I was going to write another post on POSH and some of the activities surrounding it I've noticed lately after it has gained some momentum due to the recently increased activity in Hive rewards along POSH tokens, but I think my followers are starting to get bored of hearing me talk about the same project over and over. It did bring up some other thoughts while I was browsing the web looking for some tools people may be using these days on their socials which would explain the recent behavior I noticed from some accounts.
I searched for "genuine" on pixabay.
I remember when I first got on this chain, it was quite a long time ago and somehow feels like a lifetime but not that long to not remember a lot. I was lucky because I was into crypto already for a few years and constantly looking for new projects to mine or invest into during the altcoin goldrush, even luckier because I was dabbling with the idea of a Reddit-like blockchain media platform myself having been an avid Redditor for so long. Even more so lucky because I initially forgot my "human password" to this account and wasn't active for a couple weeks after initially joining but after getting back to my own keyboard muscle memory did the trick to get me logged back in. That said I saw the potential, the advantages, the effects it had on regular users day by day and I decided to dive in hard.
One thing I remember particularly well after having read enough about how the blockchain works after having attempted to mine it as a non-dev and having wasted @smooth's time explaining to me how I go about it, was the immutability of it all and how that changed the way I'd treat Hive compared to other blockchains. Let's talk about my general activity on the other platforms before Hive first so we can better compare it later.
Facebook arrived some time in 2009, there too I wasn't much active early on but after more things started appearing there such as browser games, facebook pages, etc, it started grabbing my attention more and more. I remember receiving friend requests by some people I hadn't really talked to in a long time but the "x amount of friends in common" sign made it somehow easier to just accept it cause I may miss out on some interactions they may be having with each other, and hey, it was free, so why not, could always change my mind later. After a while it also started recommending me friends I may have not sent a friend request to yet based on the friends we had in common so I started sending out some requests to anyone who triggered a neuron in my brain. I remember when numbers started to mean things to you psychologically. Why does this person have more friends than me? Why does this person receive more likes than me? Why are more people interested in discussing things with him on his timeline compared to mine?
I found myself becoming more and more active playing the numbers game without there really being a goal or reason. Somehow I stopped caring about that after a while and spend most of my time playing games like facebook poker or FarmVille and what have you. By accident but looking back at it now most likely for the better, there was this one game I was playing consistently that had a bug where it wouldn't alert you if a certain milestone or achievement or win would share it on your timeline compared to how the others did which I always denied. I had also been neglecting my followers and timeline for so long I hadn't noticed how that had been going on for a long time pushing people to unfriend me or mute me or whatever options they had at the time but when I did notice the aftermath of the spam that game had caused it didn't come as a surprise that barely anyone would engage with me on things I started posting when I decided to get back to it. This "loss" so to speak drove me further away from facebook and I started looking for other things, I remember signing up on Twitter quite early as well, my account was created in June 2009:
but I didn't really find much to do there due to the lack of friends being on there from facebook or "IRL" as they say. Reddit on the other hand did manage to get my attention even without any friends being on there. Without making this post too long and going down the road of why I found Reddit to be better let me just say it was subreddits, a.k.a. communities we have on Hive and that friends didn't matter there, in fact they added followers and your own "timeline" sort of thing much, much later.
Alright so back to the point of this post. I didn't want to make the same mistakes I did on facebook and no, not the accidentally spamming my timeline with some random game ads that drove me to give up on it. But the "let's follow and befriend anyone and everyone to increase these numbahs bro!", not only did it make my feed a living hell but it also meant I'd have to scroll and waste so much more time per day to get to anything interesting before algorythm's arrived to assist you with what you want to see based on previous history of engagement, time spent on certain users, etc, etc.
Knowing things were going to be immutable here I wanted to go about it "the right way", meaning certain things such as:
- if someone started following me I wouldn't just blindly follow them back as a courtesy, rather check their account out, what they posted about, what they commented about, and if it was aligned with my own interests then maybe I'd give them a follow
- if someone was upvoting my posts I wouldn't just blindly upvote them back as a courtesy, there as well check out what they posted about, if it was things that interested me, etc
I didn't want to play the numbers game any longer but that doesn't mean certain actions I did didn't affect my numbers for the better either way. As I decided to focus on becoming a curator, which in hindsight should've been my focus for later considering the amount of SBD and SP people were making with ridiculous APY at the time when inflation was rampant while I was just setting up a voting trail having people follow my votes for proper curation of new users and retention, etc, which didn't really get me a lot of stake. Luckily I also spent a lot of time commenting, engaging with the users I'd curate so in a way the trail helped give me a bigger influence on the reward pool thus got me followers, whether or not they were "good followers" is another thing because as you can see I have over 30k followers now, a majority gained during the 2017-18 bull run, but percentage wise I don't do much better in engagement compared to some other popular stakeholders with way less followers who weren't around during that time or weren't actively curating with a lot of stake. In the end I don't have a lot of regret, my focus on proper curation and my contributions were well rewarded with delegations when they were implemented and other advantages. As for me sticking to doing things the right way, I also shifted a bit from that when I took the role as a curator because I wasn't just thinking about things I personally like and enjoy to read but more about what it is the platform needs, what would help the ecosystem as a whole and a myriad of other things that lead to the people I follow today.
I've often considered creating a personal account, maybe even one where I wouldn't be anonymous but not show any connections to who I really am on the platform but I've kept pushing it off until "the ecosystem doesn't need me anymore", i.e. does a lot better and is on the right way to mass adoption. Any day now. :P
Over time I saw a lot of other accounts not doing "the right thing" on purpose and playing the numbers game, some times I called them out, some times not, some times I privately asked them why they're doing so even though I knew why. I remember way way back there was a user who prided himself in being the "most engaging" account on chain, kept mentioning how many comments he's made last month, how his number was the highest among everyone else excluding bots, etc. Only to be found by (I believe) @ausbitbank that he was using a glitch where he'd post a comment then quickly delete it because the total number of posts+comments would still count the deleted one. It really makes you wonder why some people went through certain lengths and what their endgame was. There was another one, very popular author to begin with who did a lot on chain who I noticed that he was following over 60k accounts one day. I asked him what's going on and why he's using a bot to spam follow every account, he said not to mind it and that he's going to unfollow everyone soon again. Now he's only following a mere 60 people while having 24k+ followers. He of course wanted those numbers up by any means and didn't care how it affected his engagement ratio or anything else.
Over time I noticed a lot of other things like these that really made you question things and gave you this image that some people would do close to anything for some higher numbers or earnings or attention. Although to be fair if they already did it in web2 where the potential for earnings was so far out in the future then it makes sense that if they could already earn something here off the gate they'd do anything to maximize it.
In a way it's just kind of sad. Here we are with this insanely wonderful technology that enables us to do so many things all built up through the innovation of Satoshi and we don't really respect it. It's not just that we don't respect the technology or others here but also not ourselves. I often also had this thought in mind that if Hive does become the next giant in social media, considering everything is immutable, yes even those posts some of you abusers keep editing out, what will the people of the future think about you and your activity? Now maybe you won't care cause you'll be long gone by then but maybe your family or close friends might. Would you be proud of yourself if you've spent a ton of effort into plagiarising or spinning content to earn a little stake and lose your reputation? Or does all that not matter due to the nature of accounts here being quite anonymous if they so choose and the way inflation is built meaning that those who earn it early won't have to grind it as much later so they'll just focus on "doing the right thing" later on in the chain's life instead on a different account after having moved some stake around through exchanges to remove any traces of how it was earned and by who.
There's a lot of possibilities, mindsets and people from different backgrounds. Not all alays obvious as to what their agenda is, what their goals are, etc. It's a lot to process and even the things I've said here is probably a lot to take in for some and honestly I'm not even sure where I'm going with this post anymore as I went quite a bit wide there at the end.
I'm just really tired of seeing some Hive accounts choose to cheat their way to more posh or hive through web2 just because they can and they make it easy for them. It really begs the question that if they do that then what do they do here? I am also not sure about the process of calling these accounts out, do I just tag them and provide evidence as to why they're being banned from earning posh or Hive through posh? Is it rude of me to use them as examples as to what not to do in a post of mine? Is it unfair if I'd decide that their posts should receive downvotes based on their non genuine activity and earning posh and hive while directly taking it from others in unfair ways? Not sure, but I'd be all ears for what you poor souls who read all this mess have to say.
There are a few accounts who are not just spamming a lot of POSH tweets daily, but also have a group of other accounts that consistently like and retweet everything of theirs. It doesn't even end there but they're going around selectively choosing which POSH shares are earning a lot of Hive so they can cheat their way into getting a piece of that pie from the comment upvotes while their shares obviously get no reach or genuine impressions due to it just being the same people over and over interacting with them.
I think the best course of action here will be that the team who are taking care of everything POSH discuss it among each other and ban people engaging in such activities because it weakens the project and in turn takes well deserved hive and posh from others who aren't doing these things. The thing is that keeping it all within the team will leave a lot of questions on chain such as "why did you ban this user?" or "omg centralized!!!" or endless drama about the banned person wondering what the limits of how much he can abuse are and if they can get a second chance. It has happened before and I don't think it's worth wasting so much time on such users but I'm all ears as to what you think is the best way forward. The other thing that could happen of course is that people also use bots to like and retweet someone who isn't even aware of it happening, so we wouldn't want users to get banned without it being in their control or publically shame them which may result in their hive experience (possible downvotes, etc) and them having been innocent.
Oh web2, so many flaws, so little care compared to what we do and are building here on Hive.
How are you treating your genuineness on web3?
