Well, I kind of saw this coming, but I didn't think it would happen quite this early in my Hive trajectory. Also, for this to happen right now (in the midst of one of my busiest and hectic months of the year) was not ideal timing at all; a month earlier or later would've been far better. But alas, since it came up now, I'm going to address it now.
This entire post is coming about due to a small collection of discussions that popped up over the past day or so. The main one that I'll be addressing is this post by @acidyo, where he discusses delegation-for-vote projects and uses my account as an example because I'm heavily involved in a number of these projects.
My concern here is not about upvotes or downvotes, but rather to provide accurate information so that my integrity is preserved. I've worked hard on this platform, and I don't want a single highly-viewed, misleading portrayal, whether intentional or not, to place a dent into what I've built.
It's a long post, but I urge anyone who comes across it to read the entire thing. I don't intend to do this again.
Integrity and Due Diligence
First, I'd like to address the fact that although my username and account were on the screen for a good 15 minutes of the video in the aforementioned post, acidyo did not even exercise the courtesy to tag me so that I could be aware that my account was under discussion. He also didn't bother communicating with me about his thoughts prior to posting this video. I found it because someone else shared the post with me. Kind of ironic to not communicate, given that this is a social media platform, but... fine, maybe he was a bit busy, so let's move on to the next point.
Examples had to be used in the video; this is perfectly understandable. But why limit the example to just one person for such an extended period of time? As such, the request to not downvote my account was very disingenuous. When someone with significant influence on a platform effectively yells out, "This guy is doing something I say is BAD, don't go after him, but LOOK, he's doing this BAD thing!" - what exactly do you expect the reaction is going to be? It doesn't take a genius, nor a qualified psychologist, nor a qualified sociologist to figure this one out. For someone who has been on this platform since near its inception, this was quite irresponsible.
Just check this portion of the top comment on that post:
Whether or not that's a joke, there are people who will blindly go along with what someone says without doing their due diligence and proper research. This brings me to my next point...
A cursory search through my account would've revealed quite a lot that was not portrayed in this video, and in fact may have revealed a positive side to how the delegations are being used, as well as how I use my account. Considering the fact that ~35 minutes were spent creating this video, doing proper research through an account for several minutes would have been a proper course of action.
The reason? My account was grossly misrepresented by exclusion of facts. Elimination of critical information is still misleading, and is still misinformation. I cannot stress this point enough.
Acidyo claims that he doesn't know what my account does. I have pinned posts on my account describing the FreeCompliments Community, as well as a link to the community in my account description. These take several seconds to find and click.
Looking through the community, you'll find several community accounts which are used to curate and reward members, as well as provide topics of discussion, and even see how the account is using its funds. These accounts are loaded with my own funds (roughly 40-50k worth of HIVE in total, including HSBI and 2nd layer tokens), and are being used to help the community members who post there grow as they remain active. It's literally designed to encourage participation and engagement. For about a year and a half, I was running contests to award posts, comments Threads and overall engagement. Here is one of the last ones, and here's another. (I had to place these on hold due to a personal life situation which takes up a lot of my time).
Despite my reduced involvement in the community, I continue to grow the community accounts because people truly enjoy the community. Part of the tokens I receive from my delegation to some of the referenced projects go towards the community accounts, which in turn help the community members thrive. Everything I send is recorded on the blockchain and can be readily verified.
Additionally, throughout the duration of the community's existence, I have been fully transparent with the members about my plans and how I use the Hive that I donated to the community accounts. I have laid out plans for HSBI rewards and 2nd layer tokens, as well as the delegation projects. Transparency is essential if you want people to trust you as a leader.
Now, I should mention that out of the new communities that grew at a rapid pace over the past 2-3 years, the FreeCompliments Community was the only one that did not have a whale account giving out votes of $20 or $50 or $100 (compared to rapidly growing communities such as HoloZing and Vibes. Nothing against those communities and the people who use them - but we know that the financial incentive is tremendous for those. The FreeCompliments Community, on the other hand, was built on small rewards and engagement among people who wanted to help each other grow (plus a few unfortunate scammers who took advantage of the system I created).
Next, I'll bring up the Mental Health Initiative that we ran for a long time. Check out @fc-mentalhealth for posts with descriptions of what we did as a group to help people. This was done out of generosity of heart by a small group of active members.
Finally, I'll bring up the point, which also takes seconds to discern, that 20% of my post rewards go towards one of the FreeCompliments Community accounts to help it grow further. I also send liquid Hive to that account at least once per week, often more.
I also recently opened a more manageable project called the AITA Community (also easily visible on my profile). While it's still in the building stage, its purpose is to help bring in people from outside of Hive in a way that's very accessible. I have a small team of people with whom I'm building this, and getting ready to deploy our outside strategies. It's small scale, but something that I'm able to handle better than the depth and breadth of what I was trying to establish with the FreeCompliments Community.
What should all of this tell you? I'm a community builder and have spent a lot of effort trying to actually build and engage on Hive. This is the polar opposite of milking the system. You want builders here, but you also want consumers who will engage with what is being built.
Looking at acidyo's assessment of my account does not tell you any of that. In fact, it reads as someone who delegated to other accounts only to get votes on my posts. An assessment of how someone uses their earnings is critical when you want to determine whether someone is milking the system and potentially abusing projects created within the ecosystem.
Delegation for Vote Projects
This is a rather broad topic, so I'll address my thoughts on these projects and why I like them.
Consider the fact that many of the whales who started on Hive back in the Steem days are all familiar with each other. If you take a look at the voting patterns on their posts, you'll see that they vote for each rather consistently, whether this is done manually or automatically. And that's not necessarily a bad thing - when you're familiar with someone's writing over the course of several years, and enjoy it, there's nothing wrong with voting to support them.
The problem comes for new users who are strangers to the system. Although a select few will come into the sight of these whales and older users, the vast majority run under the radar and fade into obscurity. They are at a significant disadvantage compared to early users. Thus, it's important that we find ways to consistently support them early on, particularly if they produce good content, so that we can retain them.
Delegation projects and HSBI provide a wonderful means for new users to benefit in a way that older users may not require. So now I'll go into a small list of what I like about these projects:
- Financial incentive
Of course, this is the big concern and elephant in the room. I'm not going to be dishonest and claim that these projects are not out to create profits for the project owners and delegators. But, this is Hive, and one of its main draws is the fact that you can earn money for posting content. This is inevitable and it's silly to deny that anyone is here without any intention to make earnings from their writing. Anyone bouncing around and claiming otherwise is being completely disingenuous.
When I see an opportunity present itself, if it is useful or helpful and does not hurt others, I will take it. I believe that these delegation projects fit within this category.
- These projects are fun!
It's fun to calculate the math behind the ROI for these various projects. It's something I like to do, often observationally, and compare and contrast. Not mention, all of these projects have communities behind them - some large and active - and interaction with the people involved in the projects is also fun. I've spoken to the owner of every single delegation project at least once, and made sure that the way I used the service was appropriate. I also made myself involved in some of the communities that I like more (although to only a small degree due to my time limitations).
- These projects are supported and run by humans
It would be silly to try to remove the humanity from these projects. All of the accounts that delegate to these projects are still run by people. The projects themselves are run by people. There's an agreement among everyone involved that the delegations are going to be used in an appropriate manner. It's rare that these projects support people who truly break the basic rules of plagiarism, illegal content, and absolute spam. If someone distrusts the project, they can always undelegate and publicly post about it.
- These projects are very useful for new users
As mentioned before, new users start of with a disadvantage in terms of their visibility on this site. They're competing for space with people who have been around for a long time. If they're able to get even a small amount of rewards on their posts consistently, this encourages them to become more active. Once they also discover the power of engaging with other people, they're prompted to do so as well.
I will point out that the HSBI project is particularly useful for new users. I wrote an article about the power of HSBI, and I think that, for many new users, it can lead to long-term retention. I personally used HSBI to help grow several FreeCompliments Community accounts, and continue to give out HSBI to users who create good content and engage. They're being rewarded for using Hive in the best way possible!
Through the community accounts, as well as my own, I continuously support users with little HP as long as they're productively participating and engaging. HSBI benefits both these new users and myself. It's a completely positive growth mindset. We aim to help each other, rather than destroy each other!
- The projects curate a wide range of users
When myself or someone else delegates a lot of Hive to certain projects, the curation is spread out among everyone who is involved with the project. Multiple people are able to obtain benefits from our delegations, not only ourselves. My 10k delegation to one project curates one group of users; a 20k delegation to another project curates another (and possibly overlapping) group of users. It also partially curates me. Ultimately, the vote distributions are still present; they're just directed towards people who participate in the projects. That's a good thing as long as it keeps people engaged with Hive.
- We have the right to use our own money as we wish
If we're placing our own funds into Hive, then we have the right to use it as we see fit. Some people may not agree with the usage of the money, and question its integrity. That's ok; we're all entitled to our opinions.
Not to mention, there will always be some people who take advantage of a project or system with ill intent; I've seen it happen right on Hive. It's simply a reality. I believe that as long as people are not blatantly spamming, plagiarizing, or posting illegal content, they have every right to use their funds to benefit themselves as they see fit. I won't direct someone else how to use their own money, nor will I judge them for it.
If some people wish to not upvote themselves, and this makes them feel good about themselves, more power to them! If they wish to upvote themselves, then go for it! There are hundreds of millions of virtual dollars in the DHF. Earnings on the vast majority of posts won't even buy a small lunch in a big city, so you're not hurting anyone by doing this. Do what makes you happy, and don't hurt others.
All in all, there are benefits to these delegation-for vote projects, along with HSBI. Yes, we're paying into them to obtain benefits, and yes, a small number of people are going to abuse the system (which is true for any system), but as is, it's simply a redistribution of our voting power which is already present regardless. This is still more useful to the Hive community than holding onto liquid funds and contributing zero stake (which some people who are in a financial crisis may need to do sometimes).
Another case of due diligence
Someone recently downvoted a post of mine on the basis of me using the delegation for vote projects, and criticized the content of my comments:
Now, this was completely disingenuous, and it takes literally 1 minute of "research" to disprove this statement. The highlighted comment is one that I've made 4 times per day for about a year and a half (with numerous missed days in between). Let's give a very high estimate and say that I've done this for about 400 such instances (since I've only made a few hundred posts), so we'll say that 4 x 400 = 1600 such comments.
Now, let's see how many comments I've made in total:
Over 17,000 comments. That means that over 90% of my comments are not these types of comments. In fact, most of them are a combination of Threads and replies to people, both within my community, as well as on random posts that catch my interest.
I must admit that my commentary has decreased in March because I've had a most hectic work schedule (something which I clearly stated in my posts recently... probably complained a little too much), and is not representative of my average activity. Even if it was, this would be my choice. People who understand the value of engagement will engage; those who do not, will not find nearly as much success within any community not just Hive.
Also worth mentioning - there's no way that I could have organically grown the FreeCompliments Community to over 1700 members by not engaging with people. It simply would not work. I put in the effort to ensure that people were being heard, and this is one of the keys that made the community grow so effectively, especially at a time when overall activity on Hive was gradually decreasing.
Now, digging a little bit deeper, I'll point back to the @fc-mentalhealth account, where I documented how various users of our Mental Health Initiative were helping people out, almost exclusively through comments. There are a lot of activity, and I was involved in most of these comment chains. Was this done with a profit incentive? No, it was done for the community and to help people. A small number of people in genuine crisis situations were helped, and there's no monetary value that can be placed on being able to help someone in such a manner.
I'll also reference back to how I encouraged engagement of posts through comments in the FreeCompliments Community back when I had the time to run it effectively.
I'm not an individual who requires a lesson on the value of comments and genuine engagement, because I completely practiced what I preached.
See how doing a bit of due diligence can drastically alter the perception of someone's activities?
Conclusion
While there is absolute merit in the discussion on delegation-to-vote projects, as well as basic income projects such as HSBI, it's important to understand their potential downsides and benefits. It's also important to understand that any system can be abused. Finally, it's essential to do your due diligence so that you don't misrepresent people and tarnish a reputation that they worked hard to build, whether intentionally or not. We can do better than this.
I hope everyone who reads this finds some interesting points and perspectives, and that we can have a proper, respectful discussion without putting each other down for expressing different opinions. Cheers, everyone!