Hive is a social network. The society of which we are part rewards content creation according to the subjective valuation of members of that society. To maximize the strength and value of that society, which underlies the value of our Hive tokens, we should strive to find and upvote such content as we prefer, per our biases. IRL we all know people that take, take, take, and give as little as possible. Those people tout their own accomplishments and diminish those of others to make their own seem even greater in comparison. We call those people narcissists, and they devalue our society parasitically. Self-voting is comparable to that RL behaviour, taking the maximum possible from the rewards pool, puffing up their reputation as much as they can, likely pandering to anyone with stake, and so forth.

Those users and actions decrease the strength and value of the society of Hive users IMHO, and this reduces the value of Hive tokens. I have long advocated against curation rewards because these rewards similarly reward pecuniary interest instead of subjective valuation of content, replacing 'good' (however our bias leads us to call content 'good') content with emunerative voting strategies. At it's worst, this gave us a trending page consisting of nothing but votebotted posts. I haven't looked at trending for a long time. Some years IIRC, because I found no posts of interest there, but only posts that were profitable for some reason or another related to curation rewards. I have advocated instead for savings accounts that enabled folks seeking ROI to attain it thereby, rather than through gaming curation and befouling content valuation.

I was greatly encouraged when HBD savings accounts with 20% interest eventuated, but curation rewards remained available, and folks haven't stopped perverting curation based on financial interest as a result. Still, I think HBD savings helped to reduce curation rewards farming, and probably improved trending marginally, likely less so now that the interest rate dropped to 15%. HBD savings compete with staked Hive and curation to create ROI, and those interested more in money than society are more likely to save HBD for higher rates of interest, which reduces their staked Hive and their impact on governance. I reckon that improves the quality of governance by increasing the weight of non-pecuniary interests on votes for witnesses. Most of the most valuable things in society are far more valuable than mere money, and Hive being a pure plutocracy hugely devalues those far more valuable features of society by making money the only way to vote, distorting society by grossly overvaluing the weight of stake on governance.

Mike Tyson said Don King would sell his momma for a dollar. Folks like Don King rule plutocracies, and most people value their mothers vastly more than mere money. It is most people that make societies valuable, not Don Kings.

Trending is our marketing department. If we want Hive tokens to increase in value, because Hive society is growing, we should tend that garden assiduously. At least we don't have kids pimping their mothers OF's pages on Hive trending, like there are on X. I'm sure we can do better than we are, however, and the less self-voting there is the better we will do.

Thanks!