You're arguing against something I didn't propose.

I'm not saying “take away rewards” or “make Hive like other social media.”

I'm asking a much more basic question: why does an upvote have to be a financial allocation at all?

A vote can remain a vote. If someone actually wants to give you money, they can tip you, buy what you're selling, hire you, or support you directly.

The problem I'm pointing at is the mechanism that turns “I like this” into “I am directing protocol inflation toward this.”

That's the incentive AI, bots, vote automation, and whale curation are exploiting.

So no, I'm not trying to remove what makes Hive unique.

I'm asking why we've decided that pressing an upvote should give someone the power to spend the protocol's money on someone else's behalf.

And if that's the feature we're defending, then we're defending the incentive structure that created the problem in the first place.