I've been here a while. Not as long as some, but probably longer than the majority of you reading this. It will be 8 years in a few weeks! My, how time does fly. I've seen many changes and forks and knives (in backs even!) and witnessed countless tried, failed and true things emerge and evolve.

Recent events have prompted me to reread the whitepaper for Hive several times over the weekend, trying to earnestly find something to support a few whales and their personal mission to tear down what they feel is called 'vote buying'. Back on Steem, there was a major discrepancy about something called 'bidbots', where a user could purchase a whale sized vote to boost their post payout and visibility. Visibility. We'll get to that in a moment and how communities have played their part as they've grown.

I'm not gonna lie (do I ever?), I owned and helped run a few of them. Two were rather small and community focused as profits went back to our curation account but one, ran by @michaeldavid, was quite a bit bigger. He had invested a lot of his personal funds into Steem to give it the juice to compete with other bidbots. Which, a few weeks later, the bidbot flag wars started because certain parties felt it was 'cheating'. He has since cashed out of Steem and Hive altogether, entrusting me with his keys to support others that are still here - and he is not the only one that has done this. I retain dozens of keys for people in the hope that someday, they'll want to return.

Cheating

That word is poorly used here then and now. There is no cheating on a decentralized Blockchain. What does decentralized mean? Look at the screenshot graphic from hive.io. (Oh, by the way, 'controls' is spelled with one 'L', if you need a proofreader, lemme know, think I need one too 😂.) No single entity or organization controls Hive.

Is this true? Sure it is. Some have a larger stake, and force their opinions on others, but they do not control it. We all do. If you want to change things or give others less power, unvote their witness, stop delegating to them, downvote them, mute them in your communities, there is a lot that can be done. The question is - do you have the audacity to do it?

After reading the whitepaper, I could not find anywhere, not in the terms of service, mission statement, or any part whatsoever, that states a person cannot buy votes. It's not even been considered as part of any major or minor fork. Why?

It goes against the freedoms that a decentralized structure symbolizes and is built upon. Some people may not agree with it, and those people have iron-fisted others into abandoning various services and community foundations. They have even forced countless people to turn their back on Hive completely.

I don't agree at all, with flagging people into oblivion because they pissed you off. It shows lack of maturity. You know exactly who you are. It would be one thing to be a trusted policing force that merely stripped away the rewards granted by your personally frowned upon 'vote buying', but now, one user is cashing in his chips. In total, that will end up being almost 150,000 HIVE that will be sold. SOLD, Not staked. Why?

Was it the automation of it all?

Was it the acceptance of a technology that made things easier?

Weren't they building and committed to Hive?

Weren't they supporting a thriving community?

They were going to stay here for awhile. But, you know, buying votes is such a huge problem here, we had to nip it in the bud. Honestly, to each their own, I have no right to demand what someone else does with the stake they control, just like you, you, you, you or anyone else has no authority over how I use mine.

USER RETENTION

That is the biggest problem here in my personal opinion. Of the 18 thousand or so accounts #LEO onboarded last year, the combined total of HP powered up in those accounts is less than 67% of that 18k. So instead of curating what is likely a lot of good content being overlooked, let's stay busy and push out people that are truly investing their time and real money into this chain. That is brilliant. Real problems like plagiarism and AI laziness for posts seem more important to me. I'll flag those all day when made aware or see them.

But wait, there's more!

As a community builder myself, I've been ever grateful for the tools that have come to light in the evolution of Hive. Auto votes being one of them. This has freed up tons of time for me to help other new users learn Hive and support the ones that are vetted in our community. Since our vote was small, we've also used various tokens and other community services to help out who we can to improve their (here's that word again) visibility.

Yes, I check to see what we're voting on, @thealliance has always been keen on quality over quantity. And, I do that regularly with another community that I run, the #PIMP district. The major problem we all have is visibility. Unless a person knows a few whales, they're likely not going to make much over 10 HIVE a post and if they aren't part of a community with a decent vote trail or heavily tuned in membership? They probably won't make more than 2 HIVE.

The value of a community and their support via delegations from its members or outside help, is immeasurable. Regardless if they are 'buying votes' or what have you. It gives them the visibility and engagement they are seeking. And the engagement - especially positive interaction - is what keeps them here. Intrinsic value of that can not be quantified, but it can be tarnished and destroyed by vindication.

But, but, but, we only want to vote on QUALITY posts!

Quality

I don't think I've seen @curangel or @ocdb vote on any posts from communities like the #silvergoldstackers in ages. Why? It goes back to the Steem days, a lot of us bought votes. We understand how money works, I mean, c'mon, we own silver and gold and other precious elements outside of cryptocurrency.

So, since none of the bigger curative efforts wanted to vote on our posts, we created a community, delegated to a community account, and we all support each other through it. How exactly is that vote buying? It's not in my opinion, it's called community support.

But you guys don't post quality!

Oh, that's your reason? You have specific guidelines that you follow for a post to be considered quality enough and deserving of a bloated vote. X amount of words, certain tags bla bla bla. To each their own, which is the point I'm trying to make in this entire post.

Quality is very subjective. For instance, it is not likley that @blocktrades will vote on my post, it doesn't have a codex for some kind of new Hive tool, database improvement suggestion or security upgrade. That's what I see him do. For @azircon to vote on my post, it would likely have to smash out a detailed critique on a new Splinterlands game mechanic. For somebody like @silverstackeruk, I would have to catch his silver interest or talk about support for one of his many token exploits.

For most stakkers, a quality silver post only needs certain things. A shot of the metal itself. Various specs like mintage of a bar, weight, purity and variants (i.e. proof state, an antique finish or maybe colorized). Finally, where we got it or can get it. That's it. That's quality to us. That might be 200 words in a post. Just over the limit of a maxed out tweet.

If I were to want a vote from some kind of (not all) photographic community, I would have to use their tag(s). I would also have to post a decent picture I had personally taken, the time and place and finally, the equipment used. I rarely say where or what I used, but still post in them because I love photography and really wish I was better 😝. But that's quality to them, they don't care about a story behind it, maybe 50 words is it! They're photographers, not writers.

dHiversity (pronounced: DIE-vuhr-si-tee)

Hive is an amazing place because of its diversity. There are so many different types of peoples and niches here. I see more new tribes popping up every week. I saw one the other day about dumpster diving! One person's trash is another person's treasure. One person's trash is another person's treasure.

One more time.

One person's trash is another person's treasure.

Just let that sink in, I'll come back to it shortly. I wanted to ask @pharesim and @acidyo a question since they will likely not show up to the discussion tomorrow. Since you pay people to delegate to your curative efforts (@curangel and @ocdb), even if they (votes) are done manually, you are still using other people's HP and paying them for it. The question then is, how is that any different from buying a vote?

You're effectively renting others' HP to make your vote bigger and more effective, are you not? Isn't this the same as buying a vote? Instead of buying one large vote from a single entity or organization, you're buying a bunch of little votes to bolster your own and build your own stake to support your own communities. This is how you feel community building should be, right?

So then the obvious logic will follow. If communities start paying people to rent their HP and vote on whatever they want, it is ok, correct? Yes, I'm seriously asking the both of you, what makes what you do different than the other communities that have not been here anywhere near as long and are trying to build something, without long-standing delegations, autovotes and connections to big whales? The process may be slightly different, but the equation is the exact same. Services bought, rendered and applied.

Aaaaand Finally

One person's trash is another person's treasure. To each their own. We all have our own opinions and beliefs. It doesn't make mine or yours any less or more valuable. (Except, of course, in terms of a vote. 🤣) It sucks that some people have bigger votes and don't agree with others' opinions, but it is what it is.

It's also a beauty here, we can have differing opinions. I've been flagged countless times and have handed out probably ten times as many as I've gotten. I'm even on a downvote trail to an entrusted watcher of garbage being put on chain to help them (and all of us, really) limit spammy content.

Honestly, I don't care how many votes a person buys. There can be many goals for doing a thing. To prop up a community perhaps? Maybe they need extra money for their sister's operation? Maybe they are trying to get something on trending because they feel it is important and want those trending whale people to see it and take action on it because they know it won't earn enough votes to pass as a proposal?

Either way, I don't really care about buying or selling votes. As @themarkymark said in a recent comment, it's pretty far away from the real issues with Hive. I know some of the coding is going to be antiquated soon and a major fork will be coming. I know real vote farms exist and could be shut down. I know that other things are coming, that will be way faster than Hive currently is and we'll need to adopt it to compete on a scalability level for blockchain tech.

I can't tell anyone what to do or think, even if they think it is cheating or giving themselves an unfair advantage, but I can display my thoughts here, for everyone to see, with the hope that maybe some will see what I'm talking about and control their own stake. I have learned that, here, one must have slippery shoulders. I've also learned that just as in any part of the world, money speaks the loudest. I don't have much else to say except, REMEMBER TO BE YOU! I always am, and I always will be.