It's that time again: hardfork!! And folks are talking about it. Which is a good thing in an eco-system claiming to be decentralised. This is not an overview of HF21, there are plenty of posts out there. What I am curious about — and also highly concerned about — is the idea that a culture of flagging/downvoting will help solve current problems. This is a long one, so feel free to move on, or lean in and work with me here...
Witch-hunt hysteria in Salem... could excessive and aggressive flagging/downvoting lead to this kind of fervour? Image source
Preface
I am not a developer or a technical person. I am not an investor. I have no financial interests in any dApps, although I am interested in many of them, and would like to see them flourish. I am not a curator (per se), but as a (written) content creator I am the beneficiary of their work, and secondary benefit through following certain curation trails, and manual voting. I also delegate SP to services such as Smartvote, Steem Basic Income, TipU, Smartsteem, and OCDB, for which there are small returns.
I'm going to reference a few posts here, mainly because I have engaged in them somewhat, shared some thoughts, but also because they have inspired my contemplations on my discomfort and concern about the mechanism of flagging/downvoting.
Separate downvoting pool
One of the proposals for HF21 is a separate 'pool' for the purposes of downvoting so that users can use this function more without draining RC which is better used for voting and posting/commenting. A good "normietalk" explanation of all this can be found in @justineh's summary of proposed HF21 here. Not sure if I need to reference the official post from @steemitblog about the HF21 proposal, but here it is if you haven't read it.
There is more to this hardfork than a downvoting pool, so I'd invite you to familiarise yourself with the details and rationale behind the proposals. Remember: you vote for witnesses, and they either accept the proposal, or don't.
Generative behaviour
So I want to look at this from a more philosophical, sociological, and cultural background.
One of the interesting things I find with the phenomenon of social media is how it affects our dopamine levels. This is how Fakebook (for example) has been such a global whirlwind. Now here comes Steem which adds a $ value to the dopamine-releasing 'Like' button, and all of a sudden you add in a level of complexity which triggers something deeply primal in humans.
We want more.
More 'Likes', more upvotes, more tokens... And in order to get more, we need to enagage more, post more, comment more, grease the wheels and network in chat-rooms more. This is nothing new; we've been doing this since we were swinging on vines in the jungle. It's just that it's happening in a virtual space, with people from different cultures, races, countries, and creeds, all gathered together in the same space in this electronic eco-system we call the Steem blockchain.
Some folks who are really good at computers, and coding, and whatnot started to 'game the system' and create ways (usually involving bots) to get more and more of the rewards pool, which drains the amount available to everyone else. Others post prolifically, spewing forth content that isn't really read or cared about, but somehow is able to attract massive upvotes and also take what some say is an unfair share of the pool. This too, I'm told, involves bidbots and promotion.
So the proposals for HF21 are trying to mitigate these effects.
Change management
There are two ways of changing behaviours: essentially, positive-reinforcement of desired behaviours, or negative-reinforcement of undesired behaviours. This is used in psychology, behaviour change/management systems, dog training, horse training.... basically everywhere. Don't think that advertising, sales, or marketing doesn't involve one, both, or a mix of these either...
This 'curve' that everyone's talking about, and the change to a 50/50 split between creators and curators is what I would describe as a way to reward a behavioural change in a positive manner. While I have my own reservations, I think the way @clayboyn put it in this post makes a convincing argument for this move.
If I understand the idea correctly, by rewarding curation, we will lead to better quality content overall. This may take some time, but those who propose and back this feel it will work.
I have no idea whether this will work, honestly. BUT, I do feel that positive-reinforcement is generally more effective, albeit slower. My only evidence for this is I have seen this consistently doing this kind of work with people, dogs, and horses. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its flaws, but as I said: generally, and over time you have success. I'm currently using these kinds of approaches working with an intellectually-disabled man with some deeply-entrenched patterns of behaviour. It does work, and it is effective.
Rewarding punishment
Flagging or downvoting on the other hand is a type of negative-reinforcement. If I create a shitpost, then the purpose of the downvote is to prevent me from receiving as much as the reward pool as possible. The 'value' of our downvote — just like our upvote — is dependent on how much stake we have (SP). If I choose to flag a post that is currently estimated to receive 12.00 STU on payout, I'd probably be lucky to reduce it by 0.01 STU, based on my staked SP.
I'm not going to go into the math of all this; that's not the purpose of my contemplation and enquiry: What is the social/cultural effects?
Well, if you don't know about the 'Flag Wars' between some of the larger whales and those in their wake, then you've been lurking somewhere safe. Downvoting is meant to provide the checks-and-balances to upvote abuse, but unfortunately can also be abused. It leads to animosity, and general bad vibes, and leads into retaliation.
From the examples I've seen, it appears to become a personal grudge match, and looks like childish behaviour. I'd even go so far as to say it's toxic. And I'm sure no one really even remembers how these feuds have started in the first place... kinda like wars and conflicts between nations, right?!?
Aside from these extreme examples, what does it mean to downvote a post? It is basically saying, "you don't deserve to be rewarded for what you've created and published on the blockchain." And I'm sure the creator of that post would scratch their heads wondering what they've done to deserve it. Go to the Steemcleaners or Buildawhale Discord servers, and you'll regularly see people asking why they've been put on a blacklist. Some (maybe most, I haven't got the stats) genuinely don't understand why their post has been flagged as spam or a shitpost.
And here is where I think using negative reinforcement in this context is dangerous — because who is the ultimate judge of quality?
A recent example, which I mentioned in @tarazkp's article about this issue gives me at least something to reflect on. I wasn't flagged, but a curator informed me a post was "not original content" — which I can say absolutely it is. I won't harp on about it, as it is no big deal; curators are choosing content to curate based upon their audiences, their own topics of interest, and so on. But what this highlighted to me was the incredibly subjective nature of curation.
To paraphrase an old aphorism, "one person's trash is another's treasure."
I personally am not interested in reading posts about your latest Drug Wars battle, or what card you just won in Splinterlands, or even how many steps you walked today.
But there are people on Steem, who do find that interesting.
In the same way that I'm interested in reading about peoples' personal journeys of personal and/or spiritual development, their trials and tribulations meandering through the maze of life, or seeing their latest sketch, painting, or listening to their latest music, others may not like that kind of content.
Who am I to flag your Actifit post? And who are you to flag my translation and interpretation of a 3500 year old ancient philosophical text?
Do you see the problem here? Who decides what is quality content?
If we begin to actively encourage downvoting, what we're doing is actively encouraging behaviour that is limiting in order to limit and negatively-reinforce an undesired behaviour... which may not be undesirable to many others.
If we take the positive-reinforcement approach, our focus goes more towards rewarding what we think adds value... rather than punishing those whom we think don't.
Energy flows where attention goes
We've all heard of this idea in some way or another.
What are the social and cultural consequences of bringing more energy/attention to negative, punishing behaviour?
How do we differ from centralised systems 'out there' who use this kind of approach to essentially 'divide and conquer', to belittle and demean others?
Right now, people are being banned from the mainstream platforms because they are expressing opinions that are unpopular. What happens if those people start getting downvoted here? Or worse, they start aggressively downvoting others who express opinions different to theirs?
I recognise this is an idealistic viewpoint... but we also need to consider 'ideals' in some form as we build something new here. And I'm not convinced mathematics and code is going to solve all our concerns. We have to have these conversations — and we are, which we need to give ourselves (as a community) credit for.
I would rather we looked towards solutions that involve more emphasis on 'positive-reinforcement'; and maybe the 50/50 reward split is a step in that direction, I don't know. It feels like it, but I don't have any evidence to back that belief up.
Direction......?
In a recent post, @whatsup made some very good points that the debate at present comes down to nobody seems to agree on what the 'grand vision' of Steem is. I think it's a great question to ask at this point.... "what is the big picture?"
This line of thinking for me is entangled in the idea that there really could be something for everyone here.
You like games?
You like dApps?
You like photography, or art, or music?
You like reading and writing blogs?
Political content?
Cryptocurrency news?
It could all co-exist here (and this is maybe where SMT/Communities and SCOT/Tribes come into play)... I see no reason why it cannot. We just need to come up with the how.
With a more generative approach, we — as individual users — reward content that we think is awesome, and simply don't reward what we think isn't.
If you feel that is too passive an approach... well, maybe be more active in how you wield your stake: vote greater percentages, stop depending on automated curation trails, more manual voting, etc.
But if we become a culture of downvoting, then we start to judge other tribes' content as inferior to ours...
"Well I think long-winded opinion blogs (like this) are more important and deserve a greater share of the reward pool, so I'll flag any posts of food-photos!"
We begin to think like: my creation is better than yours, so I'll do what I can to minimise your share of the pool.
Do you see what I'm getting at here?
Can you get a sense of the nastiness of this approach?
It starts to turn into 'witch-hunt hysteria' (just look at the 'Flag Wars' as an example... who really wants to invest or have stake in an eco-system which is basically at war?!)
I feel quite uncomfortable and hesitant about promoting a culture of downvoting. That doesn't mean that I think the mechanism shouldn't exist; just that we should maybe want to be more cautious and sparing of how we wield that stick/stake (.... see what I did there...? 😉).
To quote Uncle Ben, "with great power comes great responsibility."
There is a reason our stake is called Steem Power. Whether used to reward or punish, use it wisely.
What do you think?
If you've gotten this far, thanks for taking the time to read it.
I've set up a discussion thread on the palnet forum for more directed conversation; also, feel free to continue the conversation in the comments here....
Here's to Steem continuing to be a thriving, sustainable, and rewarding blockchain community!! 🍻🥂
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