Being a Hive user brings responsibilities

I was having a conversation with @slobberchops today about the reasons people use Hive dapps. I accept that personal gain is going to be a major factor for most. You can earn in many ways including posting, curating and playing games with earnings varying a lot according to various factors.

So some people may take their earnings for granted, but it is a zero sum game, i.e. for someone to earn more others must get less. The community gets to decide what we make and that can involve downvotes. Your rewards are never final until payout.

Green was self-votes in this case on HiveTasks.

This is why I say we have responsibilities. It is up to each of us to play a part in distributing rewards. If you decide you deserve more and self-vote then you can be judged for that. If it is just a few cents then I would not expect anyone to worry, but when it can be dollars per day then someone will take notice. It is not hard to run queries to detect that. Some people might say it is nobody's business if they self-vote, but it is the business of every Hive user.

Even small accounts can help out. You can report abuse to HiveWatchers or the Hive-DR Discord. Or you can work with curation groups to get rewards where they are deserved. Projects with hundreds of thousands of HP can do a lot of good, but some may get abused for personal gain. They need to be vigilant to avoid getting a bad reputation.

If you are making something here then you should be thinking 'What can I do for Hive?'. If it does well then we all have something to gain. You could be talking about it on other social media and encouraging good people to sign up. They will need mentoring in the early days. Tell them about efforts such as Hive Power Up Day and the various contests.

What counts as 'deserving' is very subjective. Is it those who need the money the most or those who add the most value to the platform? We can each make our own decisions on that. I see people expressing concern that lots of people from generally poor countries like Venezuela are signing up and making a lot from 'junk posts' thanks to projects that choose to support them. Taking rewards from people who need it to buy food can seem mean-spirited. I am not against people powering down if they need the money, but we also need investors who are prepare to stake something for the long term. If people collaborate on schemes that appear to be gaming the system then that is likely to be noticed and action taken.

The sort of content that makes a lot of money depends largely on whale accounts and big curation projects as what they like gets the biggest votes. You can try to target them, but there may be a lot of competition. I do not generally fish for votes like that. I think there is something to be gained from being an active participant in various parts of the Hive ecosystem. If people think you are doing good then that can get you support. I benefit from some automatic votes, but I will still try to ensure my content has value to someone as information, inspiration or entertainment.

I get comments at times from people who may not have much to say, but they will comment anyway in hope of rewards. I cannot always judge how needy they might be. I have the choice of how I curate comments to encourage the sorts of engagement I want, but may feel some guilt for neglecting some users.

Anyone running a curation project has pressure on them to do good with it. I run @Tenkminnows which is intended to help small accounts build up their HP. I am likely to favour English writers as that is what it is easiest for me to review and have other biases. I do check if people are powering down and if so then I may withdraw support as they will never level up. I can be creating a dependency as the account and those who follow the trail may be adding the majority of rewards to some posts. People may find they make a lot less if I drop them, but then they ought to be putting in effort to building an engaged following. Of course rewards are nice, but getting real comments has value to in making Hive a fun platform. If you rarely comment on posts by others then you are missing out on a lot. Doing that helped me build my large following.

I will mention games as that was part of the original conversation. Those who create the games have a tricky balancing act to make it fun and rewarding. Some of us may not need the money desperately and just plough it back into cards or whatever, but others will be out to maximise what they can sell. We have seen that with bots on Splinterlands, although they changed some rules to reduce what they could make if they were selling off all the cards they won. Some games explicitly ban bots, but they may be hard to detect. You can still end up with a few accounts dominating the game economy and have to decide if that is viable. You risk causing dissent if the rules have to be changed.

Do not take your rewards for granted. If you are not making much now then you need to put in the effort to improve matters rather than just waiting for a whale vote. If you can make it fun then it is less like work. I get that some people are desperate. I am not seeing too many people begging with 'please follow and vote' comments, but that is quite likely to increase if Hive experiences rapid growth. I saw it happen on the old Tsu platform.

There are massive potential market in countries where every dollar counts. I consider myself very lucky to have a secure job and resources that can make Hive more of a hobby, but I still want to see what it can do for others who are less well off. I will use my influence to push it in ways that I see as beneficial, but I can only make a fairly small impact.

What is rewarding is when people say that I helped them through difficult times and kept them going on Hive.

What are you doing for Hive?

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