I mean I took a glance but it didn't really seem worth it, some points like "it's fun to do math and count the apr on earnings" or "it's good for newbies to grow", how are newbies going to grow if everyone did what you do and those accounts mainly only vote delegators? Everyone's just supposed to buy stake and look out for themselves?
At least you're acknowledging that you know what you're doing, I hope you'll reconsider your activity.
Well, newbies holding stake would also give them some votes (even if tiny ones) and result in them being a bit more encouraged to come back. What's discouraging for a lot of new people is writing content with a lot of effort and getting 0 votes (because they're new and haven't really built an audience). Getting at least a little bit, even $0.01 or $0.02, will encourage them to continue. I think HSBI is actually the most optimal way to do this, as it encourages the production of content over the course of a long period of time, and it can be delivered as a reward for good content, which I often do. In fact, I just gave out HSBI to a relatively new user today as part of a contest. He'll also see the curation from the FC Community accounts. I can guarantee he's going to be more motivated to continue creating similar types of quality posts and to continue engaging.
I'll also mention that I have no issues with the content that's being upvoted by these project accounts. I wouldn't remove my vote from them, thus voting by proxy of a delegation isn't a problem. If there were objectionable content, then that's a different story.
Thus, while I again do understand your points, and I have seen such projects completely misused at least once (the now-defunct DHEDGE comes to mind), I still think the benefits of these types of projects outweigh the downsides, particularly when used correctly.
If you curate newbies, then newbies can vote each other for 0.01-0.02 rather than relying on auto/blind votes to do so all the while they take a cut with the promise of votes as long as you delegate to them. The newbies can then also leave genuine comments that make for a better reading experience to others instead of just seeing command comments mostly or bots telling you they gave you your vote back. I find it weird how people are trying to justify these schemes in some of the most ridiculous ways when most of their workings all rely on the delegations and to maintain it they make sure to vote the delegators. I wonder what happens when people start putting an end to this with downvotes.
Please really think about the effects this has on the platform as a whole if more and more stake started doing this rather than putting the votes to use based on other merits that we should reward.
And why not do both? I take advantage of the delegation projects and also do manual curation (including in the FC community, where I have a curator who does manual curation), rewarding both posts and comments. Again, it's just a different way to distribute votes which would be given out regardless. I have no qualms about where the votes are currently going. I can see the content upvoted by each of these projects.
Now, I'll refer back to another point I made in my post:
Keep in mind that most of the users that use the delegation projects are, in fact, newer ones (i.e. accounts that are not 6-7 years old). They stand to benefit the most from them because they're starting off with a disadvantage of not being among the first people here. It's not a bad thing to give them a small boost if it's going to result in them becoming more active.
If we're going to actually do some math, the impact of the totality of the older users' HP far exceeds that of the delegation projects. We're talking about multiple millions of HP with the older users versus maybe 1-2 million HP from the delegation projects. There is plenty of "correction" that could theoretically be done on the posts created by the old guard, if you're going to do this in an honest manner. How about addressing this before you start going after the much smaller projects?
Or... just let everyone be. Nobody's hurting from the small impact of these projects, and based on their total HP, there isn't going to be any damage to Hive for a very long time - likely long after we've expired.
lol, Imagine going to a bitcoiner and being all "hey the mining difficulty should be easier for me because I wasn't here since the beginning - I should find blocks more often than you for the same hashrate".
How can you tell? It's hard to notice for sure, similar to if I were to downvote your posts and the rewards were to go to everyone else, they'd hardly notice that increase in their active posts either. a matter of fact is that these voter accounts are earning more rewards than people who've bought their stake or earned it or are putting in effort to look for content to curate for what, setting delegators on an autovote bot? Authors like you are consistently earning the same rewards from the same voters for what, posting content close to no one consumes?
Again, I'm not singling you out, I'm sure there's even worse cases out there, but this blatant selfvoting/votetrading through delegation accounts can't be defended, it's kind of ridiculous you're trying to to begin with.
Like I mentioned, compare the total HP of the existing old guard to the total HP of delegation accounts. The delegations accounts are a drop in the bucket in comparison. Old accounts upvoting each other depletes the supply far more than these delegation projects.
And I will tell you that I have had several people message me about my post in Discord. I don't think you realize that you actually intimidate people due to your threats of downvoting them. It's not as big of an impact for me, and I actually post content for the content, but for smaller users, a single downvote from you can wipe them out completely. What's their incentive to write against you?
And considering the old guard tends to earn $30 - $50 per post consistently, wiping out people who earn pennies, even if they're all from delegation projects, is a pretty cruel concept. This is very imbalanced, and I understand why people are scared of disagreeing.
Anyway, I think it would be best if agreed to disagree on this topic. While I have to be openminded because this may change in the future, for the time being, I still see these projects as beneficial. For now, I do plan to continue to use them in a manner that's beneficial to supporting newer users, particularly those who create great content. After all, isn't that we're aiming to do: support quality content?
You fail to mention the projects double-dipping just for autovoting, it's not all about the authors, for them it's quite easy to not be targeted, just undelegate from these braindead selfvoting schemes and you're fine. Now if you instead start vote-trading excessively that's another thing that's also against my books.
Curation isn't guaranteed, I know I'm not the best example to mention this cause I get a lot of autovotes but you don't see me voting them back or abusing the votes by posting daily like you are. Save it with the victim angle and how people are afraid of being asked to use the platform the way it's healthy and beneficial for more people.
I don't know what you mean about supporting new users, you have no voting power.
I'm not sure what you mean with the double-dipping ones. At any rate, like I said, I have no issues with the content these projects are voting upon. If I did, I would not support them.
And yes, it's important to acknowledge that you can intimidate people away from posting and commenting. Your earnings are easily 1000x that of newer users who can't afford to purchase stake in the platform the way you and I have. Your HP is also much higher than the average user's HP, and targeting them is a bit unfair when considering the scope of users on this platform. I would use downvotes only if I see blatant misuse such as plagiarism, illegal content, and spam, but I suppose our standards are different - that's ok. Intimidating users with your stake is not ok.
Again, there are different ways to support new users. The community accounts do have voting power, plus there's also HSBI, as well as other 2nd layer tokens which I sometimes give out. That 20k delegation I have going towards LGN - none of the tokens I earn from that right now are going to me. I send them out virtually every day. Same thing with neoxian, most of the tokens I earn from that delegation are not going to me. With Bro, I already sent most of tokens to the community accounts, and EDS is the only one that I'm actually keeping to myself for now. Even that's not intended to be a permanent voting fixture, if you read about their project. The delegation to leo.voter is only earning me LEO tokens because I think their efforts make it a worthy project; their onboarding method with Keystore is actually outstanding.
Anyway, I don't want to start defending every single delegation I have. These are my funds, and I think how I'm using them is appropriate because I trust these projects and their owners to use the delegation appropriately.
Let's just agree to disagree, ok?