - they have ads, but that's with the blessing of the community due to the ads contributing to a buy back and burn of LEO tokens.)
Even if your content receives 0 rewards, you're still winning on Hive compared to on Facebook
This is because by posting on Hive you are avoiding having your personal data extracted by a centralised authority.
AND the chances are that IF a communnity owner does decide to allow advertising on their front end, these ads won't be as intrusive as they would on Facebook precisely BECAUSE they lack your details.
And with some communities, if you've invested, the ads could even benefit your investment.
Final thoughts - the point here is NOT to get hung up on the value of posts.....
A of content on Hive, like content on Facebook, has ZERO value - which is ESPECIALLY the case if that content doesn't allow for data extraction.
But at least if you post here and you're not earning, you're not being disempowered by having your data used against you, so the value of your content on Hive is worth either:
- $0 or
- ...> $0 (if you get net positive upvotes)
Of course the later will only be true if people with Vested Hive choose to upvote you, but even if they don't you should be happy with nothing.
In fact if Hive grows and becomes successful - a combination of Facebook, Twitter and Wordpress, MOST posts should have zero value, because that it is the true value of most social media content.
NB - REMINDER BEFROE YOU RAGE COMMENT - I'm ONLY talking about 'day to day personal life update' type content here - NOT content produced as part of a business endeavour, that's a different ball-game!