For those of you who don't know, we have an excellent short-form Dapp on Hive called @dbuzz that is currently mired in controversy over a number of its users spamming the blockchain. It's a Twitter-like Dapp that allows the user to send 'buzzes' to the chain of up to 256 characters (including photo links).
For those who have been around for a while, we did have a similar DApp called @zappl which seemed to fall by the wayside like so many others have also done. At one time, we managed to mimic most of the mainstream social media apps. @steepshot was the Instagram clone, and then came @appics (recently fallen off Steem and supposedly going to reincarnate onto Telos). There was a Quora clone, (isn't there supposed to be another one now?) and loads of other things that gave us a fully integrated suite of social media toys to play with, all on our amazing, decentralised and censorship-resistant blockchain that allows us to reward each other in real-life Crypto! Fucking awesome!!! I wish we'd have had the users to support them all and I wish we'd support our independent devs more.
The obvious problems with these type pf DApps though is that they are open to abuse, there are huge farms being set up with some users knocking out dozens of posts a day and farming rewards, often using content of dubious origin. The creator of @dbuzz, @chrisrice appears to insist that as a decentralised and censorship-resistant blockchain, as long as there is no plagiarism, anything goes and is very lightly moderating the posts. @hivewatchers position appears to be that short-form content is mostly spam and undeserving of 'reward', and it was said today in discord that Hive was a blogging platform and such posts were undesirable on the chain. I disagree most strongly.
There is actually a toggle on the DApp which allows the user to set the maximum payout limit starting at $1 and so there is the onus for users to be responsible for their usage. Sadly, many aren't and as I human nature, the type of which is visible all over the chain, the dollars rule. Now I have used @dbuzz on a few occasions and set the payout according to how I value what I have to say. Last week for example, I believed I had something very important to say and set the switch to $5 (which it achieved!) but usually I leave it at $1. This is just my personal approach.
My own thoughts are that Dapps like this add value to the chain, I want more engagement and more of a social media experience. I am here, not because I'm a blogger, although I do sometimes note my thoughts into a post, but because I like reading and enjoy the interaction and communication, but above all, I like the fact I'm not selling my personal data to a huge corporation in return for the ability to use the applications. @dbuzz has so many great use cases. I want to buzz people during a football game on @sportstalksocial and get some banter going, but internal conflict stops me at the moment! I want to @dbuzz my thoughts if I think they are worth sharing at any given moment in time, I want to use it as a release if necessary.
Sadly today, the disputes seem to have almost become all-out war and conflict between developers on the chain can never be a good thing. In limited dealings with both parties, I find them both to be very principled and have the utmost integrity and genuine belief in the arguments they put forward. I disagree with comparisons being made to @dlike, they were nothing more than scammers who created accounts simply to farm their own rewards, but there is a similarity in the content type, short-form, and it's this that needs addressing and consensus amongst the community to allow this dispute to end and harmony to return but for once, I find myself sitting on a fence I hope will be a demarcation line of compromise!
One suggestion made today was that payout is dependent on post length, I think @gabe suggested it but that's not the answer. The value lies in what is being said, not how much is being said. The value is in the sincerity. of the post. The difficulty is, of course, that sincere intent is a judgement call!
Do I have a suggestion?
Of course, hence the reason for the post!
- Tokenise @dbuzz, it needs to be a second layer app that uses the main Hive feed as an aggregator. Limit the Hive rewards but not the tokens and this places its 'governance' and moderation, firmly within its own structure.
- Limit the number of daily posts a user can create. Is there any reason that anyone would need to create a dozen posts a day if not for farming rewards? Guidelines on Hive the blockchain also apply to its derivatives and bastard offspring!
- Encourage the community to use their downvotes! This is how the chain is balanced. Downvotes are not an act of aggression, they are an act of peaceful disagreement. Always add a comment with a downvote!
- I'd also like to see something that showed anyone voting, that there was a post limit and so they could set their voting % accordingly. Nothing worse than people wasting rewards on a limited reward post. Not sure how they work exactly but I feel guilty. Perhaps a message can appear at the bottom of a post telling readers that there's a limit in place?
I am sure that clever people can find many ways in which everyone can co-exist on one chain, if we had better ways of customising our feeds to see exactly what we wanted to see then many of the problems would be solved but that would take some serious work by the devs., but one thing I will ask of everyone is to TALK. NICELY. No one owns this chain, there has to be something for everyone who wants to use it and we DO need @hivewatchers, to protect the reward pool AND the users from malicious actors.
It’s funny considering DBuzz sought a lot of suggestions from antiabuse to make sure it’s not flooded with more abusers than users.
The Problem is, the harder HW push, the harder Chris pushes back! Newton's third law in all its glory!
Its a tough job being HW but sometimes I wish they'd take a slightly less, not aggressive, but perhaps not see everything so black and white!
I like drama.
I treat dbuzz like twitter: short form content, pictures, etc, that don't deserve a full blog post but are still worth sharing. And for that, dbuzz is a fantastic solution! It's easy to use on mobile, I can post pics real easy like, it's a good app to have on the Hive blockchain. I support the anti-spam efforts of GP, but this is not the appropriate target for their work.
I like it too, hence I am hoping a solution can be found but I also think that general Hive guidelines about Spam and reward abuse must also apply and if a user does not take responsibility then the DApp owener should. If this doesnt happen, or there is a huge difference of opinion, then HW get involved and we end up with the shitshow we see today!
Its just a shame. Needs to be balance and compromise!
We can saw spammers everywhere. #dbuzz is still in baby shoes with a small dev team. So I dont think that everyone should wait miracles from them. They even dont get support from other places like proposals example. And they work really hard on they dapp and also on onboarding.
Hivewatchers as a idea is good, but lets be honest. They are not the owners of the blockchain and I think sometimes they are more than strict. Many good content creators left because of them. And that is not the best advertisement for Hive. (dont ask me the names because I dont remember but I do know it happened)
Also if they are the "hivewatchers" and they get 3k HBD/month than they should do they work and if they disagree than not report it to dbuzz, but just downvote it and thats it. Nobody didnt force them to do that job. So if they do, than make it and stop threatening the whole dbuzz community that they will put the dapp to they blacklist.
Also always they want to communicate on discord. Why not here where everyone can see. I think this will be the good way to communicate.
Btw this is not healthy what is happening on hive between some dapps or dev. teams. Everyone think that they have more right than the another one. Everyone want to make similar projects also instead that they can work together or like in this example abow some people think that they have more right to tell others what to do and how. I thought this is a decentralized chain.
Sometimes I even have a feeling that there is a group on Hive who dont want more people here.
Also as we saw here that some creators they even dont get a vote from dbuzz but from another source. Do HW think that if there is no dbuzz these accounts dont find a way to get votes? I am sure they will.
All in all I am with dbuzz since I think that is a great dapp and I am sure it will be better by the time and it will grow. I can imagine that later they will have they own token but maybe this is not the right time yet.
I absolutely agree with everything you say about @dbuzz so there is no need to defend Dbuzz to me as an App because I fully support it and the use of short-form posts on the chain. I also totally agree about this...
and have said it myself in a number of posts over the last 3 years.
BUT. I don't want to see this chain, and my feeds bunged up with millions of zero effort, copy-paste spam posts that are bot created by thousands of accounts and all upvoting each other. Did you ever see the 'New' feed on Steem, or even here when these farms were in operation?
Would you also think it just if 5 huge whales set up alt accounts and circle jerked each other with $100 votes each on a 3 word blog, 12 times a day? They could totally drain the reward pool daily if they so desired.
And what would happen to the user base then? No rewards and everyone would disappear.
When I scroll down the 'New' feed, I want to see genuine posts from real people. I don't want to have to adjust my settings, hide and block, so I can have an enjoyable experience as that means, the farmers and spammers are forcing me to adjust my behaviour which is wrong.
Hivewatchers is mandated by the community through its funding and support and although it is far from perfect, especially when it tries to dictate its own vision of what Hive should be, as in this particular case, the good it does, far outweighs the negatives. As I say to anyone who wants to spam, plagiarise, farm and not give a damn about the community, you are more than welcome to go to Steem, or Blurt of Noise thing and set up camp there as they seem rather less stringent. Why stick around on a platform you disagree with and dislike?
Is it really just that there are more rewards to be earned on Hive? If so fair enough, but that's because more rewards go to genuine creators and users rather than spammers and parasites and for that, you have HW to thank!
Nice to meet you and thanks for taking the time to comment :-)
Nobody dont want to see they feed full of spam and I get what u mean. Even I dindt saw many spam since I am not following those accounts. I saw what happened with appics, how the ambassadors cyrcle jerking each other, AND themselves with they delegated power also. So I saw enough for sure. But as I mentioned even in long form content I saw people to talk about nothing in a whole page too.
I am also sure that we have users here who are living in very poor places. For them few dollars are a big help and since I was traveling around the world many times I know they are also good actors/actresses if they wanna get few bucks. Some of them give more effort some doesnt.
We can see this even now when everyone started to power down since they saw the price was a bit higher. Many of our users think in short term. And thats why we need dapps like #dbuzz to onboard more people. Also more people can manage later what they want to see and what they dont want to see since more people more decentralized power.
I was just angry when I saw a message from HW that they wanna put on blacklist all the dbuzz community because few rotten fruits. Also even here in the comments they keep mention dbuzz as a spam app. This is not how it should be.
Basically what happened? With simple world HW catch a neighbour steeling. (milking the reward pool) And instead they punish the theft and report it to the "police" (put him on the blacklist, starting to downvote) they blame the the victim why they didnt close the house.( threatens dbuzz to put them on the blacklist and call them spam supporters)
So everyone have to think was that a right thing they had to do or maybe HW also made a mistake in this case?
So dont misunderstand me I am also happy that somebody take care of the reward pool, but with more users it will be more difficult and how HW is working now it will be not working in the future imo.
What we really need is to teach the new and also the old users how to use they power and the downvote.
Anyway I know @Chrisrice and I am sure he want the best for they community and also the best for Hive so I am sure he will manage the whole situation.
Thanks for replying and I'm glad you mentioned Appics. Total joke, just like dlike was who were simply the ones creating fake account farms to farm there own rewards. Sadly this bad experience of short form content is now having an unjustified effect on Dbuzz, how could we also forget share2steem in this list!
For a while in that reply, you wrote the same as I have in the past about how small amounts make a huge difference to many people in the world, I know Chris is from the Phils where I spent a lot of time any years ago wandering Mindanao.
Best wishes . Things have a way of working out for the best and whilst HW has community members watching the watchers , all is not lost :-)
FWIW, #GuiltyParties told us privately that only 2% of our users are "abusers".
HW's Steem account is spamming lime crazy, so they aren't against spamming in principle, just when it suits them.
We all know HW has an agenda against short-form content which is why 75% of your battle is fighting against an agenda sadly!
But in the bigger picture, the huge whales will always dictate what happens on every corner of the blockchain, always have done which is why the whole place is one big hypocrisy really but it is what it is. Proof of stake will always be nothing more than a tool for the wealthy to supress the not so wealthy!
Nice to see Leo finance getting some Buzzes! I think you've got their jump on their own short-form release!
It's Sunday, stop fretting and working and take the family out for the day, its more fun in the Philippines :-)
Best wishes to you all :-)
I often work on Sundays 😀
The @dbuzz stake is used to uplift the community, to build tools that preserve & expand #FreeSpeech & #Privacy.
After spending years with my family, I almost work non-stop now, minus sleep and some time with family 😀
Posted via D.Buzz
I use @dbuzz. Slightly less than I used to because recent events in my life have been taking up my time. This seems to be like a battle against two extremes.
On the one hand I like what @hivewatchers does. If they go after @dbuzz though I feel like other Dapps like @actifit which also tends to be "short-form" will be next. Last June one posted actifit report only contained the words "walk" and "walking" repeated to use up the minimum characters. I commented with a link to a YouTube clip of the ending of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension asking which one of the characters the user was.
I don't think it's unreasonable to fear that @hivewatchers would be consistent and apply the same standards for @chrisrice and @dbuzz against @actifit. Using what I I guess is the logic @hivewatchers is using against @dbuzz a short post with a link to a 10 minute 3Speak video would also be "spam". A ten minute video easily takes more than 10 minutes to make when editing time is added. Is a three-paragraph essay with introduction, body, and conclusion really necessary to justify a post with a 3Speak video link? If a three-paragraph essay is necessary than why wasn't that information covered in the video? Is it just rehashing what's on the video which ironically would lean it more, in my opinion, toward the "spam" area.
@enforcer48 @holovision
Actifit has absolutely no comparison to dBuzz.
All apps on dBuzz are doing well and we have never had a problem with communicating with their owners and working together to fight spam and exploitation.
Actifit is a great app. They are against spam and farming and a long time ago introduced a mandatory text field with minimum word input of 150 words to avoid spam. They also use our blacklist and have their own blacklist.
They look up for abuse in their posts too.
Since dBuzz was launched chrisrice has persistently refused to add any mandatory text field. We did not even suggest minimum word input, just a minimum of 256 characters, so the post would contain a minimum of effort and minimum of original content.
chrisrice came up to Hive with an old Steemit mentality thinking that he can just copy @dlike/@share-2-steem spam apps into Hive expecting everyone to just accept what he wants from Hive.
"3Speak video would also be "spam""
Far from it. 3Speak rewards videos/posts created by the user. It takes time to record your own video and effort to record. dBuzz posts take no effort whatsoever. They just spam with links/cross-posts to some content, often just plagiarism if not plain copypasta. If there is any original content, it is just a few words added - completely effortless.
If the rewards were declined on any dBuzz posts, I am certain that almost all users who are currently using it, would stop using it.
By the way, there has been another account reported today.
Look at the rewards on each dBuzz post.
Looks like the user sorted it out with SBI, so nothing else to see there.
What does "sorted out" mean? Arranging to farm on spam?
Hive SBI has an easy way for any user to have their votes skipped that the user was not aware of (because they had not read our FAQ). We pointed it out to him (and he also found it on his own once he was called out).
We also have strict anti-spam and anti-plagiarism policies (including using third-party blacklists) and we stop upvoting tags where abuse becomes too prevalent relative to actual content.
After this incident we are considering d.buzz for addition to our tag blacklist, but have not made a final decision yet.
Can you use the term "exclusion" instead of "blacklist"? 🤔
@chrisrice
We are going to use the word Mutelist instead.
Posted via D.Buzz
Perhaps read?
The thing about this user (who for transparencies sake, I reported and as you can see, had words wit who was he was trying it on. As SBI says, he got caught out and then miraculously sorted it! testing it out he said! I would like to see @steembasicincome change to a default off position on DBuzz posts which still gives people freedom of choice to turn it on. Dbuzz has the option of setting payout size, but as we see, this does not make its users more 'responsible' in its use!
My hope is, things will settle of their own accord as users find out what, and will what not be tolerated by the community.
I would prefer @josephsavage and his team takes the “no voting” approach than expecting people to behave on their own.
I guess to put my last comment in @dbuzz form:
If @hivewatchers wants to go after @dbuzz since "short-form" content is spam then be consistent and simultaneously also go after Actift, 3Speak and all the other use cases that tend to be "short-form". Why just pick on one at a time? Just declare war against all the offenders.
The problem is, both sides are ver inflexible and have very fixed ideas. Makes negotiation and compromise difficult!
I use #DBuzz quite a lot. I consider carefully the "quality" / value of my Buzz before posting and cap it accordingly. Sometimes I burn rewards, sometimes accept the 1 default max, but quite often now I increase it to 2.
I agree it would be good if the max payout is clear so voters can bot vote so much if they choose, BUT those rewards greater than max payout are not wasted, the author rewards are burned (great for Hive) and curator still get his full share.
I fully support short form blogging on hive.
Blacklisting the pool farmers would presumable decrease rep score, so
One answer to the reward farming issue could be to burn ALL rewards to users with a low reputation score.