Some Recurring Criticism On Hive

Today, I started my day skimming through some Discord channels. Lately, I've been eyeing the Splinterlands' Discord channel often. I quit the game a while ago, but ever since @splinterlands DHF proposal, I've been reading the conversations there out of interest. Whether the DHF proposal should be funded or not is not important for this post. However, (at least while the DHF is not funded) there's a vocal, unhappy Hive user base to be found there.

When we filter away the, let's call it, "verbally interesting" messages, we can definitely find some valuable points of criticism. Now, before we get defensive, I want to advocate for myself as a huge fan of these, so let's throw away the negative connotation that goes with the word criticism and call it by its other name: Constructive feedback.

So In Their deep-dives channel I Stumbled Upon This

It reads:

Just by making quick study on array of Hive social networks I found what there is virtually no serious controversial, ''conspiracy theory'', or unpopular ''political or religious'' posts, just mostly happy kitties etc.(very strange for real decentralized social media) Another point is: - the clear incentive here is to post to make money basically, which just biases everything.

Yup i mean no one almost no one posts here not to get hive to at least sell like half and cash out for there effort lol its like i would just go on facebook or another site with much more traffic to monitize a diff way then. But everyone mostly with a blog is doing it for money.
They dont want to keep all that money in a risky investment its prudent to sell often as well as re invest

This Isn't New

Now this isn't anything new. In fact we've heard this often before, but I think these messages encapsulate 2 popular points of critique very well:

• The fear of being punished when writing about unpopular topics
• Earning skews both the motivation to write as well as the topic to write about

The Fear of Being Punished

I don't know why, but the first thing that popped into my mind was this edition from @hiq here: https://peakd.com/hiq/@hiq/deu-hiqs-flash-16-or-semi-weekly-hive-news

Here @hivewatchers and @themarkymark are depicted as the "police" of the blockchain. This is a comment I hear often, and I'd be lying if I said I haven't discussed this with people before.

But let me play devil's advocate for a second and ask: isn't @hivewatchers just the face of evil? A scapegoat of our fear of receiving downvotes? The downvote button is something available to all of us, and when you want to talk about a controversial topic (e.g., religion, conspiracy theories, wars, etc.), there is perhaps this lingering worry that you're going to step on the toes of someone with a completely different opinion, who also has the Hive power to make you "feel it."

If that's the case, and it prevents you from writing good content about a topic you care about and have knowledge of, then perhaps we should question some of Hive's fundamentals. We should wonder, "How can we improve this part of Hive?" Is this a user problem, a technical problem, or both?

Money Skews Writing Motivation

This is a simpler problem to identify as it makes sense. Why should someone with a master's in literature write and comment on topics about literature if they get noticeably higher rewards for posting a picture of their cat?

Solving this issue, however, is much more difficult. The moment people who put effort into something get some sort of monetary compensation for that effort, they start calculating what that effort is worth. This completely changes their incentive to make that effort.

This isn't just a Hive problem. It's much more widespread. For example, videogames often face the issue that if they sell a type of in-game currency, people start calculating what grinding that currency in-game is worth. For WEB3 games, this is even more noticeable. You often hear that "WEB3 games" are not fun, and the majority of them definitely have questionable quality. But in addition to that when a player starts a traditional videogame, their initial mindset is often, "This looks fun," and it's up to the game to hold that standard of expectation.

However, when a player starts a WEB3 game, their initial mindset is, "Let's see if I can make money," and it's up to the WEB3 game to be so engaging that the player forgets about the monetary gain and focuses on the game itself.

Youtube video of 2 years back where Filipinos discussed Axie Infinities' hype and why they like the game so much. Money/crypto incentives where almost soley given

Anyway, this was just something I wanted to share. While it doesn't provide any answers, I hope it was thought-provoking nonetheless. And maybe next time someone writes a good article about a provocative topic like "Why Heineken is Actually a Good Beer," I might actually go for the upvote button despite the blasphemy.

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