RE: RE: Is Hive censorship-resistant?

I tend to disagree with this point as there are different layers of censorship. What’s going on with hive for some posts is essentially shadow banning. It’s the same as the big platforms like Twitter and Fakebook. The content is out there but people don’t see it unless they physically visit your page. I think the same is true on hive where a whale may disagree with an authors perspective for what ever reason and down vote it, regardless if the content is valuable to the users that are interested in it. This then hides it saying “this content got low ratings, click to show” or something of the extent. A passerby is likely not going to click on it sadly and significantly reducing the potential audience.

What is the Hive community?

One of the biggest issues I see is that people see PeakD and Ecency as ‘the Hive community’.

But they’re not.

To me, we just have the wording all wrong.

There’s no such thing as “the Hive community” that you can plug into and have access to EVERYONE.

Hive is just a blockchain that stores data from millions of entirely autonomous accounts.

It’s front-ends like PeakD that are actually communities.

People see the way PeakD displays Hive content, the way it bases its content display algorithm on the stake of connected accounts, how popular it is and ultimately conclude that it’s “Hive”.

But PeakD is nothing more than an independent micro community that allow people with Hive accounts - and who most importantly follow THEIR legal/moral/community rules - to come together.

If you don’t follow their rules - which right now feature censoring content that has been downvoted by accounts with large stake - then losing your ability to interact within that community hurts your reach.

But with the ability to simply take your account, with all data and followers attached and plug it into another front-end (community), it’s certainly not censorship.

And yes, I totally agree that not being able to put your message in front of the maximum amount of people because the major front-ends use the same rules sucks.

Your issue is with the micro community and entirely private company called PeakD - Not the censorship-resistant Hive blockchain.

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I get the disagreement with rewards end, sure the person may or may not take their money off the platform but I’ve sadly seen incredible journalists on here get blacklisted and now they don’t post here any longer and have removed hive from their list of platforms they promote to people who are looking for better platforms than the mainstream ones. These journalists are struggling to survive and reach audiences because of big tech censorship and I feel like we are doing the same.

Can a journalist use a censorship-resistant Hive account?

A Hive account ALWAYS affords journalists a censorship-resistant avenue to publish their message - To the immutable Hive blockchain.

But front-ends (communities, remember) don’t always afford journalists a platform or community to amplify this message.

Again, we have the wording all wrong.

When we say Hive is a ‘platform’, that’s incorrect.

They’re fundamentally misunderstanding how dApps that allow Hive accounts to connect and interact work.

In this case, PeakD is the ‘platform’ that these journalists were trying to use to get their message out.

But PeakD chooses to censor content that has been downvoted by accounts with large stake and as such, they were censored on their platform.

Yes it sucks that those in the PeakD community didn’t like their message and that the owners of the PeakD dApp allowed it to happen.

But that is PeakD’s choice.

However, thanks to their Hive account, the journalists retained full ownership of their account data, their entire list of followers and the ability to plug it into another front-end community with a set of rules they find to be more receptive to the cause.

Something that couldn’t happen on Twitter where if they are censored, that’s game over.

Wait until someone builds a journalist-friendly front-end that displays stories by tags and hides downvotes and ignores blacklists.

I know that you said these guys left, but they literally proved Hive’s effectiveness as a censorship-resistant tool for journalists.

The future of Hive for censorship-resistant journalism is exciting!

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In the end my point is so many people tout censorship resistance here but sadly I think that’s a load of horse shit if you get to the wrong end of a whales opinion on a topic and they find it within their day to down vote it. My personal opinion is if the topic isn’t for you, move on as long as there isn’t plagiarism of content or images, or threats of violence.

Can a Hive account be its own front-end?

I talked about an opportunity to build a journalist front-end in the previous section…

But what about purely a plug and play website that turns your single Hive account into its own community front-end?

People right now see peakd.com/@accountname as their own.

But it’s nothing more than a website on PeakD’s servers.

Therefore, it’s not theirs at all.

What if for example, your Hive account becomes the community in itself, and your followers become all of the members.

You retain full control over how your personal community’s content is displayed (because its only you publishing to the front-end as posts).

Those interacting are connecting to your front-end and are only allowed to comment.

Of course you would have to pay for domains and hosting, therefore adhering to the legal jurisdiction of the servers.

But that sort of out of the box front-end solution that makes your account its own community could be a game changer.

Think about how this could be used for something like an OnlyFans alternative.

Game changer!

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The hive platform has thankfully come a long way for sure but I tend to disagree with this censorship resistance notion. Shadow banning is most definitely censorship.

I’m sorry that this reply turned into a post in itself, but the questions and points you made allowed me to add a ton of supplementary content.

Thank you for keeping the conversation going! :)

Hopefully you got to the end and it at least made you reconsider your position on Hive's censorship-resistance.

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