Well i think i see where you coming from. I use to erroneously think about this the same way. I use to say wow this is great. I can post free and maybe i can earn a few bucks. That's better than facebook right? Well the theory of that sounds good as in what ought to be.. However what ought to be and what is are different.

For example what is the cost of me to use hive. Is it really zero? Not really because most social media models depend on "attention value". Attention value takes time away from end users. Time is one of the most precious commodities we have. Time is money and many other things. Time is life. So it's not so much the cost are zero and there is no risk.

I knew an engineer who wrote a paper on here took him about a week to write it. He got about 4 cents for it, lol. However, let's focus on your point of decentralized social media and censorship resistance. I understand the importance of decentralized social media and i get the world doesn't understand it. If they did their actions would be alot different. See i don't believe that products that solve a big problem are that hard to find. I actually think it works in the opposite direction.

However, i would say if the system is saying the post have a value of zero anyway and that we're just using this to keep our voices from being silenced. Why even worry about having a payment system at all? Why not just have a decentralized censorship free site. Why not just evenly divide up the proceeds with the account users? I mean if that's the argument and if that's the point you trying to drive home. However they have the monetary upvote system so it must be important enough for them to have it. So that will make it important.

"Even if your content receives 0 rewards, you're still winning on Hive compared to on Facebook"

Yea i think i covered this point in another thread. Yea i don't think this is true at all. We don't even have to talk about how businesses use facebook to make money. We can speak specifically on the individual who doesn't even have a business or anything. So this person is likely getting tremendous value on average because facebook is a big convenient communication system for him thats free to use minus internet cost. So he's reaching all his friends and family and the interface is easy allowing them to catch up on past events etc., and etc., So obviously it's alot of day to day value there.

Like i said i don't wanna keep parroting the same points but i think its a big difference in a network arranged that way where you can possibly reach 2.5 billion people as opposed to. i dont even know close to the accurate number of hive users.. 1-2 million people but if i'm honest everyday i look on the network i see the same exact posts dominating the front page. So it just to me looks even alot smaller than it probably is.

So i guess what i'm saying is. I do think its possible to expend time and energy on hive maybe not in sync with what the end user gets in return. I agree and i get the argument of you can post something that can't be erased from the chain. However i guess society hasn't prioritized that as the most important issue they have at this time. if that makes sense. For example if censorship resistance were at the top of their list. Then most people would be walking around going hey we gotta find a solution to this.

I think to get to that point a data breach may be required. Which i think will happen eventually. However again the pyramid of priorities maybe that just hasn't reached the top yet.

I'll speak on the ads a bit and i'll conclude. I will give the example of the Alaska oil fund. So decades ago Alaska decided to invest in an oil fund and gave the alaskan residents a few options. One option was that they could give all the proceeds of the fund directly to the residents.

So you probably had some environmentalist against it. I"m sure you had someone against it lol. Anyway the people decided it was worth more to have it and to get the money directly than to not have it. So like in the example you give of the ad token burn that leo uses. The point is that it gets used for the good of the total network.

What i'm saying is when it comes to advertising often times the conversation we get is that ads are just bad and intrusive. However we don't know that. We have to allow for the question to be asked to the people. As you said in the leo community they were welcomed. It could be that if they are contributing to the good of the network and the impact is directly experienced by the people as it should be. Then if given the option they may choose to opt for ads.

The problem is we can't just assume ads are bad. Also unfortunatley as important as decentralized social media is. It kinda falls into the same category. Decentralized social media sounds great until you get deadly disinformation and misinformation spreading propaganda which is who dangerous propaganda thrives.

So some go well i don't care we'll take our chances. Sure but that doesn't mean everyone else thinks its a good idea right? It could be billions of people woh are fine with the power to remove some horrible things from the influence of people. I know in a more simplistic way its easy to just tell people to turn away or not look at it.

However that's the same mental exercise of telling me not to think about oranges lol. If you tell me not to think about it i'm going to do it. So my overall point is thats why certain types of governance models are important to each blockchain. There is'nt a one size fits all solution. There isn't a just oh no ads and let anything ride on the chain type approach lol.

Human beings are complicated. My last example and i'll stop typing. Donald Trump the president of the united states gets banned from the biggest private companies in the world in his own country. Is there an uproar? Nope not really. Pretty much the same people using these social media giants. They could have went this is an outrage. The reality of the situation though is many where glad he was removed. I for one of them were. Did i think he should have been removed? No not really i can balance and remain consistent with certain ideas of freedom of expression without letting personal bias takeover.

However many were glad he was removed. Don't have any problem with it. So all i'm saying is maybe its not a one size fits all approach of oh total decentralized social media and censorship resistance and no ads because they are annoying lol. I don't know if thats going to be primary focus for the entire community.

For me i have this vision of hive as a payment channel similar to like what could be a massive cash app system with free transactions. To me thats how i see hive with the social media dapps worked in. So to me that's its most valuable use. So you can see my views on it and the views alot of the community has is totally different.

So are you better off on hive than facebook. That doesn't seem to be what the end users think. I'm not sure if they see it that simple. I don't think they do. They don't act like they do.