RE: HiveWatcher's Politics of Not Being Political

I don't think anyone is disputing that HiveWatchers did actual abuse investigations. They did. I've seen plenty of them over the years, and I've said that before. The problem is that apparently when you look back over those ten years, you remember all the work you did but somehow forget why so many people had a problem with dealing with you in the first place.

I know that part personally. I asked questions on your Discord years ago and got banned for it. That's why I haven't been there in years. I wasn't going to make another account just to get around the ban so I could ask more questions. And I certainly wasn't the only person complaining about how people were treated there. One of the recurring complaints was people being told to appeal through the Discord while being banned from the Discord. Then when somebody pointed out that perhaps this wasn't the most functional appeal process in the world, the response was basically, “Yup, and you shall remain that way.” Apparently that was considered perfectly reasonable.

And this is where I think your version of the last ten years leaves out rather a lot. The criticism wasn't simply about whether HiveWatchers found legitimate abuse. A lot of it was about the way you treated people, the attitude toward anyone who questioned you, and the political side of things that you apparently don't want included in the retrospective.

I remember people getting treated as abusive for advocating free speech or challenging the prevailing narrative on Hive. I remember whales joining in with the downvotes and reputation destruction because somebody had said the wrong thing. Maybe you remember all of those people as trolls and jealous idiots. A lot of them remember something rather different.

And now we're seeing the same thing again. Someone asks questions about your proposal and suddenly she's envious, promoting a fraud chain, and apparently should go to Blurt if she doesn't like Hive proposals. You introduced Blurt into that conversation. She didn't. Then her promotion of Blurt somehow becomes part of the explanation for why her replies were silenced.

But sure, none of this is political.

It's just abuse fighting.

I don't need to pretend HiveWatchers accomplished nothing in order to criticize the way you operated. The actual abuse investigations mattered. The database mattered. The scams and phishing accounts you found mattered. Your contribution to that part of Hive's history is real.

So is the other part.

So, you can spend ten years fighting legitimate abuse and still spend ten years being rude, antagonistic, politically partisan, banning people who ask questions, and creating a community environment where a lot of people eventually want nothing to do with you. Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

And if you're going to give us the ten-year retrospective about how horribly the community treated you, perhaps the ten-year retrospective should include the reasons people were treating you that way too.

Otherwise it's not really a retrospective, but a Hive watcher's version of history.