So shortly after I made my first two post some people reached out to me and told me to tread lightly in certain communities. When I asked why I was told that Hive whales basically control the platform. And that they could single handily black list some one by down vote bombing this post just because of a beef. As a new user this really scared me. And as I have not been posting due to desktop PC issue I have heard other people in my Splinterlands guild express that they to were warned of such action being taken. So really my big question iss how likely is this to happen. And are there any steps in place to keep such things from happening?
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May I ask how they approached you about this? (looked into your first posts and didn't see any signs of it)
Generally newcomers are very much not in any risk of downvotes unless there's something suspicious about their activities. The way rewards work here and the immutability of them after posts pay out opens up ways for abusers to try and trick the community into being other people, having put effort into the content, etc, when in reality they're the same person that created many other accounts trying to copy-paste text on that belongs to others and so on. Those are mainly the only accounts that receive downvotes. If for some reason some whales/larger stakeholders are having a bad day and purposely attack new accounts with downvotes it usually gains attention pretty fast and others can step in to counter such behavior. They may be whales and they may retaliate on those countering their downvotes but there's also whales that value the new users' starting experience beyond the consequences or are mostly passive and can't be retaliated on in terms of post rewards, etc.
Downvote mana is also only 25% of upvote mana, whales going bad eventually means they'll have to use their upvote mana to downvote and continue said activity which will start eating at their curation rewards and growth, at lower prices like now it may not mean much to them but it might eventually. Others countering their downvotes with upvotes may also earn less returns due to the downvotes but they can band together and take the loss of APR hit together so it doesn't hurt as much.
I was actually messaged through some different discord servers. Granted all these servers were splinterlands related. And they all had sections to promote your splinterlands posts. So I am not 100% sure if it was someone who was salty due to lack of engagement with their post. Or whatever the case may be. I myself have never had a downvote and I have very rarely seen them occur. That is why in my question is this actually still even a thing that happens. From personnel experience I was treated very well once I started posting. Was event delegated 50 Hive power to get myself started for the first few months. I was also able to meet you and become part of the Gods Unchained community on HIVE. Which I enjoy being a part of very much. The past year has just been rough with my desktop broken and my laptop not able to handle my editing softward to make solid posts. So sadly I have not been able to be as much of a part of the community as I have wanted.
Like I also spoke of this happened to four of my splinterlands guild mates. So perhaps this truly is just a splinterlands issue with the discord servers people are using to try and promote their posts?
But I do love Hive and I am hoping that by the end of the year my desktop PC will be running and I will be back at full blown posts/
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