What is the difference between being downvoted and being silenced?


I was talking to someone on the chain about Hive's user-friendliness, and it was a good short conversation. Why? The person learned one or two things from my input, and I learned something else from their response, which is why I use the term "value for value."

If you are not learning something from the content you are consuming on Hive, you are most likely following the wrong users. On Hive, you must constantly learn to be a better user and web3 person, and the only way to do so is to follow the appropriate set of users.

Remember that I used the term "users" rather than "people." In terms of how they interact with the chain, the type of content they create, and the knowledge and experience they can share.

DVs Vs Being Silenced

For example, many people have come to associate downvotes with being silenced or having their free speech taken away. They believe that when their content is downvoted, their freedom of speech or ability to create is violated, and they are forced to refrain from creating. However, this is incorrect.

Most entities on Hive choose to downvote people for a variety of reasons and act autonomously. Hive does not have a ninja-mined account titled "Hive" that downvotes users, and even if there were, it would only be "taking rewards" from the creator rather than deleting or making their content invisible to others.

In this case, it would be demonization rather than being silenced. However, there are no accounts like this on Hive.

DV Trails

On the other hand, we have things called downvote trails. People trust a single entity with their downvoting power, and that entity uses that DV power as they see fit. So, most of the time, when a user receives a DV, they believe it represents the entire chain, as well as 300 other people who have downvoted them.

I've seen a case where a new user is commenting or tagging everyone on a DV trail and pleading that they stop downvoting them, meanwhile it was just one person who triggered the trail.

I am not going to sit here and say that DVs are pleasant in any way; they are not.

I have gotten a lot of them in the past, and over the last six months, I have seen people rave about the chain being occultic and satanic because they got DVs. In fact, some of these users have begun to champion and form an anti-Hive campaign, urging other users to power down, sell their stash, and join blurt, where they will not be downvoted.

Months later, they are back, despite having called it quits months before. In reality, they do not really mean anything they have said about Hive; it is just the pain and hurt, and since they cannot financially match their downvoters for strength, the only thing they do is try to create a FUD campaign to see if they can hurt the chain by asking people to mass-leave.

So, these people can create whenever they want, and their accounts are active, but they can not earn, and sometimes the inability to earn is interpreted as silence, when it isn't. However, they are misplaced because some users only see the dollar value of their posts, and when there is no corresponding dollar value on a post because it was removed via DVs, it is common to assume that it means being silenced.

In reality, we frequently underestimate being silenced on web2.

There are people whose accounts are completely obliterated on web2 because of what they've said. Their accounts vanish into thin air or have their reach reduced (shadow banned), which is synonymous with Twitter. However, we do not hear much about this unless it is a big account (i.e., celebrities or popular people) or one that has been monetized.

So the bone of content is often being demonetized.

Being demonetized is a completely different demon on web2, and it differs significantly from what happens on Hive. On web2, it hurts because, for example, you have managed to build 100,000 followers on YouTube and now you can not earn money with it because you posted something about the Israeli war.

When a non-monetized account is deleted on web2, the account cares less because they have lost nothing.

On Hive, we often overestimate the concept of demonetization. In reality, demonetization is a large and harsh word, and while it is less severe than being silenced or canceled, it is still extremely venomous when compared to the concept of downvote. This is because, in the case of a downvote, the person or persons are not speaking on behalf of the chain, DVs do not last indefinitely, and when the effect ends, nothing is harmed except the user's numeric reputation on-chain.

In Conclusion

As I have always stated, DVs are not evil; they are simply tools of protection, and some users may be overzealous with them. We saw it incessantly in the past with a huge curation account, but then, I think it has reduced a lot nowadays. By any standard, DVs cannot be compared to being silenced.

This is a much more expansive concept than downvotes. The latter is synonymous with web2 due to its high centralization, ownership, and control patterns. The Hive system is not perfect and requires a lot of work, but it functions despite the contentious hinges. When we remove a lot of emotional play, we can begin to apply the necessary logical biases.



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10 comments

I personally never use my DV power, nor is mine tied to any kind of voting chain. Neither is my upvote power for that matter. Before using a DV it would be better to communicate, I see people who leave Hive because they've become the target of a DV chain. Often they receive little or no communication from the initiator of the chain, and if they are new to Hive they're not going to be able to figure out how to stop it much less communicate with the initiator.

DV definitely doesn't silence anyone, but it does demonetize them which can be very dangerous for us as a collective. It it's someone who is a serial plagiarizer, a stalker, or consistently attacking someone unreasonably without a reasonable discussion the DV should be used. We are seeing to many people driven off of Hive though because of these DV chains, our goal should be to grow Hive and not push people away unless they are truly toxic.

!hiqvote

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Yeah. I champion this a lot too. I was getting my posts zeroe everyday for over 6 months and by zero, I mean I was completely wiped out everyday. If it was a new user they might probably left in the second week. However these people will not stop the DV no matter what. They'd basically say it's an expensive of their will and all that.
It's just like the issue of the DHF, it's a concern but then it's a bit controversial, so.

I think the DVs have decreased though, it was notoriously bad q year or two ago.

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It's a good thing they have, they really drive people away. If they would communicate rather than DV... It sucks that they put you through that for more than six months. Not only is it rude, it was damaging to you economically. A less patient person would have jumped ship and it would be another loss to Hive!

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While I agree with your position on DVs compared to real censorship and I have the same opinion, I can't help but notice that enough of the people being subjected to multiple DVs think of it as a form of censor. It is a form of perception which is also influenced by the negative emotions usually associated with receiving DVs, unless you consider them as part of the game and move on. But not many can do that, especially if they are targeted.

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I think a huge percentage of DV here is fuelled by hatred. Some of them do it, because no one would do anything to them and they enjoy making that person feel sad. Some of them hide under the idea that it's the right of expressions and many reasons.

I was targeted a lot, and I can tell firsthand. However, I just wanted to clarify that it doesn't really mean being silenced.

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I think a huge percentage of DV here is fuelled by hatred

I don't think it is huge, but there are people who enjoy making others feel bad. Sadism is even more prevalent online than offline.

But I don't think they are the majority of the DVs. I'd say the majority come from DV trails, where account holders don't even know who they are downvoting or why.

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I do not appreciate down votes neither would I wish it for any user. It's painfully hurting and discouraging.

The first time I got one was from one community curator's account. I sought for the reason behind the down vote and was told that I was shit posting and using the community's tag on them 😅. Imagine me, shit posting. Well I apologized and never used the tag again.
But you know the funny thing, I checked all the user's posts and comments and gave them 100% upvote to teach them that I wasn't looking for votes.

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No one appreciates DV. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I think I've seen your content and they're good and I don't think you're a shit poster, I think they just don't want your post on their community and that's why they said what they said.
We cannot post in every community, that's why we should know the people who owns a community to be sure they appreciate our contents too.

However, DVs are not users being and that's what I wanted users to know

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It sucks to get downvoted, but it's a part of the system here on Hive. As much as I don't like them, downvotes do their part to help the ecosystem. I have seen some of those spam bot farms go crazy so I think it might be a necessary evil.

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I think we need to educate people from time to time about DVs. It's often mistaken for being silenced and all that, and why they're a necessary evil. Although we rarely address the part where it can be abused

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!hiqvote
!discovery 25

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Thanks 👍👍

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I've never been downvoted or silenced before Nd I dont plan on getting one. It's all about following the rules and doing what is right if a person is being greedy then they wont see the real value of hive

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No one plans on getting downvotes, someone out there might just choose to give it to you. That's why I chose to make this post

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Hmmmm you absolutely right on that

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... we have things called downvote trails. People trust a single entity with their downvoting power, and that entity uses that DV power as they see fit.

Reworking the delegation of downvotes seems a good area for discussion and a great place to start to address the issue.

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Indeed, I remember one time I was getting notifications that I was being downvoted, hundreds of accounts and it really felt horrible.

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... it really felt horrible.

The only thing worse than getting no votes. 😎

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