With the December deadline looming in Australia for social media websites to require us to ID ourselves to prove our age, it's got me wondering how much value they offer and whether I can gain that from other sources, in particular Hive. While Hive has come a long way since its emergence in 2016 it still struggles to draw people in at any significant level, so where is it falling short?
Image courtesy of @thepeakstudio
How I use other social media
The main social media platforms I use outside of Hive are YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Discord.
Instagram is probably the easiest one to walk away from. I'm already starting to distance myself from it because it feels more toxic than good lately. I will miss the direct messaging feature and the ease with which I can just quickly send a little reel to friends and family I don't see often to make them smile. For those in the same country it will be easy enough to text message instead, but I'll probably have to return to email for those back in the UK.
I've enjoyed sharing videos of climbing and the community I've connected with on Instagram. These videos are mostly around a minute long, which I can probably load onto 3speak, but with only a few thousand unique active accounts I don't think I'll find many people interested enough in climbing to want to see records of my painfully slow advances in skill. Also, short form content is generally frowned upon here, especially if you've got a lot of autovotes coming in. Potentially I could make a new account for that, more for my own benefit to document my progress, but it would likely be without the climbing community side of things at the level I've been used to, so I might feel like I'm just talking to a void or just myself.
I should probably note that while short form content is often frowned upon here on Hive, it's hard to deny that there is demand for it nevertheless. As @holoz0r's analysis for August demonstrates while the majority of posts fall between 100 and 250 words by a large margin, posts at <50 get the largest proportion of rewards by far. I can only speculate what the majority of these posts are, they could videos or memes, but regardless of our opinions on short form content there is demand for it and @meno has been working on an app with the intention of meeting that demand and encouraging more uptake of Hive.
YouTube
YouTube I mostly use as podcasts while I'm travelling with my work. Most of my drives are fairly long so I prefer videos no shorter than 50 minutes long. A lot of the videos on 3speak are very short, which would be of no use to me. I did try out the 3speak website recently and listened to one of @bobaphet's Splinterlands 101 podcasts with @mattclarke and @giotrix, which worked out well. I noticed that it was pretty easy to get to his various other videos from his page and it looked similar to YouTube in that regard. I'm not sure how good it is at coming up with other recommended videos once you've finished one, however. This is something that has been useful with my YouTube app when a video finishes while I'm still diving and it will automatically move onto something else similar. I can't be searching for content while driving, after all.
I'm not sure how long the 3speak app has been going, but I found it very hard to find anything using it. I wanted to search by account name and got nowhere. It doesn't feel very intuitive for me. Perhaps I'm missing something, though.
I can, of course, always move over to a podcast app, but I'm guessing this will probably involve a subscription cost. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
I don't post on my page on Facebook at all. I deleted an account there once due to controversy and toxicity both online and off which made me reluctant to share any of my personal life there. I created a new account purely to use the groups. I've also taken to using Messenger for video calling with family in the UK. I could probably go back to Skype for that if I can remember my account details. I also purchase through an organic food co-op on there, but they have expanded enough to also use emails for those members not on Facebook, so I'll be able to continue with that.
I won't be able to stay on with the Buy Nothing group, so moving on items I no longer need or use will have to go through charity shop donations again or binning things and I guess I'll be going back to buying straight away instead of checking if others have things they aren't using any more first.
Discord
Now finding a replacement for Discord is going to be tough if this is on the list for restricted social media. All of my direct messaging and general community discussions with others on Hive are done on Discord. Losing access to this would affect my ability to curate fully.
While Peakd has a direct messaging and community chat option it doesn't seem to have been taken up very well. Most of the chat there seems to be from well over a year ago and it didn't work very well on my tablet anyway, so I haven't been able to use it. I don't know if any of the other front ends have something that works better. For most of the communities they're pretty well settled on Discord anyway.
Is Hive limited?
I'd love for Hive to be able to replace all of these social media apps. The theory and concept behind it was that anything can be built onto the blockchain, however, there are a some obstacles which probably aren't easily overcome.
In some ways the monetary rewards can be a negative rather than a benefit to general uptake and genuine interaction. The way Discord is used by many here isn't something where we'd want rewards for every little interaction. That would devalue the reward pool for posts where we want to encourage rewards. Earning rewards can also end up being prioritised over genuine interest and interaction. I'm grateful to have a few people who will read and interact on my posts, but most of the votes I get are automatic ones (not that I'm complaining I'm grateful that I've earnt that trust) from people who aren't even reading or watching.
We're all aware of the farming, plagiarism and AI generated content that comes from the money aspect side of Hive. So we get a lot of low grade content. The quality content generally seems to come from those whose focus places the content over the earnings.
What are your thoughts? Do you think these demands for ID and biometrics on other platforms inventivise more people to give Hive a better chance or do you think it's still too complex or intimidating for most people?