Most of what is discussed in the meta-conversations around Hive leans toward profit potential or content creation.
We rarely talk about being a consumer of the content produced in this community outside of games.
Now, of course, there is a large contingent of Hive participants who are ONLY here to make money. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I get that.
But some of us actually read the content that is produced. Well, I read some of it.
Content can be our ambassador or an albatross
A very odd aspect of Hive that is different from the outside networks is how people do not focus on niches as much.
With such a small community, fewer readers, and automated and follow voting, there is not as much incentive to niche down.
When most of your "readers" don't actually read, does it make sense to stick to one topic?
So people write what is on their minds or what seems will get popular.
As a long term user of Hive, this is fine and understandable.
What about first-time visitors to Hive?
There are topics I just don't want to see. Ever. Let alone have people I care about be confronted by.
There are topics I don't want my friends to associate me with.
Therefore I don't invite my friends to Hive.
How many people are there like me?
Some will see some fringe topics as recruiting vehicles, but that compounds the issue. The community becomes more skewed towards topics that are anything but mainstream.
Personal Filters
Unfortunately, Peakd for some reason only allows a limited number of filter tags. I don't know why.
So what is the solution?
I don't know. While I like the @Peakd UI, and I don't want to switch, there isn't much chance of me continuing to read and comment if I am constantly confronted by stuff that will drive me away from the platform as a whole.
"Oh here we go, lefty snowflake wants to censor my free-dumb!"
At this point someone will be twitching their sweaty downvote fingers thinking I want to go all-in on big-brother style censorship.
No, I just don't want to see the crap. I don't want to stop you from saying whatever fever dream bullshit your tiny prison-planet-addled brain wants to dream up.
By all means imagine that your 10 minutes toilet break on YouTube is more valid than actual scientists who dedicated their careers to knowing things.
Isn't it funny how the tough and anti-fragile freedom of speech crowd are the first to brigade downvotes when someone speaks out against their conspiracies. It's like they only want freedom for them, not the people they disagree with.
Oh, and of course, someone will call me a democrat, libtard, whatever. I am not in the USA, we don't have democrats or replublicans, and I am a capitalist as anyone with half a brain cell can figure out. Keep your misunderstanding of broad stroke political labels to yourself.
Blunt-Force Muting
Yes, you can mute accounts, but as I say above I want to read stuff that hasn't been infected by RWNJ talking points. If someone wants to believe that Hillary is a lizard person who eats children's brains, that is sad and possibly indicative of a medical issue on their part, but it probably doesn't make their art any less valid.
The future of Hive
If we are going to grow out of being an extremely tiny piece of the web, we will need to attract the mainstream.
That means we will need to have new visitors be able to find their community and not be confronted on day one by racist Tommy Robinson (actual name Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon) crap or anti-vaxxers calling for violence against medical workers.
Even though I know some people will be willing to sacrifice the whole Hive project on their altar of "alternative truth", as a community if we want Hive to grow, we need to present a more welcoming experience.
The Reddit Effect
Mention Reddit to some people and they will associate it with unsavory connotations. For many, it is like a 4chan-lite.
Even the founders have been disgusted by some of the events in the community.
It manages to be super popular partly because of that notoriety - it gives some members a feeling of edginess.
Perhaps that is what Hive wants to be. I don't know.
My Suggestion
This could be a very bad idea but I didn't want to describe a problem and not put forward a solution.
I suggest as part of a new member sign-up process they get asked what they are most interested in and least interested in. That becomes the seed for their homepage experience.
For not logged-in users, I suggest having the homepage of content be curated by a human being with no particular axe to grind.
I'd also suggest users should be able to comment without having an account, perhaps by using a single sign on for a third party social account such as twitter/fb.
For Peakd, obviously as mentioned above I think it would be cool to be able to add topics to your filter list, but also "interested in" lists. That way, rather than rely on a recommendation or quantity of votes, we can curate our own experience.