Some names in the list weren't known to me and I decided to try some.
Bluesky
I've tried to find their social media and I found:
Join waitlist / Bluesky will launch soon. It looks like the social media doesn't exist. 😀
Minds
I've created an account and clicked the button Join rewards. They asked me to verify my phone. And that was the next:
No verification code. This was my Georgian (country) number. If they don't allow a European country (non-EU, ok), I am sure that they don't allow most of the world. Or their SMS delivery doesn't work today for every country? 😀 A social media which is crumbling apart? 😀 They sucked half an hour of my time, they promised huge future in their shitty promotion videos, but their website just doesn't work properly.
I don't try to defend Hive - I create content and I need different ways of its monetization - I am super open. The problem is that there is nothing to be open to - only marketing bubbles. Mirror? You can't earn there. They talk about selling your posts as NFTs but sold posts are very, very rare and belong to gods and demigods. People join (blogging on ETH, wow!) and leave.
So... Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles. No surprise people can't find Hive in this bubble jungle.
Hive suffers the same problem as minds, too few users.
You can sign up without an email, if you want a burner account.
You do have to kyc to get rewards out, unless you know somebody trustworthy to do it for you.
I sent way, way too much money into the account of a person known only to me through minds, he converted it to eth and sent it back to me.
I paid for a funeral with it.
It was a bug bounty for finding a bug that let me print endless tokens, for a few weeks I was billionaire, until somebody ratted me out.
They let me keep what was >1k usd at the time I cashed it out.
Now it is worth a fraction of that.
So, I might be biased, but they have never said boo to me about what I post and my content is as controversial as I can find.
Don't take the bait when they say post and get paid, unless you think pennies a day is enough for your time.
Practically, I'd like to write an article for HubPages with the topic "Alternatives to Medium.Com". I will mention Hive, Hubpages, Vocal.Media, Quora. What else? In the world of the blockchain, I see no alternatives except Hive. Steemit keeps working, yes, but I know it from inside - I started posting there in spring 2021 before Hive. And I left it in autumn 2021 with the feeling of horror - Steemit is sinking, I can't recommend investing people's time in a dying project.
Thank you for your story and review. You are saying "Don't take the bait when they say post and get paid, unless you think pennies a day is enough for your time" but it looks that things are even worse there.
I tried to verify my phone, but I never got a code, only this:
So, I even can't earn pennies on Minds - you must verify your phone there to start earning. They also actively promote Minds+ upgrades. It means you must pay (for Minds+ 60$ and for Pro 480$ annually minds.com/upgrades) to get maximum from this project, and it gives a very bad feeling.
I am not the only one who feels bad about this. This is a comment on Minds:
Yeah, I wouldn't put any money into it unless you like the features it grants you.
I have been on minds since 2105 and it is still a work in progress.
It suffers the same problems as the others, rich people run it with the interest of rich people in mind.
It is not egalitarian in any aspect as far as rewards go.
Lots of engagement, more rewards.
Pay to play, more rewards.
The common way of enriching the already rich at the expense of naive people that can't math.
I think I did give them a phone number years ago, but I haven't had that phone, or number, for several years.
A burner phone gets around this hurdle.
But, as far as free speech goes, it is good for that.
You can say anything you like and the platform won't hassle you.
It's open source, so if you wanted to run your own instance, you can.
Maybe that can get you around the kyc, I don't know.
It's about the same here in the hive, if you don't care about rewards you can say anything you like.
If you want rewards you brown nose the rich and their lackeys.
Basic crapitalism in action.
The rich people pay, and the poor clean the toilets.
Interesting about Minds...
About Hive, you dramatize. I, for example, just share my images/stories on Hive and get good rewards because Hivers consider I am a good content creator.
I understand it. Minds and Hive can't delete your posts or your account unlike Twitter, etc. If a person wants to do political blogging, that's very important and great.
Yes, you engage in speech they approve of, it is easy to support agreeable speech, but to support 'free speech' one has to upvote things that they do not like.
That ain't happening in the hive, more likely to get downvoted.
Lots of people have been driven away for speaking their truth.
Hive can't delete your post, but the front ends can make them inaccessible outside using a block explorer.
Minds can delete anything it wants, but they do, at least, make an effort of not punishing unpopular speech.
IF you look long enough you will see the falsity of what you think hive is and does.
Not that this in any way affects the tech, still the best tech in the industry and getting better by the day, but the crowd leaves something to be desired, imo.
Then, what's the use of this platform? Though, it doesn't matter... No use. 😀
It was interesting, thank you for this conversation! 🙂
They do offer an option to put things on the 'permaweb', but I don't know much about how that works.
In any event, they can just delete your account.
They are not a blockchain.
It's okay to defend Hive there are many good things about it.
I'll defend it too, it just could be more than what it is, and if it doesn't grow it's eventually going to be a swap of tokens between Hive and HBD and the Hive Fund and not much else.
For sure. Hive must grow otherwise all these marketing bubbles will choke it. You described the situation well: