Hive Improvement Proposal: Decentralize blacklists on Hive
This is a proposal to make changes to how blacklists are maintained for the Hive network. In particular, the proposal is a way to decentralize blacklists so that anyone can easily establish their own blacklist and can also choose which blacklist(s) they wish to interact with. But before I get into the details of this idea, I want to provide some background on the current state of Hive blacklists:
What are blacklists on Hive?
A Hive blacklist is a list of Hive accounts that are reported to be engaged in some form of behavior that other users find annoying or worse. Blacklists were created as a way to protect unwary Hive users (especially new ones) from various forms of trickery.
As an example, a blacklist might be created to warn of one or more of the following behaviors: phishing attempts to steal private keys, misleading account names that are very close to business services such as exchanges, spamming of plagiarized content and claiming it as their own, identity theft, etc.
Who maintains blacklists on Hive?
Several different groups currently maintain blacklists for Hive (BuildAWhale, HiveWatchers, etc). @themarkymark maintains a server that provides an API for querying these different blacklists.
How are blacklists used on Hive?
A blacklist by itself is nothing more than list of accounts that are publicly published. But these lists are often used by various Hive services such as Hive wallets and browsing sites to warn their users to be wary of interacting with the accounts on the blacklist.
For example, several popular wallets warn a user if they are about to send funds to a Hive account that is very close to the name of an exchange or payment service, to prevent a user from mistyping and sending the funds to the wrong place. As a side note, most exchange wallets do not provide this service, so be extra careful when sending funds from an exchange.
How do services get blacklist data?
There’s really several ways a service can get blacklist data: directly from the list maintainer (often in a git repository), via API calls to themarkymark’s server, or via hivemind servers (several of which currently get data from themarkymark’s server).
For example, hive.blog currently gets it’s blacklist data from hivemind. Hivemind servers primarily read data from the blockchain about posts and votes and provide this information to most user frontends such as hive.blog, peakd.com, and esteem.
Why change the current system?
I’m making this proposal for three reasons: 1) to improve hivemind performance, 2) to democratize/decentralize the creation of blacklists to some extent by making it easier for anyone to create a blacklist, and 3) to make it easier for users to choose what blacklists they want to use.
Enhancing hivemind to support creation and selection of blacklists
Since most frontends rely on hivemind servers to provide them with blacklist data, I think the simplest thing to do is enhance the code base of hivemind itself.
Hivemind already supports a feature that allows users to follow or mute a user. Following a user adds their posts to the user’s feed so it’s easier to find when a favorite author makes a post. Muting a user hides that user’s posts from the user.
My proposal is to add two similar features to hivemind: allow a user to “blacklist” users, and allow a user to “follow” another user’s blacklist. These two features will allow anyone to construct a set of blacklist users and will allow each user to use one or more blacklists created by others.
As mentioned previously, this change will also substantially improve hivemind performance, because the data will be stored locally in hivemind instead of being fetched from an external service. During our work optimizing Hivemind response times, we found that code for computing blacklisting was one of the main causes of slow response times (there were several other causes as well, but these are mostly fixed now, more on that in another post).
How is blacklisting different from muting?
Muting an account means you don’t want to see the account’s posts and comments. Most frontends honor muting by preventing those posts from being displayed when you view the site.
Blacklisting an account implies you think the account is doing something wrong, and is intended to be used as a way to warn others that you think they should be careful when dealing with that account.
How will users “select” their preferred blacklists?
This will require a change to the various Hive frontends, which is ultimately up to the developers and operators of those frontends.
For condenser sites (e.g. https://hive.blog), the site would generally assign a set of “starter” blacklists provided by well-known community members to protect new users. Condenser will also provide an interface for adding and removing blacklists from the profile settings page.
A similar interface would be added for adding and removing users from the user’s personal blacklist (if they wish to create one).
How much work is involved to implement this change?
The good news is, this should be a relatively easy change to implement, maybe a week or less to implement and test at Hivemind level, and relatively little work for the frontends, at least ones that already have features for following and muting, since the interfaces for blacklisting can be virtually the same, with a trivial modification to the hivemind API calls they make. No blockchain-level changes are needed.
And if we don’t make this change, we’ll need to come up with some other way to speed up hivemind using some form of caching of the existing centralized blacklists, because the performance impact using the current method is just too severe.
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If anybody can create a blacklist, then blacklist will be on a rise and people who does not even deserve to be on the blacklist get blacklisted either offending the owner of the blacklist stuff or getting into a little conflict.
I hope this proposal is rethink again
I see the term itself decentralized blacklist as an oxymoron
LOL you would know =)
However, I reckon @blocktrades is right, as muting is essentially the same as blacklisting from the user perspective, just less efficient and scalable. Presently we are dependent on extremely centralized blacklists to prevent massive spam from overwhelming the blockchain, and the idea here is to distribute that function, which strongly protects freedom of speech.
You seem to be the poster child for that.
I beg to differ. I fail to see how you can believe that stigmatizing people does nothing to them. Can you explain that to me ?
The vast majority of people will blindly follow any perceived authority. As evidence just look at the vast majority who are blindly following social distancing directives, following wearing mask directives, following directives that have bankrupted many small businesses.
Look at how the German people behaved and the atrocities they committed because of a perceived authority. The German people are no different to any other population
In this decentralized model, each person defines their own blacklist that only affects their own viewing experience.
Other people can chose to opt-in or opt-out of adopting someone else's blacklist.
By-the-way, it's nice that I can see and reply to your comments again!
Blacklisting another user of itself doesn't do anything to that user. People exchange worse insults via comments all the time.
The term ''Decentralize Blacklists'' is an oxymoron
Not really. If anyone can maintain their own blacklist and a user can choose what blacklists they care about, they are in fact decentralized.
Thanks for the reply Dan
I encourage you to conciser what we want for Hive. Do we want it to grow, be a welcoming supportive platform where people are able to grow their Stake? If we achieve that people are far more likely to invite others and invest. What went on with Steemit years ago prevented investors and this is fact.
Lets also think about and take into consideration how moronic the general public is. They tend to blindly follow perceived authority. Black lists look like authority.
As evidence we need look no further than the covid 19 virus. We see all over the world, people going along with perceived authority figures and doing things which are detrimental to their own health such as wearing masks. The reality of this is, we all host a wide variety bacteria and viruses. Now we see many people serving customers in shops, wearing masks all day long, increasing their viral loads and exponentially increasing the risk of becoming seriously ill with every in breath and increase the risk of everyone else around them. The vast majority are morons and blindly follow regardless of how much money they have. Wealth is no indicator of wisdom or general intelligence.
If there is need for black lists at all, I strongly urge you to consider the suggestion, that any blacklisting be done through an open consensus process where everyone interested in such things can have their say.
Thanks again for your response
Actually, my proposal goes beyond open consensus, because I consider blacklisting to potentially be too severe to allow it to be determined by a simple consensus decision (i.e. a single source of truth decided by general agreement).
My proposal is more of an "opt-in" strategy, where each user decides for himself which blacklists he wants a frontend to consider.
This is also the approach I want to take for future reputation/rating systems as well. In the reputation and rating system I'm envisioning, there will be no "single source of truth" decided by general consensus. Instead each individual will get to select whom they want to trust to provide them with reputation information, and they'll be able to weight the significance of those sources. So each user will get custom data based on their own choices.
I ask you to consider removing reputation scores completely.
Just look at the loudest accusers on steemit and hive, they all have high reputation scores and simultaneously are guilty of more egregious abuses than the people they accuse. Reputation scores convey no reliable or meaninful information regarding an individuals character or past behavior. Get rid of it completely.
We should also be aware of the social credit score adopted by Communist China and how that is used top oppress its own people, why would you want to use system that is designed to oppress people on Hive?
Look what is going on in other countries like the US UK Australia NZ all being coerced into adopting the covi pass with its own color coded form of social credit score. This is a bad idea if we value freedom and decentralization.
So no to black lists and no to social credit scores or whatever other label you slap on it.
I believe you are confusing reputation with scoring. It is demonstrable that even quite asocial vertebrates rely on reputation, and the most sociable species are the more dependent they are on scoring reputation. This is because higher sociability has generally promoted centralization, as bees and wasps demonstrate.
However, enabling reputation to be scored by individuals prevents centralization of power, which promotes distribution of power.
I am strongly in favor of societies that feature peers rather than overlords, and distributing reputation scoring is essential to formalizing such society. As it would be difficult to envision our present circumstances resulting in informal society without catastrophic population reduction, which I do not support, I strongly support distributing reputation scoring.
The usual suspects have many accounts and literally control their own rep score.
Me to but on platforms like Hive people may have as many identities as they like, this allows for the creation of overlords
I will have think about it and make a more coherent argument in reply to your post.
My mind is on something else right now.
These things are deeply concerning to me.
I am very happy to hear your thoughts on reputation. Indeed, the reason reputation matters at all is because it is subjective, and it is the lack of subjectivity that so reduces it's meaning and makes it susceptible to being simply a commodity on social media.
This one is both great as well as tricky. Hopefully a million blacklists won’t get created. Then again if a blacklist only has one person or two on it, does it matter? Most likely not.
Still like the thought of getting a bit more decentralized with this. We shall see how it unfolds.
Also glad it’s not too difficult for you folks on a coding side.
From a performance perspective, there wouldn't be any big impact if many people create blacklists. It's similar to follows and mutes, both of which are maintained as similar lists. I considered using mute lists as blacklists, but decided they were semantically different enough to maintain them as separate lists.
I can see uses for blacklists as there will be people who create lots of accounts to spam Hive. So far that has not been too much of a problem, but it is likely. It's not feasible for every user to mute every spam account and so we will need this. Being able to choose which blacklists we use would be great. Some people may want to see troll comments for whatever reasons. Bring it on!
The issue you're getting at above is actually a slightly different one, which is being able to follow someone's mute list and have it add to the user's muting function.
We discussed that idea in our office as well and I think it would also be a nice feature to add. It would be also be a relatively easy feature to add. But the immediate need was to find a way to speed up the performance of API calls being impacted by the blacklist processing.
Being able to subscribe to someone else's "mute list" would be a cool option.
All I know is I don’t like that little red (1) next to my account
One potential side-effect of this change is you might not see it it any more, if you opt out of using the blacklist that has your name on it.
I know what you mean I made a little honest mistake with another account @kggymlife and got blacklisted for life 😂 I don't like the mark but real people know the truth and as I always say the truth always comes out in the end
If it can improve the hivemind performance and add a decentralized way to blacklist accounts, sounds really interesting to do. Thanks for the work!
People with some form of influence will create a blacklist and add people just when they want
Unless other people decide to use that blacklist, it won't matter.
Okk
What if there was a system implemented in the same way that we vote for witnesses? Perhaps we could vote for accounts to be added to the blacklist? Any thoughts?
Most people probably aren't going to spend the time to figure out who is trying to trick other users. So I don't think stake-based votes are a good way to attack this problem right now. But the current system I'm proposing has elements of the reputation system I want to implement on Hive later on.
Does the blacklist means to block another member from communicating with me permanently or to report the member?
No, it doesn't prevent the user from communicating with you. It just allows you to make a computer-processable statement that you don't trust that account. Here's an example usage: say you accidentally send funds to an account called bloctrades when you meant to send it to blocktrades. To prevent that ever happening again, you could put "bloctrades" on your blacklist, so that your wallet would warn you if you mistype it again.
That's a good and simplified explanation. I appreciate sir
I believe this is a good and a bad idea the good anyone could start one and the bad it will get abused 💯 I think themarkymark and steemflagrewards are fair maybe they could come together and maybe even you could help I just think we need one proper blacklist with enough people running it that's the main thing I'm willing to help anyway I can and keep up the good work 🤝
I am surprised to see someone on their blacklists support their blacklist. However, despite that I am not blacklisted by them, I do not want to be at their mercy regarding blacklists. I'd prefer to blacklist only spammers and not trolls, for example.
I don't support hivewatchers and spaminator because as you see I've been blacklisted and the funny thing is this account had nothing to do with it I made a honest mistake with my account @kggymlife tried to appeal my case got blocked from discord channel and now I'm getting spam comments on every post it's funny how they meant to be protecting us from spam but hivewatcher copy and pastes the same comment over and over again check for yourself also banning people for life with no way to appeal is just a joke thanks for replying I lot of people act like they can't see my comments but it's all good everything is documented (31 may 2020 ) @blocktrades if you could help that would be great I would really like to contact you off the Blockchain if possible
Please. I need your assistance here on this, not blacklist issue but something critical and pathetic in nature. I lost my Steemit ( formal account password ) which lead to so many disappointed, disability, distasteful moment for me even with my family members as well. What really happened was that my mobile phone got hooked up and went dead suddenly. I nearly die this fateful day because I thought it was a joke, I kept on charging for more than 12 hours and this phone did not come up at all. All my Steemit password was stored on one folder apartment there. And I lost them with so many rewards there. How can you be of help to me. Thanks. Can we talk more on discord. I have your address. Thanks sir.
Unfortunately, if you lost your key/password, there's no simple way to recover your funds. If there's a lot of money involved, you might want to consult with a good tech guy to see if he can get your phone operational. In general, it's recommended to always have a separate backup of your password, to avoid this kind of problem.
Oops. This was one of my life time savings. But it was unfortunate. I lost everything. I am a farmer but I love to invest my cryptocurrency as well but this took me unaware and I nearly had a stroke of the heart.
I opened the account with Oracle-d as at that time of the year. But I don't know. I was confused. I can see my money but not touchable. Too bad
can you power up the phone after hooking it up to a computer to access the files?
If you can, back up everything to a flash drive or CD/DVD depending on what you can access.
*Try powering up the phone while hooked up to a computer after allowing it to charge for a while, maybe its an issue with the charger or phone charging chip...
I still have the mobile phone with me for more than 8-9 months ago now. This is what it always bring up and show.
Maybe you can go on Steem.chat and try your luck at the #help channel. Maybe someone there can help you if you already have access to your phone.
Oh. Thanks so much for your comment. I will.
love the idea, especially introducing decentralization into bl creation so individual creators must compete in some sense and hence reduce the disadvantage of power centralization, but how well it functions will need time to tell of course.
Just want to confirm the following questions, thanks in advance:
Can users follow/create multiple blacklists?
They would need to create multiple accounts to do so under this proposal. I'm trying to keep this initial implementation as simple as possible, so it's fast to implement. Longer term, I think the entire system could be replaced by a more sophisticated reputation and rating system, which is really my personal long term objective for Hive.
Thanks, sounds logical.
oh, and btw, maybe you can take a minute to check this message for some hive.blog issues?
Hmmmmmmmm
We appreciate bringing this up and providing a viable option for decentralization of these lists.
We have wanted to see lists select-able by the users. With certain lists opt in and some opt out by default. So if this helps towards this end that would be wonderful.
If this goes through we would love to see lists have a few fields to help inform potential subscribers of these lists about what the list is and why they may be interested.
I think PeakD together with users will likely make decisions which lists provide valid information and benefit to users (like level of consistency and specificity of the list etc) and provide those lists as options to users to opt in or if for some lists limited to dangerous accounts we could see them as opt-out instead of opt in.
What is next up for helping this proposal happen?
We're implementing a prototype of it now. I'm fast tracking this idea because the current blacklist processing is the remaining bottleneck on hivemind performance at the moment in our prototype hivemind.
Unless there's a serious objection to the idea, I'm planning on just bundling the costs into our upcoming proposal for hivemind optimization in general.
Nah thhgu
Hmmm... Hive users blacklisting another user. That could be good, maybe more of a block feature is better? 🤔 What if random or new users just decide to blacklist anyone out of the blue though? There's got to be other conditions to be met before someone is blacklisted by anyone.
blacklists are in operation now on Hive. @blocktrades is basically proposing what you suggest: enabling users to choose what blacklist conditions apply to the blacklist filtering your feed. Right now, your feed is filtered by a blacklist(s) over which you have no input.
100% THIS.
There is a "block" feature, it is called "mute" on hive.blog.
The blacklisting feature is actually less powerful: it doesn't block a user, it just puts a warning beside them. And be default, that warning is only going to show for the person doing the blacklisting. So it really doesn't matter if a new user blacklists someone, that warning will only show for them personally.
Oh I see. ok then...
Oh my ghad! This is what I have been looking for in Hive. Thank you so much for this proposal. Sending 💯 support!
You and me both!
I like this idea. And also that little fish can act against bigger accounts without fear of being hammered
I am completely against this blacklisting and whitelisting business. Assume if on BTC network - some addresses are declared as blacklisted. This is censoring and is against the ethos of decentralization and free speech.
Some powerful people, having their own views on what is right and what is wrong, decide to declare others right and wrong is a way to rule others.
A blacklist as it functions here doesn't censor, the term is probably a misnomer. It's a way that a user can mark to himself and potentially others that an account should be viewed with caution.
Anybody can make the blacklist but at the end blacklists made by powerful holders are visible and seen genuine. Effectively giving authority to large holders to punish small players as is already seen with existing blacklists.
This idea actually reduces the power of the existing blacklists, by making them "opt-in" instead of making them "automatic" for everyone.
let's hope it helps. In any case I see the space evolving. I believe there will be many more iterations of similar hardforks as happened from steem to hive till a system that is useful and just for all stakeholders evolves. I won't quit but keep voicing
Interesting that you decided to make a post about this issue now. I was just working on a post for a possible proposal which deals with the appeal process for blacklisted users. My personal experience and that of others shows that the current team responsible for appeals on discord are quite rude and unfriendly. Especially new users (who have been mistakenly been put on the list) could be turned off by this behavior and leave Hive for good. The idea is to have 2 or 3 "official" hours for people to appeal. This is managed by a paid rotating staff who get paid from the proposal (e.g. 10$/hour). This should make it more professional, but there are still some questions and I am also not sure if this is something that users on the chain would regard as something being high on the priority list.
I don't have much experience with the procedures associated with the current centralized blacklists, so I can't really comment much on the likelihood of the success of such a proposal now.
I do think this change will create more "competition" among blacklist providers. But I can't say whether that will lead to any increased politeness by list providers.
100% THIS.
Smoke indicates fire...
People are going to start making a whole lot of blacklists that are themselves spam. It'll be confusing to a point but will likely taper off in the end.
On the other hand, its good for us who have lists off-chain as it gives an option that's easier to maintain. Currently the only on-chain blacklist is the @plentyofphish phishing blacklist that uses the mute option (the account mutes hacked accounts and unmutes them when they're clear).
What this will need is some thorough documentation for devs. I already fielded questions earlier today.
It also seems that there's some confusion of whether it'll cause services like Hivewatchers and Spaminator to lose their blacklist. This will not. It will instead build in a layer of redundancy as backup.
The API docs for this will be pretty simple. We'll probably be able to publish them Monday or Tuesday.
Being able to opt-out of blacklists I disagree with would be a dream-come-true.
It's only tangentially related to this topic but I think Hive UI's should move towards selecting names from lists (eg. following list, list of exchanges) and only as a last resort should users ever type someone's account name for a transfer (if it's on none of their lists). One-character typos are just too damn common and usernames don't have checksums, and it's as easy to do with a large sum as a small one.
It is reasonably closely related, since I think one of the most important functions of the blacklists is to warn people about transfers that might cause them to lose funds.
I've been considering a similar idea for a while for the wallet functionality. For the fiat money transmission sites I use, I have to first setup specific "beneficiary" accounts, and only then can I make transfers by selecting from such a list.
I think a similar function would be useful in the UI, such that when the user types an account name he has never sent to before, it would warn him that he has never sent to it before, and ask them if they want to do the transfer. This prompt could also ask if the user wants it to be added to a list of "commonly used" accounts that would show up as a dropdown below the edit box (which would be filtered as the user typed characters).
Hello, nice to greet you, I am practically new, I have about two months and something on the platform, I had several problems at first I enter an account or a curator I do not know and I remove all the publications, my big votes, I did not understand why, I do not always do palagios I try to carry out my work my ideas, on Monday I also had another problem that under my reputation I also do not understand because, this list if anyone can put you on a list for pleasure, you should follow the work of each person, see why they lower their reputation if they have enough elements or is to damage.
@blocktrades, maybe you know more infos and can tell me something.
My account is on the blacklist, and i made an proposal allready and its over. Do you know if my proposal was succesfull or not, if i am still on the blacklist? Thanks
Sorry, I don't know anything specific about your issue.
But by hovering over the red (3) on your account, I can see it's on 3 centralized blacklists: spaminators, hivewatchers, and buildawhale. Each of these groups maintains a separate list.
AFAIK you need to contact each of these groups to get removed from their blacklist.
Note also that the management of these lists has nothing to do with the proposal system (aka DHF). You need to contact the actual groups that manage those lists.
Thanks @blocktrades for the response. I made the proposal not in a group, i made it private as single. Who i have to contact? In Case i need to make the Proposal again, until which time i have time to do it? Becaseu i hear, that there will be a Softfork soon and after that its to late....but i dindt have any Date limit. Thanks
needed!
I like the idea. Thanks for your work.
Btw, it is becoming absolutely necessary to include a "roadmap" on hive.io, I am getting feedback from a lot of friends visiting the website that they have no idea what is the goal of the crypto.
Hive is already working, but people in crypto are used to invest in future potential.
Since development is decentralized on Hive, I think a quick and easy way to deal with this would be to provide a link to the Chain News Badge created by @asgarth or a link to the HiveDevs community. What do you think?
Yes, I don't think it's likely we'll see a unified "roadmap", as there are many different development groups working to add completely different features to Hive (opinion processing, games, social media features, etc).
I'll be making a post soon about the work BlockTrades has been doing.
And I'll also be making posts about plans for future work by BlockTrades as well. I've been holding off until we got finished with our current work, as I'll need to write several posts just to set the stage for the new capabilities I want to add to the Hive network.
Your previous suggestions could be good starting points for showing someone what's going on, but many of the posts in HiveDevs are about ongoing work as well as planned features. I created the Hive Improvements community to be a place where users could share ideas for how to improve the network, but it's also not an exact fit either, because it's about ideas more than concrete plans. But both of those could be good starting points.
There's also a group working on a new Hive whitepaper, but that's more of a general "What is Hive" instead of being a roadmap for new features.
Perfect, the whitepaper is more than what I expected, it is not fun to write at all...
Hey, it's been a month since these comments, what is happening with the Hardfork? There's been no update from anyone for weeks. Tried to comment to @hiveio and got no response, even GitLab looks dead.
And could you point me to the group working on that whitepaper? I want to help them and be done with it, it's about time.
"Eclipse" code was released to gitlab two days ago. I think @gtg is about to make a post where he's running a node for it. Hiveio is also planning to release something more formal. There's a lot of work to be done on the library side still, at least a week worth I suspect, with coordination challenges. Here's commit, it's quite huge: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/-/commit/2074917f0735d9bdf22d33f5bdb089df3f6361b0
For whitepaper, check with @guiltyparties . IIRC, he was considering putting it on github rather than gitlab. I haven't worked on it personally, so I'm not sure where collaboration is taking place.
Send me a message over on Discord please @marki99. You can find me on the Hive Discord at https://discord.gg/64YGqcy Whitepaper feedback is more than welcome.
Would be glad to help, thanks for contacting me directly, will find you on discord soon.
As a side note, visible activity on gitlab will be picking up now that devs have completed rebranding and moved work to public repo (at least for hived node software). Same will happen for hivemind shortly (probably in next few days), but changes there are still temporarily in private repo.
On a related note, the easiest way to see activity on a project is using a URL like this one for hive node: https://gitlab.syncad.com/hive/hive/activity
Thanks for all the info and answers. People can't follow everything though, I think the hiveio account should be a bit more active.
It is not necessary to say exactly what is happening if it takes too much time to write up posts, but a weekly update that just says "progress is being made in private repos" is not a big ask.
Generaly speaking @howo is posting biweekly reports about dev meetings, which cover the work being done in more depth, plus early discussions about proposed changes and new features: https://hive.blog/@howo
In the last week, all BlockTrade devs have been pretty much buried in work associated with testing associated with new release, so I think we deferred the last dev meeeting until this Monday. @howo should be following up with a recording of that, plus a text summary afterwards.
I follow @howo, just commented to him earlier today about the missing core dev meeting, so thanks for clarifying. He's probably also busy and doesn't have much time to post updates.
I don't want to keep distracting you, you spent a lot of time answering my comments, but maybe we should make a proposal to pay someone just to talk to the devs and put up some posts on @hiveio regularly. Weekly at least.
Doesn't have to be technical, just important to give some signs of life, and not disappear for three weeks.
I answered some of the above in an edit to my previous reply.
Yes, we commented at the same time...
It's probably worth noting that the blocktrades group doesn't make posts via hiveio, so if you have suggestions for format changes or improvements, it's probably easier to take that up directly with people doing the work. I believe @crimsonclad is the primary writer of the final posts, usually.
Thinking about it, I think that your issue comes down to a core decision on the mission of hiveio: should it just be to report major events, or more of a weekly report. I personally don't have a strong opinion one way or the other.
One option is that I could write weekly reports for the work done by my own team, if that's what people want. The downside could be that those reports would be fairly technical, yet likely to receive high rewards, and this might just annoy people. Well, I suppose I could decline rewards, I always forget about that feature :-)
It is very much needed to make the unusual downvoters to the blacklist. Some big cows are threatening the minows like me with their stong voting power. Already i have affected much with those downvoters. Some of them downvoted to my quality posts Intentionally. What can i do in that case?
the idea itself is good...let's put it in practice and see how it will work :)
Nice! Nice! I love it... Great and more improvement!!! Really! Really! Great!!! We will take care of this site as long one of you like you @blocktrades is here to make all well and balance! ( ^_^ )
I don't think so is a great idea to blacklist a user, this is a decentralized platform and thus it's not a good idea to censor any user, then Hive will not remain a decentralized one.
Blacklisting in the sense referred to here is not censoring. It's a way a user can put a warning beside an account's name, to remind themselves (and potentially others, if they opt-in to use your blacklist) that interactions with that account should be handled with care.
Truthfully, blacklisting is probably the wrong word to describe what this feature does, but it's the existing name that's been used for the centralized version of this feature, so I continued to use it for continuity purposes.
I got the point, but again don't you think it can be a misuse where if without a warning (which used to happen) people will be adding someone on blacklist
These new lists just allow someone to say they don't trust this set of people. They can then try to convince other people to accept their judgement.
But there's no coercion in any of this: it's an exchange of information and each user makes his own decision about the reliability of that info.
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There is a need to prevent spam, which has been undertaken to destabilize the network for some time. Blacklists have enabled the network to continue to function despite such attacks. However, blacklists are presently only optional at the point of front ends, and users themselves do not have any control over what is filtered from their feeds, other than by choosing which front end to use (and I believe all popular front ends provide the same filtering at present).
Enabling users to choose from available blacklists would distribute that choice of filtering, while maintaining the ability of the network to prevent destabilization. Your feed is filtered by blacklists now. This idea will allow you to choose the conditions of the blacklist that filters your feed, which is currently not available to you.
I got the point and thus I know blacklist is operational as I can see in Hive.blog, my only concern is its misuse, yeah I know its beneficial but if its getting misuse.
Presently blacklists are global. The same blacklist that filters your feed filters mine, and neither of us chose to apply it. @blocktrades proposes that we choose whether our feeds are filtered by blacklists, and which filters apply. One user would no longer force every Hive account to be filtered by the blacklist they make, as happens now.
Your choice of filters on your feed does not now affect my feed, and would not after this proposal is adopted. Right now both of us have filters on our feeds we did not choose and cannot change. Right now abuse could happen.
After we can choose what filters our feeds, abuse can no longer happen.
I don't think it's a good idea, with all due respect, it's like giving a loaded gun to a monkey.
For some people it will go up in smoke, imagine that someone who does not have valid reasons, and put you on a blacklist because you do not like them.
There are people here who have multi-accounts and we don't even know who they really are, imagine all the spam they would create on the platform. this is my point of view, i don't think it's such a good idea
Putting someone on your personal blacklist will, by default, only affect your personal experience using the web sites. So it's far from a "loaded gun".
In practice, the existing mute list is more powerful (because when you mute someone, you no longer see their posts, whereas when you put them on your blacklist, you just see a warning beside their name).
The only time someone's blacklist becomes influential is if many people decide to use that blacklist for their own account.
I agree 💯 people will definitely abuse it as the current blacklists are being abused I got blacklisted for making a honest mistake read @kggymlife
Amazing idea! This will surely add value to the Hive Ecosystem.
I don't think it will add value more blacklists equals more people leaving I did think it was a good idea at first but people will just abuse it with friends by ganging up with friends and getting them all to blacklist people they don't like and in turn make other people blacklist them to there is always good and bad in most things but more bad will come out i mean with the current blacklists so many people wrongfully blacklisted and left the Blockchain for good
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I strongly support this idea. I will support reasonable proposal(s) to implement it.
Thanks!
I know a couple of people who got added into a blacklist for the flimsiest of reasons. We are all here for different reasons. While there are a bunch of accounts that wholly deserve to be on the current blacklists, I should be able to maybe filter out one or two accounts I believe are wrongfully on it.
Basically, have the blacklists as they are and enable users to whitelist the accounts they prefer for their own blacklists rather than starting from scratch.
Allowing people to select the blacklists they want is part of the change we're making.
We have to make some kind of change anyways, because current usage of blacklists slows down Hivemind too much. As we need to make a change for performance reaons anyways, it looks like a good time to also make this improvement, since it's relatively easy to do.
Edit: I just realized your suggestion was slightly different, you're suggest allowing a user to make a whitelist to reverse blacklisting. We could do that also, but I don't think it's necessary, since blacklisting just provides extra information that a user can ignore anyways. It is not a muting function.
Anything to reduce systemic noise means a better quality signal from every legitimate account on the blockchain.
It’s a fine balance between protecting and encouraging voice and the antithesis of censorship... but I think a decentralized/democratized approach to the problem of noise is only going to boost the value of all honest accounts on the network.
I have been sorting my follower/and following lists using @peakd’s front end this week. It’s been quite surprising to see the number of spam accounts that followed me. As well it’s very interesting to note the inactive accounts.
A change to how blacklists are currently functioning will make the system faster, more efficient, and less centralized. It is a definite must and I think broadly that’s going to translate into less noise, better content, and better behaviour over all.
If we can continue to move the Hive Blockchain in this direction some of those inactive accounts will become active again (the good ones) and retention will go up as well.
Count me in. I will vote with all my accounts: @wil.metcalfe @adventureready @beachready
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This sounds amazing. Optional blacklists are sooooo much better than a ONE SIZE FITS ALL, blacklist capriciously maintained by a small cabal of unaccountable vigilantes.
How do I vote in favor of this proposal?
This post is more about sharing the idea and looking for feedback both about the idea itself, and seeing what ideas for related features it might spark, instead of being a work proposal for payment.
The work involved for this change is relatively small, so I'm planning to bundle the cost for the work itself into a later cost proposal to cover our work optimizing hivemind performance. I'll probably create that proposal late in the coming week, assuming everything goes well with the work and we're able to release it this week.
Please consider me a rabid fan of this proposal.
The philosophy behind this is flawed.
Why would you decentralize a list? A list by nature is an arbitrary way to centralize something into a category so I can't see the appeal, or the logic.
Is it that much of an issue or a hindrance to the operation of #hive?
Sorry, but what you're saying makes little sense to me. Lists, of themselves, are neither centralized nor decentralized (and neither are categories). And categorization is pretty fundamental to knowledge representation and reasoning.
Is it important to protect users from accidentally sending funds to phishing accounts? Yes, it's very important. Even now, people continue to lose money because exchange wallets don't typically give these kinds of warnings. But at least the main frontends do now (well, a couple don't yet, but will soon I think).
@blocktrades I would love to see a blacklist implementation that only blacklisted users if the flag votes on a post were weighted above the upvotes in both rep and volume.
Current blacklists are too easily manipulated bu powerful users. I had my steemit account blacklisted for self upvotes, on a list managed by a whale who uses votebots on all his posts. That's just reward pool sculpting not spam prevention. If Hive is going to succeed, it needs to learn from the mistakes made by steemit.
I hope that I will never be in that HIVE Blackist 😀 The idea is very logic though:)
This is something I've been trying to get a decentralized social media site to implement since the original idea for Hivemind. Presumably you will implement these in custom_json?
I encourage you to add operations for both adding and removing either usernames or specific permlinks.
Distributed, opt-in moderation without gatekeeping is the goal. Nobody wants censorship, and nobody wants an unmoderated site. This allows individual end users to choose how much moderation, and by whom, they want.
Yes, they will be implemented in custom json. Likely it will just be a minor tweak to the existing call for following/unfollowing and muting/unmuting.
Initially we're just replacing existing centralized lists of account names since we take a performance hit from the current implementation and the change is relatively easy, but we'll certainly look at adding more features later for opt-in moderation.
This isn't really related to this proposal, but do you have plans for an overhaul of the witness structure so we don't see similar things happen again? For example, could we move from 20 consensus witnesses to something larger, like say 100? Or if not, could we change witnesses votes from 30 to say 5 (or even 1 but with a slider to adjust voting power in order to vote for more witnesses). These changes seemed to be on every's tongue during the height of the hf, but have since seemed to have been forgotten about, at least publicly. I'd love to hear your plans/thoughts on improvements there. Thanks.
I don't think they've been forgotten, just people are busy with a lot of things.
My personal view is that the best way to stop a voting attack like the one that happened prior to Hive is the new voting delay feature. Most of the other suggested changes probably couldn't have stopped it, which is why I came up with the voting delay idea to begin with.
I'm not saying the voting delay defense mechanism is perfect either: it wouldn't stop a truly careful and patient attacker, but I think it will stop future attacks from likely real world scenarios.
But beyond voting attacks, there's other potential arguments for increasing the numbers of witnesses, assuming that witnesses are distinct individuals and not sockpuppets. But there's also arguments against that same idea. Both sides of the argument boil down to more witnesses means harder to get consensus on any action to change the blockchain's functioning. So more witnesses will generally mean more likelihood of status quo (for good or ill). There's also additional costs associated with running more witnesses, but this may well be a lesser concern.
Changing from 30 votes down to 5 votes (or 1 vote with a slider) wouldn't have stopped it? My napkin math looks like it would have, but I haven't double checked it yet.
And harder to get consensus is probably a good thing at this point as most people are fearful of investing in projects like this one due to the possibility of funds being frozen. The harder to reach consensus on something like that, the safer those funds become.
And sure there are pros and cons to everything, but I do think we need more changes than just a voting delay and we need to make them sooner rather than later.
Just lists then. Black resonates with censorship with most people.
Ok... So where do I go to vote for this proposal @blocktrades? Is there a link?
How will the list of hivemind nodes load?
How will the default blacklist be loaded?
If I open Hivemind node, will it automatically become an option for all users?
Gracias por su apoyo y esfuerzo para que la colmena sea segura y confiable.
Thank you for the information ... Hopefully I avoid being blacklisted. I will continue to strive to create original and quality content. I hope I can be seen here. Peace with HIVE.
If it comes to scam I understand although it feels to me these blacklists go way further. I remember a list you once published and ruined many great writers with. Not because they were scamming, spamming, stealing keys but because they shouldn't join different social media.
You might find this childish to start about but I notice many behaviour on platforms/social media is childish, unnecessary and feels like dictatorship. Facebook, Twitter are great examples of it but they aren't the only ones.
If people are adult enough to join, write, can read the rules about keeping your key safe, use debit cards with punches (same message keep it private) are those rules necessary? Is all this bureaucracy necessary?
It's already been proven on any number of social media platforms that automated bots can spam them to death if there's no way to stop the spam. Decentralized blacklists allow an individual to choose to block such spam. Imagine someone was calling your phone all the time, and you had no way to block their number. You would end up having to change your phone number.
As for this list of great writers you're claiming I published, you appear to be confusing me with someone else. I haven't published any such list.