Further Clarification on the 'Exclusion List'
I've been paying a lot of attention to this 'Hive Exclusion list', as it seems like it's being portrayed as racial extermination or whatever.
I personally do have a problem with it as the very idea is a lot more nuanced than can possibly be done with some lines of code. Removing the Ninja-mined stake, well, I don't think many people oppose it.
However, it was done using lines of code. It was not coded to exclude certain races or communities, but actions.
You may disagree with this, and that's fine.
So Hive is a dictatorship, after all
Er... no.
Certain people were excluded from a kind of 'airdrop', in which their tokens on Steem get copy-pasted 1:1 into Hive.
Nobody gets censored or controlled, and everybody - even Justin Sun - is still perfectly capable of signing in with an account on Hive. Everyone is also capable of getting upvotes and rewards, too.
Everybody is still free.
For the most part, this was a decision executed - flawlessly or not - to exclude those who openly opposed Hive and supported Justin Sun, who is demonstrably opposed to decentralization.
For reference, just look at the current front page of Steemit.com and the code actively censoring certain users and terms he doesn't like (blocktrades, hive etc.)
If people are opposed to Hive, then I see no problem excluding them from an airdrop - while still giving them all the same access and rights as everyone else.
In short, people are upset they are not getting free money.
But there is a catch
Clearly, some users were caught in the crossfire. This is because, as I said, code is not as nuanced as the human touch, and should your activity match the criteria of the exclusion list say, by accident, ignorance or other reasons such as voting for all witnesses to keep a balance while discussions were being had, you end up losing out.
That sucks a lot, especially for those who seriously could do with a break and a boost.
Not everybody pays that much attention to politics. I remember clearly my first time voting witnesses. I voted the top 20. Just because. I remember considering clicking on the links to look stuff up but I was instantly bored and just left it at that.
One could say ignorance is no excuse, but I beg to differ. However, this debate is long drawn out and too late anyway.
Is this exclusion list really so bad?
Not really, no. What people are frequently failing to mention is that there will be an appeals system put in place which will be driven by community consensus, allowing those caught in the crossfire to get their airdrop like everyone else, albeit with some delay. This has not been completely ironed out yet, but its one of the most popular features of the proposal system from the get-go, so keep an eye on it.
This completely takes away from the argument of dictatorship, as it becomes up to the community to decide if an individual's appeal is deserving. Was that person actively attacking and endangering Steem, or opposing Hive? Were they genuinely just busy doing their own thing without paying much attention?
These nuances are the human touch that was absent in the original code which, to be clear, was a rush job to get this whole migration done as quickly as possible. Everybody anticipated numerous problems and the announcement reflected as much. It's frankly amazing the Hive chain simply worked first time round!
This process, all things considered, is about as decent and fair as it could be, and though you can rightly argue the exclusion list shouldn't exist in the first place, I believe the added appeal option adds a bit more color to the community while also demonstrating the nature of decentralisation and what it really means.
So What Now?
Anyone who feels they are in need (for some reason) can always use steem.chat or the bountiful discord channels to ask for help, and people such as myself and @pharesim have been more than happy to delegate to anyone in need. However, 'need' is a bit of a stretch here. Don't forget, everyone still has their Steem accounts, and Steem is still more valuable than it has been in months, and considerably higher in price than when Justin came around showing off that HE drove the value up to, what, 15 cents?
People on Steem still have their Steem, thus, nobody should find themselves in a desperate situation as a result of what happened. They just didn't get free money.
So. Let's have a look at this image by @Kopasi:
Hostile to counterview
Nope. Everyone can still join Hive and express their counterviews all they want. If by 'hostile' you mean, people will criticize your opinion, then sure. Welcome to Earth, Twitter, Facebook, reddit, you name it. The point is to allow the freedom to speak, and the freedom to criticize such speech.
Steemit, on the other hand, is doing everything it can to censor and blacklist 'counterviews', the code of which can be viewed here on github which completely removes posts from Steemit Justin doesn't like..
You also may notice a flood of pinned, pro-Justin posts on the Steemit front page.
You also may notice that Justin has installed a new, updated ToS removing the rights for anyone to talk about any third party platform on Steemit!
Funny that. It seems pretty Hostile to Counterview to me.
Ignoring Individuality
Nonsense. The code executed at the beginning to prevent certain accounts from getting free tokens does, temporarily, ignore individuality. But if we look beyond the first five minutes, again, we have an individualistic appeals system that specifically pays attention to individual cases.
One action through one series of codes does not define a blockchain in the same way that the actions of one Korean do not define Korea, or one Hive witness does not define Hive (trust me, they do nothing but bicker most the time). If you are one who pays attention to individuality, you would understand that.
Violation of Property Rights
I don't even get this one. What property? Which rights?
Ethnic Cleansing
This one is just trying to evoke emotion with the race card and for most people completely disarms the argument and exposes it for what it is: Desperate nonsense.
It reminds me a lot of the Chinese Communist Party. They know how sensitive the US is to racism and it has become a core focus of their propaganda arm. Calling out racism at every corner is a crucial part of their narrative to show the hypocrisy of the West.
That's why the Chinese Virus is a trending controversy, despite Spanish Flu and German Measles being completely acceptable.
Meanwhile in Korea... for decades now:
Sometimes, when one accuses you of racism so flippantly, it might be wise to look at oneself in the mirror. You may be surprised at what you see.
Greetings @mobbs.
Very timely and accurate, this contribution on the clarification of the "Exclusion List".
You know my case, I was added to the exclusion list, action that in this quieter hour I am trying to understand in all its magnitude.
If we evaluate the parameter that was considered to elaborate the list, evidently the immediate answer is that there is no injustice, however, I believe that the error lies in the choice of the parameter, this because in an objective way it does not allow to measure the two variables;
A. The user openly opposed the Hive
B. The user supported Justin Sun
I believe that a clearer mechanism should have been established whose parameter would measure the two variables in an objective manner, in this respect I refer to my case, I am not opposed to decentralisation, I have not voted for any proposal to support the centralisation of Justin Sun, since that proposal did not exist, and if it had existed I would have opposed it. I made the mistake of voting for the total number of witnesses (30 witnesses), and in completing the list of 22 to 30, incorrect witnesses came in.
I clarify that I am not upset, for not receiving free money, the fact is that being on the list I have been harmed, I say this because I have received insults in the channels of the Discord, and I began to receive hostile messages in my last post.
In my 2 years on the STEEM platform, I have invested time in creating content for our academic communities of reference #SteemSTEM and #STEM-spanol, on the other hand, I have also prudently invested economic resources to increase my SP, and to see that my account was not considered in the launch of Hive is something discouraging, First because Although I have access and rights like everyone else, I don't have the resource credits at Hive to do my job as I have been doing, and although I have already put my STEEM account into Power Down, by the time those resources are available they will probably be worth zero ($0), plus the possibility of investing is unstable and more so in these times of turmoil.
I hope that this situation will be resolved and I can make normal use of the HP in HIVE, since it is clear that I do not wish to continue in the STEEM platform, however, I am clear that this will be a community decision.
In advance, I appreciate the receptivity and support I have received in the last hours from @mobbs, @lemouth and @carloserp-2000.
I see you have a 20HP delegation on your account now on Hive. I'd suggest you start posting over there and when the appeal process is in place submit yours. In the meantime the delegation will let you do your work and start earning your own HP.
There's been some people whining about it and that's fine. Codes are codes after all. There's provision in the DAO for anyone who believes they were unfairly blocked.
It doesn't exist in the DAO yet, and I don't think there's consensus yet on exactly how itll be done? I could be wrong. But I'm sure it will since it's such a popular element
The people on the list were racially motivated to vote for tron sock puppets. This happened long before the exclusion list existed and was made public. Therefore, it is related to race.
But yeah pretty ridiculous to relate it to race.
I suppose in that regard it is yeah. Hardly a cleansing, tho
I think my problems with the exclusion list is the fact that we've interpreted that single action of voting for a puppet or two as direct opposition to decentralisation. Dare I say it that not everyone who voted for those puppets support censorship. They could have voted for so many possible reasons. Maybe they were sympathetic because someone's stake got frozen, maybe they didn't like that the witnesses took that action without the community's input.
Not supporting the SF 22.2 doesn't directly mean one is against decentralisation. Voting for 5 sock puppets and 25 proper witnesses doesn't mean one is against decentralisation.
This exclusion list, just like SF 22.2, wasn't something the community had a hand in, or fully supported. Until yesterday, not one normal community member (aside the witnesses) knew what the exclusion list would look like. We can't really say the community decided in this case, because it didn't.
I hope it gets reversed.
I don’t mind it..it’s like if someone has a party they can invite whoever they want.
Steemit is still here and hive took nothing away from it.
I say it’s win win.
Thank you for writing, Mobbs. I'd posted a comment earlier but I couldn't find it anymore. lol So, I'll try to do it again.
I think that my problem with the exclusion list is that we've interpreted the single action of voting for 2 or 5 sock witnesses and 25 real witnesses to mean that a person is completely against decentralization. I think people may have voted for those sock accounts for several reasons. For example, some people may not have been comfortable with a blockchain freezing someone's stake. Some people may not have been comfortable with the fact that the decision was taken without the community ever knowing about it beforehand.
As such, I do not think that having a reservation for SF 22.2 directly means you're against decentralization. And I do see a lot of people getting caught in the crossfire, and being condemned because they voted both sides. When you're in the middle like that, it's hard to see whose side you're on. So, who gets to decide whether you're good or evil?
Another thing worth noting is that this exclusion list (just like SF 22.2), isn't directly the decision of the larger community. Until yesterday, no one in the Hive Discord server knew exactly what the list would look like. Hence, it would not be true to say that the community decided to exclude certain community members from the HF. As far as they knew, we're doing this to get away from STINC's stake.
I hope it gets resolved, eventually.
I am sympathetic with this exclusion list because it could have been me. I never supported SF 22.2 because I think it was a hostile move. But it doesn't mean i was against the community. Who knows how many people like myself are there already?
Yep, as I stated above. Trust me I've debated it from that point of view since this whole thing blew up. That's why the marketing is emphasising the DAO appeal system to re-affirm it's all good.
This I can kind of understand. Under the circumstances, some secrecy was needed given the opponent. That being said, I think the main agreement among everyone is that decisions were made too abruptly without enough nuance. But again in their defense, this was a rush job. They were largely not sleeping more than an hour in days to get this out. So there's that to consider.
I think everyone is sympathetic to the list but I think it'll be fine in the long run if the proposal thing works out as it should
You didn’t invite me to the party so I’m mad!
Boo hoo.
Clowns.