This morning I woke up and seen that my mother had posted a new post on Hive. I had convinced her to starting using Steem regularly a year or so ago and just recently helped her make the transition to using Hive instead. She still doesn't understand what either one is, or why it's so important, but she loves me so she at least tries to be on it. She shares her message daily in hopes of me looking at it. It's extremely sweet and I appreciate hearing her simple messages when I log on.

My mother is very open about her faith and hopes to share it with anyone who is willing to engage with her. I admire this about her. When she asked me what she could post on Steem I told her that's what she should be doing there like she already was doing on Facebook. Her use of Facebook was sharing bible versus with her church friends and she followed through and started posting daily the main verse from her bible study from the day. She's been doing that now for a little over a year.

About a week ago I had a Duo call with her while I was using Peakd. It hit me that I realized she was still using Steem so I walked her through exporting her keychain identity over then changing her bookmarks from steempeak.com to peakd.com. I can't believe it but she was able to do it all herself with me just coaching over the phone. That's when she finally made her appearance on Hive the following morning sharing Jude 1:21 with the world. I quickly jumped over to congratulate her on making the move to Hive.

She doesn't understand what Hive is or what Steem is. Like I said she doesn't understand blockchains or why this can change everything. She's the epitome of the mainstream users that we are all fighting hard to reach and bring here. That's why when I logged in to read her verse this morning and seen that @hivewatcher has added her to @spaminator's blacklist I was taken aback. That doesn't even touch the personal offense I feel since it's that of someone sharing their faith on the blockchain much less being my own mother. Let's hold off that for just a moment though.

Instead let's start by discussing the growth of Hive. I'd like for you to put yourself in the shoes of a new user who knows nothing of computers much less distributed social blockchains. You start using a new platform sharing what you find is interesting because you have a personal connection with someone that does regularly use the blockchain and is engaged. You come back to find that you are "banned". Are you coming back to use the platform again? Unfortunately I doubt many users do return.

With that in mind can someone please tell me why we have projects like spaminator on this blockchain? What good do they actually provide? All I see is them attempting to keep people from using the project more by attempting to "ban" a user that they have no ability to do. Is that what we need to be doing to get normal users on our blockchain as they won't know that their ban isn't real?

I've always thought these spam services were here to stop awards abuse. In the last week my mother has made 6 posts and had an anticipated total payout of .28 because of built up SBI votes and that I upvoted one of her posts one day. Not hardly a huge rewards thief compared to single posts that are empty bodies with only a question in the title receiving $40. If these are the users that get targeted then I have to wonder what their leaders consider rewards abuse.

Let's go with their stated reason of copy and pasting content. Ok I can see where their feeble logic arises that copy/pasting is a big, bad, boogie man. After all we don't want people just posting plagiarized articles from The Times in hopes of getting rewards but then I have to ask, "Is there any issue of copying works that have no copyright that can be attached to them?" I don't believe there is and then have to wonder what else it could be an issue of.

Then there's the fact that on some posts she didn't just share what she was studying but also gave personal insights about the meaning of the verse to her. This would be akin to quoting an article and then giving your personal perspective. This is something we all encourage and which is over half the content on Hive. It's the whole point of having a conversation about something! These are still quoted as simply being "spam".

Maybe the real issue is in the title of her post. Maybe it's offensive to whatever keyboard warrior behind @hivewatcher that someone is sharing biblical quotes on Hive. I'm not saying that is it but as I breakdown reasons for why someone would blacklist a user sharing bible verses I have to begin to question that as a motive. Either way going after religious text is really the best use of time for spam fighting? (What is spam when we have RC that limit spam in real life?)

Either way I'll take this back to the front. We have a new user that just switched to using Hive, sharing their religious texts they believe in and are studying and someone thinks it's a good idea to blacklist them. I'm disgusted.

Annoyed, Disgusted - Free photo on Pixabay

Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://patrickulrich.com/2020/05/14/im-disgusted/