I have been around this blockchain for a while now - over six years - and I have learned a lot in my time. In my opinion, it is the most compelling place to visit on the internet, and it isn't because of the rewards, although that plays a bit. The rewards themselves are an incentive for participation and those who earnestly participate, do tend to earn a little too, as long as they aren't incessantly complaining about what they are earning, or all of the other issues that are "wrong" (whatever they personally don't like) with the platform.
That is my ratio of posts to comments. Which might not be that high in the grand scheme of things, but I have got 5786 5787 posts on the blockchain over the time I have been here, which is about 2.4 a day on average - which is high. Too high perhaps, as I used to post more frequently than I do today, but I haven't done so in ages, nor have I missed a day in almost six years. Still, this means that I have 58,840 comments on this blockchain and if you consider that my average post is over 1000 words and my comments are written in full and usually multiple sentences - I am among the most prolific authors on the blockchain, without there being any automation, and zero templates.
Nothing I do is by form - it is all free-form.
I have also been involved with various sides of the blockchain and in order to do that, I have had to dive into things that I had very little understanding of and perhaps, still don't. But, through experience, I have a pretty good understanding of the way things work at the blockchain, economic and more importantly, the social level.
As a people watcher, it is the latter that is the most compelling thing for me, as Hive is like a microcosm of the world and with so much of what goes on being transparent, it gives insight into people's behaviors. The way they act under different conditions, the way groups form, the way people are triggered and react to positive and negative situations, the way some feel attacked, while others feel empowered - the way people generally operate.
People are people.
And the fact is, most people aren't interested in the community here, they are interested in themselves, like most social media has conditioned. Most people have been taught over the last decade or two that they are the most important person in the world and what they have to say is valuable, regardless of what they say, because everyone is given a free platform to speak upon, to shout to the world. And, they shout, finding people of "like minds" who shout support at them, ramping each other up, polarizing conversations and making people feel relevant, important, because they have found their tribe.
However, the reality is, that the platforms themselves are the ones that are benefiting from this, as while everyone is shouting into the void and siloes, they are reaping and selling the data. The reason it is free, is because the platforms are making money from the people, which is why the "you are the product" statement rings true.
Hive is different in this regard though, because the value of the community "data flow" is held and distributed by the community itself, not some corporation that picks and chooses activity based on what improves the bottom line.
This is a MASSIVE difference.
Yet, how many people are actually going to take the time to understand firstly how it works from an economic perspective, the implications of the difference and the affects it has on the community involved? How many actually look at the ramifications down the track here and potentially on the greater world in terms of distributed communities, the possibilities of redefining what value means and the ramifications on larger communities, governments and business?
The answer = Not many.
Yet, people come onto Hive and believe that they know how it all works and have an expectation that what they have to say is valuable, because they have said it other places and got some support for it. However, it is easy to get support when no one has to open up their wallet and pay to give it, which makes Hive very different.
While I am not going to get into the mechanics of voting, suffice to say that wen people who have stake vote, they are providing value to what they vote on and, they only have a limited amount of value to give. This makes their vote, a scarce resource. And as such, people are generally discerning to some degree as to what they vote on - not all, but likely most. And, the general approach is that they look to what they feel adds value to the community.
However, this is where it again differentiates from centralized social media, because on there, the value of the community is held by the company and they decide who earns and who doesn't. Not only this, the value that people derive from the platform is through content only, whether that be reading other people's content, or adding their own. While people might follow and share, they don't actually have to transfer any of their own funds directly in support.
If you can imagine for a moment this was the case and people actually had to pay out of their own wallets, do you think that the stars of the world would be earning more, or less? But, the stars aren't getting paid by us directly, they are getting paid by corporations, advertisers, interest groups, based on the data we give and the products we are influenced into buying. People are far more careful when spending their own money.
But Hive is different, because in order to have a vote value, one has to have some skin in the game, one has to be an owner of the blockchain, meaning staked Hive. It doesn't really matter how much that stake is or how it was gained, holding it on Hive comes at an opportunity cost of what that stake can be sold for at any point in time. This again, makes people a fair bit more attentive, which is part of the reason that Hive is so compelling, because there is incentive to participate, and not just through creating content and sharing.
This also affects what the "definition of value" is, because while a content creator used to other platforms have been conditioned to belief that their content is valuable, the owners of that same platform know that is not the case at all, it is the network that is valuable. The data collected has value, but it is the ability to leverage it to spread influence through the network that has the real value, because that is what advertisers and political parties are paying for - reach.
This is the same on Hive, but on a much smaller scale, because the networked community is smaller too and, the owner base is broader. This means that there can be more spread of value throughout the ecosystem, because owners (staked users) all have their own preferences and opinions on what provides value to the network they own. There is a very broad spectrum of what this might be and for some, they believe that it is maximizing their own short-term earnings on the platform. While others look long for the future, believing that slower personal growth can be offset with a large future value.
This ability to have a personal say in what is considered valuable, is a highly compelling reason for many people to stay here, once they are staked. However, for the unstaked, it is less compelling, because they don't have much influence over what has value, since they do not have a voiced stake. One way or another, all stake on the platform has been earned, whether on platform, or off - something a lot of people seem not to consider.
And of course, when it comes to the value of the distribution pool of Hive, the only reason it has value is because there is demand for Hive off-platform too, meaning that people are willing to pay for it, either to speculate on future price, or stake to earn curation return. This pool is a shared pool of resources directed by stake, which means that all stake has a relative amount of power to their stake to direct the flow. No HIVE is owned on the blockchain, unless it is in a private wallet, and in terms of content creators, that isn't until a post has paid out, precisely seven days after it was created.
Yet, most people don't think about any of this at all. Nor do they think about how their own behaviors interact with the rest of the ecosystem, or affect other participants. And, this makes it even more interesting, because that is representative of the world in which we live, where people have an expectation that they can act as they please, and someone else will take care of all the details. They see the inflation pool like free money from the government, without recognizing that the government has no money, it is all by way of the taxpayer, the staked community.
And this is one of the redefinitions of what is valuable on social networks, as while content does have value, there are many other points of value that get recognized too, including interaction with others, influence within the network, track-record and of course, stake itself. No one on Instagram gets paid for how many posts they scroll through, yet with stake on Hive, there is incentive to curate in some form, meaning people get paid to consume.
This means that not only does content have value, behavior has value too. And, while people can disagree, this is the normal state of affairs in a true tribal community, because everyone has to add value to the community, no one can be a freeloader. Of course, babies are assumed to add future value, and elders are carried as they added past value, but you should get the point. The behaviors of value are dictated by the needs of the community, not by the desire to increase profits for one member of the community, which is what the social platforms are doing, with the "one member" being the corporation, and the shareholders.
In a tribal community, everyone is a shareholder, but there is an expectation that everyone is going to add value to the community at some point, to either support it to survive, or help it thrive. When there are members of the tribe that are taking more than they are giving, they are shrinking the value of the community itself and the tribe will fail, unless behaviors are changed. If a lot of members are doing this, the decline can be rapid.
The value I speak of isn't just the value of Hive, the stake, the pool, or whatever votes they give or receive, it is far more complex than that, but it is on the financial value where most people focus their attention, because in this world, money matters. We need it in some form to survive and there will never be enough of it for everyone to get all they want, even if they have what they need.
Again, this has to be a scarce resource and desirable to have value, otherwise, people will not behave in ways to get more of it. But, this doesn't mean that all activities are created equal, in the same way that not all content is created equal. However, to understand the value of content even subjectively, a person has to understand enough about what makes some activity or content valuable over other versions.
Why is an original by Da Vinci priceless, but a print of a Da Vinci work valueless? Why is one author's work turned into movie franchises, whilst another can't even get published? Why is it that one footballer is paid 100M a year, whilst another who is almost as good, gets paid a million?
What dictates value?
This is different to what deserves value, because if it comes down to what is deserving, nurses and teachers might get paid more than Wall Street bankers. Everything has value. Everything. But, from a financial sense, this isn't true. I love my wife and that is valuable to both her and for me, but no one is going to pay us money for our love, are they?
Yet, most people don't fully understand the value of a community from an economic sense, because we have been largely removed from the mechanics of it. Instead, we are forced to proxy a government to make the decisions for us and forced to pay taxes to finance the decisions that they make, whether we want to or not. We are also influenced to consume based on our desires, not our needs, meaning that as a global community, there is a massive imbalance in the behaviors of the tribe. A few are making the decisions for the majority, many people are not adding value to the community, some people are taking far too much without giving enough back and things are a mess.
On Hive, this is different, as while things are messy, we as a community have responsibility over what we put on the blockchain, what we stake to the blockchain and how we use our stake to direct the value of the blockchain throughout the community. People can disagree with how this is done, but this is all through an opt-in process, with no one required to join, no one required to stake, no one required to post, no one required to do anything at all - unless they want to be part of the community and then, behavior matters.
If you have made it this far, well done!
This is already a lot of words, but my basic point is that understanding the mechanics of Hive and the value of those mechanics, goes a long way to understanding the behaviors on Hive and should affect personal behaviors too. Choosing to remain ignorant to the functions of the community is going to likely result in a poor experience, in the same way it does in the physical world, where people blame the government for their misfortune, but don't realize that they themselves are supporting that outcome, by not learning how the economy works and how behaviors are affected.
People spend countless hours on centralized social media complaining about the state of the world and feeling victimized, and all that time, what they are actually doing is supporting the current state of the world and continued economic victimization, by improving the profits of the decision makers who are incentivized to increase their profits, not grow the strength of the global tribe.
Hive isn't Facebook or TikTok. It isn't Patreon or the Apple Store. It is something completely different. It is investigating how a very large community can operate as if it is a small tribe, but no matter the size, one thing remains constant. The need for participants to add value. Not value in the eyes of the participant, but value in the eyes of the community itself.
We are working out what all this means.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
