Again, I'm not necessarily talking about the bidbot itself. I'm talking about the collection of initiatives and pushes on Hive to find ways to terrify people who were never told they are doing anything wrong up front, and then have to face waves of DVs that they do not understand. You wrote your post to be scary to folks -- that one person paused his, but you scared plenty more people who are not going to feel they can help themselves in any way without being targeted. You published that big list of names of Hive users that are not going to understand why they are on blast -- and this is crypto, in which anonymity and privacy and being able to live under central control of what you can do with your resources is very important. If we are trying to communicate that Hive is decentralized, free, and safe, every threat of punitive action involving people who are suddenly all on blast with threats of future witch hunting and downvoting reads just like I said it. That's what Hive starts to look like. Everyone isn't going to wait for you to explain -- they are going to RUN.
4,779 users left -- MAYBE. Between folks barely clearing the signup hurdles, not knowing the rules when they come in and falling afoul of Hivewatchers, having Krampus the child-beating demon being made a measure to judge them ... that's Azircon's choice of name for his ratio ... not knowing about the history of bidbots and so being judged by a standard they have no way of even knowing exists ... that sounds like it is not worth the effort.
Meanwhile, you and Acidyo have open wallets too. I've looked in them and found that you both are sending enough Hive to exchanges so that if you backed off by just ten percent, you would have time to take a gentler approach to little accounts who don't account for that much Hive going out the door. Now immediately you will explain that you and he have things to do with all that powering down and exchanging... but I'm a business person. I already know that. But no one without such a background is going to know or care: they will know you are going after them for pennies while clearing thousands of dollars. The story is that the rich on Hive are running a circle jerk that also abuses the little people, and that's the story people who leave are telling, too. Just read all of your comments ... you'll see it. Understand that the narrative on Hive in the world is being affected quite a bit by this perception. So even IF we had 4,779 users telling good stories in the world about Hive, that would already be what we have to work against.
And, no matter what we do, altcoins lose 90 percent of their value in the bear times on average ... so,if there are not an influx of people we can get interested and excited and feeling safe on Hive this year, there will be no way to get them in 2026 when people will be running out of the crypto market as a whole, and when every bad story will be amplified. But let me make this easy: what is your entire whale stack worth, at ten percent of its present value? That's where we're going if we don't get a better narrative out there and sustain it, SOON.
This post is about the bidbot itself.
I wrote this post to remind everyone that vote buying is a no-no. I don't care that vote buyers like that they can buy votes. I have and will always be fighting against business models using the reward pool for their own profits, and I will continue supporting >100 small users with my upvotes every single day without asking for anything in return.
Don't fuck around to find out, maybe?
I'm sure pharesim's stake supports hundreds of users daily through curangel to point to that one user he may or may not have chased off the platform by downvoting their ill-gained votes.
If "people" are going around spreading this narrative they're just hurting themselves long term cause that's not what the truth is.
That is the story out on Hive in the world ... I know you are working with OCD and Zingtoken ... but very few people who leave here are going to even know that. Again, read the comments ... that's the story going out ... Blurt, Steem ... interwebs ... it's out there, past the English language.
Now, about FAFO ... I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here ... I can understand you being frustrated with me of late, but I am going to assume you don't think you can bully me because you don't like what I have to say. Just in case, know who you are dealing with: I'm a best-selling Amazon author on crypto...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735575216
... and I've just launched my course on Hivelist among other places:
https://store.hivelist.io/?post_type=product&p=23352
... and right now, both contain whole guides to doing well on Hive, the third of the three greatest blockchains on earth. That's how we want it to be, right? Put another way: I'm not FC. My storytelling reach on what Hive is, and its value, will only continue to increase and although we have our disagreements, I know we are not unreasonable to the point that we are going to endanger the good story of Hive. That book is coming up for a revision later this year, and I will of course revisit Hive's place in the book. I know we want that story to be even better, particularly with Hive down to 5K users. So, just this one time, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt, with the reminder: FAFO can be a two-way street.
It sounds like I made the good decision to mute you and will be doing a lot better in the future to also mute you on the FRIDAY notification bot. Good luck, may I never have to read any more of your weird takes on how things are.