Pavlov's post - the real value of Hive

We all work on incentives of some kind, and while we like to judge each other's perceived reasons for doing something, but at the end of the day, we are all the same, it is just that the type of reward changes. The reward mechanisms matter a great deal to the way we behave, which is part of the idea behind Pavlovian Conditioning.

One of the interesting (I use that word a lot, mostly because I am curious about a lot) things on Hive is that people are often "accused" of only writing or doing something because there is the potential for an economic payoff. When someone does something for money, it seems to be seen as a negative on Hive, even though that is the way all economies work at their core, even if what is the "money" changes form.

For example, people might like to read a book, but while they are reading, they aren't thinking much about the entire economic structure that lays behind getting that book into their eyeline, from the author who was able to have the time and resources to sit and write, the companies that built the PC and keyboard (or typewriter), the editing staff, the printing presses, the publishing houses and marketing campaigns, transport network and a myriad other ancillary services that were required - for a book. Even if the author didn't care about the money at all, didn't need it or didn't want it and gave it all to charity - that book still generated value.

But, very little of this network is considered or indeed, visible to the end-reader at all, as all they care about is reading the book's contents. The infrastructure however is where the majority of the value is generated, which is why owning the infrastructure is so lucrative and always has been, as it is needed to get goods and services to where the demand is for them and without the network, the goods and services are useless.

But, there is more to it than this in regards to the "why" people post at all. Some people seem to think posting for money is some kind of manipulation on Hive,, where people will change their content to what they think will get them rewarded. But, it is the reward that people are after, it is just that some people want money.

On other platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the vast majority of users are not monetarily rewarded at all, but they are rewarded.* It is just that the rewards come in the form of stars, hearts and thumbs, as well as random other digital emojis that carry no real-world value to those who receive them. At least not directly - get enough of them and the platform could pass some of the value they get from them on, in the hope that a popular account will generate more sales for their advertising revenue.

Yes. Those digital markers that carry no enduser value, do carry value for the platform as they can use them as markers (tokens) of market segmentation and targeting. Also, they can use them liberally on the platform to reward all kinds of behavior and condition response. For example, people on Twitter love to see someone they dislike torn apart, so they add their likes and shares to some random account to give it 15 seconds of fame for a bit of schadenfreude. That is a reward and the reason that people are trolling is for reward too. On the centralized platform however, that reward doesn't come in the form of money, it comes in the form of digital attention.

If you haven't noticed on Hive yet - trolling behavior rarely earns because while there is no user cost on Twitter or Facebook to support it, there is a cost on Hive to support it, because it requires a vote. Staked users would generally rather pay for content they want, then content that gives them some schadenfreude points.

But this aside, if we look at posting behavior itself, the reward mechanisms of the centralized platforms are set up to condition for content that desires attention and digital tokens that hold no value as payment. This is interesting, because it encourages drama and often a far less thoughtful type of content and the people posting it are willing to in exchange for something that has zero value to them, other than their own feeling of importance and popularity.

If looking from the perspective of what kind of content is healthier for an individual to produce, I would suspect that the one that does it for usable value will generally be more useful, as it has to convince an audience to actually pay for the content, not just give something that has no value in exchange. A person can spend all day for years on any of those highly-subscribed platforms liking this, commenting on that and scrolling through all of that free content, and earn nothing. But, these platforms generate trillions in infrastructure value for the small group of stakeholders, without having to pass anything onto the users at all.

People are conditioned. The metronome of public opinion clicks and people start salivating and posting incessantly, generating a massive amount of wealth for those who use their power to direct more wealth their way, by affecting public opinion. They have created a massive circlejerk of information flow that extracts value from the userbase and all they have to pay for it - is worthless digital tokens.

I hear you saying though "hey, we do it for digital tokens too" and that is the case, but the difference is that the laws of economics apply to the tokens we are moving, so things like scarcity, distribution, demand and ownership matter. On Facebook, Instagram or Twitter - I don't even own my account, so ownership of the useless tokens they pay with is impossible and even if I could own them, useless because they are free.

for something to have actual value, someone has to believe it has value, and this is what the centralized platforms have successfully managed. They have been able to make people believe that the rewards they offer are valuable, even though they cannot buy anything at all. They have done this to such a degree, that people are willing to "buy likes" from secondary markets in order to appear popular on a platform that they have no ownership over and offers nothing tangible in return. It is all about making people feel like they are getting something, even though they are getting nothing.

I find this especially interesting in regards to the troll behavior on those platforms as for the most part, they get nothing out of deliberately harming people in some way. Well, the is is not true is it? They get the good feeling from their behavior, making them sadists. This is interesting because essentially, these platforms are encouraging and "rewarding" these kinds of people, which is why this kind of behavior is so prevalent on the centralized social media platforms - because the trolls are conditioned to be trolls - while thinking they are clever.

What the general response is from the centralized platforms to deal with this is of course things like censorship and KYC rules, but this doesn't actually stop it, because the platform itself is monetized by the drama. meaning they are still rewarding that kind of behavior, but they are making a "show" of dealing with it. They know the solution however, it is just that they don't want to enact it, because to do so breaks their business model.

Hive has this solution built into it of course, and that is to have users who are invested and have the ability to incentivize or disincentivize behaviors, with tokens that carry real economic value and can be used in the real world. This means that without censorship or KYC, people are rewarded for behavior, and with a very wide distribution of those who can reward, a very wide range of content can earn real value. While imperfect, it is able to generally govern content and behavior direction, without encroaching on anyone's ability to write to the blockchain itself, as long as they have a tiny bit of ownership.

However, this doesn't mean all content gets rewarded, because people who hold ownership value reward as they choose and just like they would on the Facebook and Twitter platforms, if they had to pay for it, they wouldn't reward the negative side nearly as much as it is currently rewarded with those valueless stars and hearts.

While people are willing to pay for Netflix, if Facebook were to start charging users 15 dollars a month to use their services, how many of the 2.7 billion would? And then, Twitter would charge 10 dollars for Twitter and Instagram 10 dollars too, and Snapchat.... Just to give those stars and hearts some value.

If they did that, I am sure there would be takers, but far fewer than what they have now, as while they might be able to add some value to those stars and hearts, they can't give ownership of the platform itself, as that fundamentally destroys their platform. Netflix offers what people are willing to pay for, most people aren't willing to pay for pictures of their friend's lunch - at least not directly.

This means that if they did add a subscription, there would be an exodus looking for a new home and new ways to do much of what they have been doing and they will discover that all this "complexity" that Jack Dorsey from Twitter has been struggling with, has already been solved in various ways by places like Hive. The only thing that makes it complex for Twitter is how to do it whilst still maintaining centralized control and profit margins, and not adding any real value back to the user base that the platform has to pay for.

Hive can do this because the platform is owned by us and through the witnesses, is able to do what it does without having to take a cut at all. But, because of that ownership model Hive has, anyone can post what they want, just not get monetary rewards for it. However, they can get some likes and comments on their content, but they just won't hold much value, unless the person "liking" is also someone who is willing to pay for what they like.

Damn. That was a far longer post than I intended and there are still a million and one more things I would like to say about this as well as threads to complete.... Would I write this on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? Would I write it on Medium where they choose who gets support?

Where else am I incentivized to write content such as this?

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]