Tuesday, December 14, 2021মঙ্গলবার, ২৯শে অগ্রহায়ণ, ১৪২৮ বঙ্গাব্দ
𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖂𝖊𝖊𝖐𝖑𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖗𝖓𝖎
""Editorial""
Incentive
Hive doesn’t have the reach that Facebook or Instagram does. Not even in the same Universe! However, it does pay you on your content. Right? You know what that does? It creates an incentive to ‘game’ the system to earn money by the most efficient ways possible. Why? Because it is human nature. Human society, from the dawn of time, is driven by incentives. If there is a way to game a ‘free’ earning system, people will do so.
I don’t want this editorial to become a history book on how people ‘milked’ the system since the inception of Hive and Steem. However, I do like to discuss how some of it is done today..
It has several main end-members:
Content Creator: If you have a follower base..
Majority of the hive-voting is done by automation. Meaning, most people don’t really read any post, they have their account set up on auto-vote (sorry, new comers, hardly anyone reads your post). So if you are an ‘established’ hive account, you can generate whatever, and it will get voted. Soon, less motivated but experienced hivers resort to this mode
Curation projects on hive control large amounts of HP. So if you can get into one of their voting patterns, it is a win-win situation. They will vote for you, especially if you are a consistent creator. You will create frequently because they will vote for you. It is a symbiotic relationship
Using some large votes, if you managed to get to ‘trending’ you will get more votes, because some large accounts only vote from trending
Try to generate a closed system of 10-15 accounts that vote each other. It is called circle-voting
Content Creator: If you don’t have a follower base..
You are trying to manufacture a follower base by a) sitting on discord all day, b) visiting many curation discord channels, c) use certain preferred tags
Trying to be friends with large account by a) leaving comments like ‘nice post’ in their posts b) leaving long comments but ones that makes no sense
Spammer:
You copy-paste content and picture from internet and post
You generate various low effort posts/picture/charts at rapid interval
Self-vote your posts a number of times a week and self-vote your comments
The last type is rather easy to manage and typically fairly low return. But the first two can be very lucrative. As a responsible hive user, try not to engage in any of these activities, as they don't benefit the chain and don't create any personal growth for you. You can earn maybe $100-$1000 quickly, but you will likely get identified and then you will lose your reputation. In a social network, once a ‘real reputation’ is tainted, it is very hard to repair or recover it.
""A Neutral Take on Farming""
Farming on hive usually means an attempt to maximize profit from posts by any means possible. And people go to such astonishing lengths to do just that. They will use unfair means to get votes, analyze the curator's voting pattern and exploit that and use many many accounts to increase the chance of getting votes. And this problem is not hive's own, it is quite universal—if any platform rewards for content, some people will try to exploit that. We see this on every other social media, youtube being the most obvious example. But to exploit youtube, you gotta be smart to some degree. Exploiting hive is really easy. Especially when there are a lot of ways to plagiarize, spinning articles (rewriting something with some words changed or using a tool to do it for you) and low effort multiple posts are some common ways.
This is why the abuse fighters on hive are really wary about farming and farmers. So much so, they will even tag a harmless content creator with genuine intent to create and make money off the content as a farmer if they take money out of HIVE on a regular basis. But as I see it, that shouldn't be the case. If the curation is legit, if your content is legit, so the money you get from curation is yours alone and does not belong to the HIVE community. You should be free to spend it however you wish. And cashing out shouldn't be seen as farming. Do YouTubers get called out for cashing out on their content? Do creators on any other social platform get called out for using their hard-earned money? Nope. They certainly don't. This also shouldn't be the case on Hive and you shouldn't be shamed for doing so or feel guilty in any way.
However, HIVE is not like other social media, and for many reasons such as this—it never will become so. Even if you are a legitimate content creator, you are supposed to get more stake on HIVE and keep the money you earn on the platform itself. It's your money alright but frozen in your account. Cashing out is frowned upon. This is the norm on Hive and all creators are supposed to go with the norm. There's a very good reason for this too, the less hive gets sold, the price of hive stays up more. Curators aren't salty without reasons. And with a larger stake, any creator will get benefitted in the long run. Perhaps more than they'd be if they cashed out immediately. I have sold a considerable number of HIVE at $0.11 because I needed the money then but I could sell it at $3+ a few days ago if I still had it. That's 30X profit right there. It needs to be said the lost opportunity still bites me in my sleep, I'm not ashamed of selling hive back then. It enabled me what I wanted to do and that is the most important thing.
""Cycles.""
- @Minhajulmredol
The word 'farming' may be confusing for many newcomers or the people who aren't attached deep to hive. Well, this term refers to the actions of some people who are stealing the rewards that they don't even deserve. I mean, they are not doing anything meaningful that would make them justified for those rewards. Still, they manage to suck them somehow.
First of all, let me put some thoughts on the table from my end. What's hive to you? A website where you come, post something and get some votes(reward) keeps repeating like a cycle. I was first introduced to steemit (days before hive) with a similar concept, which didn't work out for me well. When I moved back, I found a new place named 'Hive'. A new home, a new beginning, and new rules to survive, and this time I was on my own way to explore. I first understood that I am not among the fantastic writers that hive has already got, but I can be a part of this fantastic community somehow. Started to explore, and it kept going and still on, for my own benefit and to help others too, who seek survival here. If you lack on one side, try to fill it from the other side.
It's been a long journey here. I have seen a variety of people carrying the same misconception, like the cycle I mentioned above. Everyone is not a good writer, artist, or gamer but shouldn't be the one stealing from others just to survive here. Plagiarism, I have seen a lot of users copying from a place and pasting it here like nobody will suspect or find that out. Some are also so brilliant that they try to modify, yet the keywords remain the same. How much would you change a text keeping the central idea the same? Not much because if you could, then you would need not steal. Post something interesting, something that you would also love to read, talk about, and engage through them with others.
Another thing we hate the most is vote begging. If you feel like lagging behind, try to get up with double dedication, you will indeed find a way. That cycle of coming to hive posting something good or bad and then vanishing should be stopped. No interaction with the other users. Their one and only priority are just the rewards as if it's a platform of bots. The same cycle keeps on moving. They are here for their own interests, not for the community. This is a community, and we are meant to stick together. If we rise, we grow together, and if we fall, we lose together. Don't be self-centred. Explore other things and make yourself helpful to others too.
A few days ago, someone thanked me for helping him out on a particular thing, and I showed him a cycle too on that day. In the cycle of helping, I got help in my beginning, I explored things and gathered as much as I could, and this is on me now to pass them forward who seeks and they would continue the same thing forward. This should be the cycle as a community, not that reward-sucking cycle without any meaningful impact for the community.
""Hajar Bochorer Farming""
- Headclerk
This week's Turni is a bit different than usual. Most of the time, you guys get to read about general topics, stories, poems, a hefty deep editorial and some eye-pleasing arts or photos that may or may not be thought-provoking. This week we are trying something different. This week's topic is about something that has been here for a very long time. Reward farming. I'll try not to dive too deep into the complexities as what I am going to say is directed towards the relatively new users who, without even understanding, participate in these types of generally harmful norms. This Is intended towards them.
You guys might have heard about a term called reward pool here and there. It's basically a magnificent floating pool of money in the ether that gives money away towards people who write, lol, on a serious note. It is a pool holding hive commanded by protocols that replenish every day, and every day a good chunk of it is distributed towards authors and curators in the form of votes. Users who have Hive power staked get to give or take away rewards from posts. The more Hive Power a person has, The more they can roleplay Robinhood. That is what it is in basic terms.
Now, as there is a system that gives out money, it is a given that will be tried to be manipulated. In the forms of plagiarism, shitposting, milking while participating in a network of people who hold commendable Hive power, vote begging and vice versa. All of these behaviours are generally called Farming. It is called farming as the term itself refers to performing actions that are robotic and severely repetitive. While taking everything from this blockchain, farmers/milkers give nothing in return. But Hive is social media. And it is intended to be a melting pot of culture and creativity. Farming in its core opposes everything that Hive or, as a matter of fact, any social media stands for.
Now that you understand what Farming is let me talk about what comes next. What comes after Farming is downvotes and loss of reputation. Downvotes to you newcomers might seem like it is a bad thing. It feels like someone is hijacking your money. But that is where this kind of thinking is highly flawed. Unless your post reaches the 7-day maturity mark, you are not the owner of the rewards that show under your posts. People give it based on the value it provides to them. They can just take it away. If they think it is overvalued content. But that is not the worst part. What's worse is the loss of reputation and respect. People who are farmers get flagged and downvoted sooner or later. And by the general masses, they get heavily judged and scrutinized. If your self-respect is worth more than the temptation of money, the equation is simple for you. But if it is the polar opposite, beware of Dada, the Dark Knight. Do not shit where you eat; that is all I am going to say.:)
𝕰𝖓𝖉 𝕹𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖘
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