Whether we want to or not.
First you need to put your big boy or girl pants on and leave your nasty, personal attacks at the door.
The comments on this post are getting interesting.
@r0nd0n/hive-blog-rewards-will-need-to-go
Talk about a bunch of knee jerk, personaly offended people. Nowhere in the post is @r0nd0n saying that users shouldnt be rewarded for content. He is suggesting that the fundamentals of Hive need to be reexamined.
Lets look at a couple of uncomfortable facts here.
Hive is stagnating in growth and actually shrinking in active users. I mean actual real users that are active for longer than a month. They show up, be active for a month or two and then boom, they are gone. I know there has been plenty of people who ask why this happens. There has been a few theories and retention initiatives. But no one seems to be addressing the real reason(s) why it happens. Just like those people that have been through 10 relationships and cant seem to find the right one. We have to ask. Is it us? Are we to blame? Do we run our own new users off? I would say no. Most of us do our best to keep them around and encourage them to keep active. But we do actually run them off. More on this point in another post since I've already talked about that many times.
Lets say the quiet part out loud
Hives problem is Hive it's self. That problem is at the very fundamental core of how it works. And its also the very thing that makes Hive work. But it does not make it great and it literally holds its self down.
With Hive anybody can jump on and earn a few bucks. But that is essentially all that a new user will ever earn. There are no users who worked their way to the top of Hive earnings. The top spots of earners are all held by the OG crowd of when Hive forked from Steem. If there is a user who has earned that much after the fork please point them out to me. I want to interview them on the Defluenced Podcast with @allentaylor if you don't watch or listen to it you are really missing out. We talk a lot about Hive and other Web3 technologies. You should follow him on Hive too. He knows a lot from all the research he does for his books.
I digress
The mechanism of Hive has created a social structure of those that happened to be in the right place at the right time. New users are forced to create custom content that appeals to those upper class and they are not able to freely express their actual true opinions or content for fear of no votes or even the deadly down vote.
This social structure has arbitrarily held content creators from setting thier own prices for content and not allowed for any kind of market for the content.
Removing the rewards pool would create an open free market that creators could get paid more for their content but could actually create a demand for some creators content.
This social structure has created a perpetual content machine of only a select few specific topics on Hive no matter the form of media it's delivered in. Audio, video or text. It's mostly crypto and occaisonally music and some fiction and poetry thrown in for good measure.
I dont know how to break it to you any other way than to say that no matter what world you live in or what bubble is around you, but crypto is not the king of content. If we want to grow Hive we have to appeal to an entire world out there of many different topics and opinions. This vary narrow topic content selection coupled with probably the shittiest discovery system of any social media platform drives new people out faster than HiveWatchers can ever dream of doing.
Before you start throwing in your stupid "this is the dumbest idea. Stop talking about it" comments.
No. I will not. The fact that it hasnt been discussed openly in the public is a problem in its self. You are the very same people that vote for these huge propsals in the DHF to fund for on boarding campaigns but will not address the actual real problems of on boarding and retaining new users. Think about it objectively for one minute. Remove the rewards pool. Boom on boarding is now free and painless for a new user. New user creates some content and people go give them a reward. New user wants to create some different content that appeals to themselves as well as to a bigger crowd. Boom they make an even bigger reward. They set up a paywall for those that want to subscribe to them. GREAT!
But as it stands now they are trudging along creating content they think a few people would like for a few little coins thrown into their hat. I know there is a tip function now so you can throw a user an extra tip if you really like their content. But be honest. When was the last time you actually used it? Did you even know it was there?
Again, I urge you to remember that this is not suggesting that people not be rewarded for content. It is simply leaving it up to a transaction between a creator and a consumer. Just like Web3 is supposed to be.
Curation trails
Obviously this has the potential to destroy curation trails. But does it really? Could there not be a group of people who pool their Hive together to go give a monetary reward to users for their content? Why not? Could something like that actually be funded by the DHF as part of a retention campaign? Yes. That is something that sounds like it should be coming out of the DHF to me.
It will obviosly kill auto voters and the people who just join a curation trail to gain some rewards. But ask yourself. Do you really agree with or actually like what that curator that you donated to actually votes on? Do you even know what they are voting on? Have you ever checked on them?
As far as some of you that have made the curation trails the basis for a business. I honestly dont have an answer for that. But Hive has some of the greatest brains working on it. I am sure that something can be worked out to continue those businesses.
Some predictions for you to think about
I honestly dont think the following will happen. But they are completely possible if we dont talk about the actual underlying issues of Hive. These are just based on my uneducated observations over the last 4 years of being here. I love Hive and truly want to see it become the absolute best. But it's not the best by a long shot. It's the closest to real Web3. But it will not ever be unless some fundamental changes happen. Im not a defeatus type of person or pessimistic by nature. I love to be excited, happy and optimistic. But ...
If we stay the course
I predict that Hive will, with in the next 12 months, end up stagnating into a circle jerk of accounts all run by bots that do nothing but launder upvotes for those at the top and entertains a few real accounts in the middle class that think people actually like and consume their posts. The content found on Hive will be similar to what it is now. Only going from 75% of crypto related posts to about 80 - 90% about crypto.
The rest will be made up of mostly automated posts such as the actifit posts and more game posts that are nothing but screenshots of their winnings. The real posts that do remain will be fiction, short stories and poetry that will have a continuous dwindling audience. In short it will look like the current version of Steemit.
But the Leo crowd will proclaim that they saved Hive by bringing 10,000 new active users for a couple of months. Those new accounts will all be considered inactive by not posting about 3 months after creation. They will pat themselves on the back and ask for an even bigger chunk of the DHF for the next round. The real people left will quickly upvote it saying "Great job. You are great!" along with other various praises for them to bring even more crypto only content to appeal to only crypto people. Solidfying Hive to be a crypto only content platform and not apealing to anybody.
Leo's crypto bro only fan base will pretty much proclaim that the only front end for users to Hive is Inleo. Leaving Actifit, PeakD and Ecency to split the remaining users who dont post about crypto. 3Speak's saving grace will be the Spk Network but the content you will find will be no different than it is now. Crypto and acapella cover songs. Largely from South America. Believe me, it's better than the crypto content. Theres some real vocal talent in South America.
CastGarden will most likely, unwillingly, branch into other blockchains if possible. But it will continue to have a large variety of content and topics due to it's intergration of the Fediverse.
Liketu will continue to grow and probably surpass most of the other front ends because of it's social media appearance and appeal to the younger crowd.
Dbuzz will continue to grow slowly, mainly due to the crypto bros who continue to falsely tout Threads as the "only or first option for short form content on Hive".
Off chain, some other blockchain or social media will over shadow Hive yet again and Hive users will once again continue to scream "We do it better, what about Hive. Come join the greatest community." While still wondering why Hive hasnt grown over the following year.
But I could be competely wrong
And Hive could be booming this time next year. Hell you can take every last word of this with a grain of salt. I mean I'm not a developer. I'm just an end user. I mean, what do I know. I'm just a dude that likes to occaisionally throw an opinion or two out there in the ether. If you dont want to listen to me and people like me, your target audience, then you must be conent with keeping Hive as a shrinking and failing platform.
Or we can have an intelligent conversation about making Hive the best platform by starting with the fundamentals.
You can see some of my ideas in the http://hive5.info document.
Yes, I am proudly a part of that.
So do we just want to call each other names, say the other person and idea is stupid or do we actually roll our sleeves up and make Hive the greatest Web3 platform in existence?