Valueplan has posted seeking comment from the Hive userbase. This is the comment I left there.
"To create the 2025 general marketing strategy for Hive we need to outline our main goals. Our current goals are:
"Increase listings, integrations and partnerships
"Inspire investment in HIVE and HBD and increase their utility
"Onboarding and retention of long-term community members"
Since I began using Hive's progenitor in May 2017 I have observed as more than a million people undertook the onboarding process and learning curve to join the community and contribute posts and comments to our library of content. I have watched them leave too, as we have ejected them. That library and satisfied users is all the marketing program Hive needs. The market will not be fooled by tricks or gimmicks without content of interest presented by a satisfied userbase. The vast majority of reasonable people lost any respect and confidence in the platform when bidbots were allowed to operate, and rightly so. The primacy of greed, of grubby, filthy lucre being the sole purpose of every act, of every aspect of the code, could hardly have been better demonstrated.
During this same period social media has risen to become the largest sector of the global financial market, demonstrating that people face existential threats they seek means to secure themselves, their communities, and property from that mere pecuniary interest is immaterial to. Hive's demonstrable maximization of financial interest has prevented it's utility to that market, and is why it has the worst retention of users in the social media market.
Hive's underlying offer to the market of a social media platform that resists censorship and enables people to earn from their posts through micropayments from their audience, instead of the advertising model of web2 social media platforms that remunerate only the most popular creators, has not failed to attract users, but it has failed to retain them because it did not live up to it's offer. The narrative wasn't left to the creators, the people discussing the things that matter to them, but has been managed for the purposes of the majority owners of the platform, which is and has been ~3 dozen whales.
The market revealed that onboarding was not the problem. The UI was not the problem. The platform failed to deliver meaningful censorship resistance. It failed to deliver even modest earnings to the vast majority of those users. After overcoming onboarding and UI issues these users began to post and comment, and then encountered unrestrained taxation of their author rewards as the whales' minions used their ninjamined stakes to flag them continually, zeroing their rewards serially until they left. The bidbots were almost worse than the flaggots at destroying Hive's reputation and userbase, but the two together rightly caused respect and confidence in the platform to evaporate.
Almost every user that joined the platform quit because the dynamic offered was not what was actually delivered. Rather than provide a list of the folks that were flagged off the platform, let's do the opposite: make a list of folks that have joined and stayed, particularly those with substantial audiences, so called 'influencers'. The number that came and tried to make a go of it shows that the onboarding process and the UI didn't prevent them from posting. They were driven off after they came. Retention is basically zero.
Zero.
It doesn't matter that any of us might disagree with any or all of their views or how popular they were. Any and all of these views are part of the conversations and ferment of the free speech market which Hive is dependent on serving, and only insofar as Hive allows the market to self regulate can Hive prosper as the platform on which that occurs. Hive has not allowed that market to operate, and Hive does not prosper. There are two options the market has regarding a product: to buy the product or not to buy the product. But that is pure free market capitalism, and the platform can allow producers to prosper or tax their production intolerably. Hive hasn't just favored some producers over others. It has suppressed all of them equally with unrestrained taxation.
As Hive taxed their income here to prevent them earning rewards, it cut it's own throat. Many of them continue to thrive on other platforms, which reveals that Hive is less able than those platforms at enabling free speech to earn it's creators income. Hive will continue to be outperformed by other platforms that do not financially oppress and censor free speech as much as Hive does. Hive has burned through the market of early adopters, and those that have been driven off tell people what happened. That is Hive's marketing program in operation. As long as new people onboarded, their investments could be absorbed, but now that very few make the attempt that income has dried up, leaving only the cash on hand - the DHF - left for the whales to extract.
As long as unrestrained taxation continues - and it continues to this day - Hive will drive users away, and it's userbase will continue to shrink. Accordingly, Valueplan is not surmounting the one challenge that prevents Hive from growing and increasing the value of it's token, which is retention of users. The power to elect witnesses governs Hive, and has since the advent of it's progenitor. ~3 dozen accounts today retain the majority of stake in Hive, and thus completely control governance. Distribution of Hive has not decentralized and this maintains governance centralized in those ~3 dozen accounts.
What Valueplan could do is to curate posts from people that post on Hive to encourage them to continue posting on Hive, with the strictest mechanisms to exclude bots and socks from such curation. It could completely counter every DV that isn't cast on spam or a scam. Finally, it could DV votebots and similar scams that continue to operate on Hive. ~3 dozen whales (or some subset) fund spaminator, hw, and etc. to DV users and drive them away. Censorship of the free speech published on Hive has nothing to do with spam or scams, but ensures continued centralization of governance by preventing distribution. I expect them to continue to secure the whales' sole and exclusive power to govern Hive until the last satoshi of value has been wrung from it, the witnesses give up, and it ceases to exist.
Every lame argument that DV's aren't censorship, aren't taxation, and don't matter can be trotted out as they have been for the last 7 years to no avail. If Hive surmounts the user retention issue, every other goal of Valueplan is either the natural consequence of a growing userbase and token increasing in value, or is greatly facilitated by those metrics, and nothing else Valueplan - or anything else - can do will. Every other expenditure of funds will simply fritter away those funds without benefit to the platform and it's community. However, funds disbursed by Valueplan do seem to benefit some specific people.
"Value Plan is a community-driven marketing and promotion initiative and to function as intended requires feedback."
I find this statement utterly contradicted by the refusal to provide receipts for expenditures that are necessary to verify funds are utilized for stated purposes. Multiple parties (
"The only thing I was paid for is organizing Hivefest."
I don't use Hive as money, and work for a living, so my interest and availability to investigate these matters has been too limited to exhaust the copious evidence of fraud available onchain. Every inquiry I have made leads to the same obfuscation, lies, and fraud that appear to be the purpose of Valueplan's disbursements, without exception. My only involvement is as a Hive user with interest in the DHF benefiting Hive, but after seven years observing the maintenance of governance by the whales I do not have any hope that will change. Folks with substantial stake, or intent to acquire substantial stake, or that have accepted Valueplan funds innocently should address these matters diligently. $M's are flowing out of the DHF, and stripping businesses of their cash on hand is a common practice of vulture capitalists like KKR and Bain Capital Partners, and that looks like what is happening to Hive.
I am confident victims of fraud have reported it to law enforcement, and enforcement will follow investigation, exacerbated by political interest in Venezuela. Sadly this threatens good people with integrity who have received funds from Valueplan, may have never suspected such accusations existed, and who would be wise to keep receipts and document carefully any interactions with Valueplan or it's principals to prove they aren't committing theft by fraud, or worse. Someone is, or will follow the money. Criminals offer up scapegoats as patsies, and will make you a patsy if they can. The best way to prove you are innocent is to not take money from suspect sources.
Because of this taint I can only recommend Valueplan provide accurate and verifiable accounting and receipts for every expense it has incurred and all funds it has disbursed. No strategy will matter until that taint is dispelled because failure to verifiably account disbursements facilitates fraud. Until accurate and verifiable accounting of Valueplan's disbursement of funds is made I strongly recommend everyone vote the return proposal instead of anything related to Valueplan, and that everyone that has been involved in Valueplan take action to fully account for any disbursements from Valueplan to prove their innocence.