Thank you for actually replying.

"I understand the idea of a downvote being expression, but it is not a particularly valuable one to me. To me it feels more like a policing action than an expression. We tend to not think of police as wandering the streets 'expressing themselves' because such free expression in that context can be dangerous - yet in a sense that is what they do."

In regards to Peakd, don't you have your own frontend? Correct me if I'm wrong since we haven't talked for a while.

Police are hired individuals. They're not someone who goes around and acts in accordance to their believes. When you downvote something you dislike you are acting out of your own free will with no instruction. The same as the people who downvoted your Covid posts because they dislike them are acting on their own free will with no instruction.

One thing we don't know when it comes to downvotes is whether the downvote is cast because the voter dislikes the post creator, the subject of the post, or the evaluation of the reward. The same with upvotes. Did the upvotes come because of a trail set simply due to profitability, because the person likes the creator or because they agree with the topic? What is the opposite of "police" for this matter?

"'I'm saying that people are in a contest for eyeballs on this platform..."

This is an opportunity to think hard about Trending and content discovery. Some posts have massive views despite having no rewards at the time of posting. There are ways to create incentives in parallel to content monetization.

The typical argument to your points around needing to make money is that no one here deserves anything. It's an obvious argument but not the right one to present to someone like yourself who expected to see rewards on a whole bunch of posts and then they were downvoted off. Instead, the real opportunity is to start a discussion on how we can communicate additional Hive-related income streams and how we can identify and categorize them. There are many ways to make money on Hive, predominantly through building (witnessing as you know is not exactly lucrative). There is also trading and curation. Expanding one's activities makes these income streams more predictable and eases stress.

"They are forced to conform to the views of those with the most stake who are downvote heavy. This is just the same as being forced off of youtube because your views aren't aggreeable to the advertisers or Google's executives."

No one is forced. Everyone is an adult individual who makes their own decision. They can be influenced, but they make the call themselves. Back when I joined there were quite a few Holocaust denier posts that had significant payout and it was a popular topic. I'm not going to post about that filth just because it's popular and I need to earn a buck because it goes completely against my morals. It's a personal choice and the tides of public opinion change.

In regards to Youtube or other social media, however, that's a private company. They don't owe anyone anything, including accounts. They can kick you off for wearing a green shirt because it's their private property. That's why those who want real freedom of speech need to self host. Before YT became the convenient norm, everyone had to self host. It was expensive but we did it and those who valued our content found it and supported us by purchasing whatever we had at the store or through donations. When we make YT the norm because we're too damn lazy to go back to our roots we give those massive companies the ultimate power.

"... just because they think differently to some folks, even when hundreds of people agree with them and upvote them whole heartedly?"

I know what you mean because after reading through your other comments here I went and looked at who voted on your Covid posts. Many of your upvotes are autovotes. Those curators didn't read anything; one of them has staff hired to calculate profitability and curate. Up and down curation algorithms are unfortunately part of the blockchain and remove the human element. But I can't say much on this problem because I understand it hurts emotionally to see your stuff nuked. Can't say "don't let it bother you" to someone because that's just basic emotions.

"I don't really understand what you saying here to be honest, our views of the situation seem to be quite wildly different somehow."

When I replied to your post I didn't realize you were talking about your own experience. It's been a while since we chatted and I figured you were doing well. I understand your points and perspective now knowing all this.

"Every person who tries Hive and finds that big players have deleted the payout that others elected to direct their way will likely go and tell their friends they have been treated unfairly."

Part of the problem here is that because some people have historically retaliated for downvotes, smaller accounts aren't making them as intended. I believe that if both up and down voting was simply normalized -- particularly if automated trails were no longer the norm -- we would have a lot more variation. Many autovotes that are manually triggered will also steer clear of anything that was downvoted because they want to make a buck on curation. Not many except for the post owner really take notice unless their priorities are their convictions and not their finances. In the end, people will come and go as per their principles. We still have to accept that some people will find Hive isn't for them no matter how friendly or unfriendly it is from a monetization success standpoint.

"We have high visibility of upvotes and no equivalent for downvotes, meaning that downvotes take on a more nefarious light than perhaps you think they should."

That's very true.

"My suggestion has always been to use downvotes with respect and for the health of the community it would be a good idea for downvotes to be made more visible, so that the wider community can understand how they are being used and why. ... Holding downvotes up to the light on an 'untrending ..."

This is quite possible with HiveSQL. You would simply need to query all downvotes and exclude those made by the few anti-abuse accounts. The rest should be organic downvotes. You can go even further to clean up the data by also excluding those made to counter malicious curation exploiters, of which there are only a few.