INTRO
Once again I have been a target of the so-called watchers of Hive. On my main account, where I post only to my own blog and do not ask for upvotes. Also, on a community account where I also post and do not solicit votes or post to other communities.
For both locations I do use services that may come with an upvote (reward.app, HSBI, etc). These are services available to every Hivian and is not out of the ordinary.
After being dinged again, I thought I would make a post to explain what I perceive as fallacies when it comes to the anti-giveaway frame of mind.
Fallacy: Giveaways are low effort
In many cases , while the initial post may appear to be low effort, there is work involved to make the post and then to determine the winner of the giveaway and the distribution of prizes. You know some folks who ran giveaways were using spreadsheets to keep track of the various participants and winners. That doesn’t look like “low effort” to me.
Sure, there may be some cut and paste involved, but it’s not like there is no work involved at all. Not to mention that planning and branding that it all entails.
Do you mean to tell me that if large corporations came to invest in Hive and used cut and paste for their branding that they would be downvoted? That seems a little crazy.
Fallacy: That all giveaways are low value
Personally I always try to give good value with my giveaways. I adjust the amount of the various tokens and it is a fifty/fifty split. Now on some occasions I will admit I may have a low value Splinterlands card in a giveaway, but even there the value in the post is folks being able to participate and have fun while doing it (and maybe win!)
**Fallacy: That giveaways harm the ecosystem **
On the contrary, the giveaways help the ecosystem in two ways. One is the redistribution of tokens, cards, or HSBI subscriptions. Especially in the case of HSBI which is better? I share a unit with another and we both “win”, or I just donate some HP directly to the HSBI and it only affects myself.
The other way it helps is by boosting up new members. If you come to Hive and you are a small account it can take years before you are earning enough on your posts to make it worthwhile for the effort you must put in to get to that point. It definitely is a slog as you write post after post and see no real rewards. With giveaways, the new member can participate and build the value of their account with winnings from day one.
Not to mention the fact any rewards I received got reinvested into the ecosystem. I used them to buy into versus games here on the blockchain. This makes the ecosystem stronger in the long run.
Fallacy: That giveaways steal from the rewards pool
How does the one or two Hive I might make from a giveaway post (remember, I put half back in purchasing the tokens) compare to the Hivian that only posts analysis or charts and gets 30, 40, or 100 hive?or the posts where essentially the same thing is repeated over and over again and those posts get large upvotes merely because they are considered the “expert”?
The rewards pool is there to reward posts. Now back when it was Steem the idea was it was the new social media and might even replace facebook. Back then the founders demanded a better system than FB with sharing memes replaced by well written posts. Then people who appreciated the posts could upvote to show approval or to receive a value for their upvote from the rewards pool.
So now if someone appreciates the giveaway post, either for the post itself or the return they receive for the upvote, don’t they deserve it? In a sense a downvote to zero is stealing from the people who have upvoted it in the first place.
CONCLUSION
I favor giveaways even if I weren’t creating them myself. Rather than being a detriment to the ecosystem I believe it makes it stronger. Let’s starts dialog.
Any comments or rebuttals are always appreciated and leave them below. This post is using commentrewarder and the first few comments will receive upvotes.