The Unofficial Minds Newsletter Issue #4

It looks like we’re making up for lost time after last month’s big news sleep! There’s quite a bit of things to cover this time around, but first let’s take a moment to thank @Drawzooka for Orbo’s dapper upgrade in the banner!

The Goings-On of Yestermonth

Townhall

Our third ever Minds Townhall meeting was May 19th and hoo boy do we have a lot to go over. The meeting was recorded, but due to some technical difficulties (aka Jack can’t computer), the audio has been lost to the void. Several people have expressed the desire to try and piece as much of it together as possible, which I’m also going to try and do here. 

Overall, it was fruitful. A lot of tough questions were asked, some necessary Karening was done, and there seem to be results happening. The make thing simpler and avoid repetition, I’ll mark each specific topic of discussion with a * as we go. 

*Token Value Has a Stroke and Frickin Dies

Welp. F in chat for the token. In less than a month it dropped from around $.90 all the way to $.25 with no signs of recovery in sight. The entire crypto market has been in freefall for months now as investors pull out and liquidate due to the poor state of the economy, and our poor tokie has suffered terribly for it. But there’s a few things worth mentioning with regards to Minds liquidity.

Last month, there was a massive $2 million withdrawal from liquidity from some kind of group wallet. The wallet wasn’t connected to the rewards system, so liquidity rewards were largely unaffected, but according to sources, the holders never liquidated or converted these tokens. So… there’s basically just a bunch of people with $2 mil worth of tokens just sitting on them somewhere. To my knowledge, none of this was ever really explained. I heard something about seed money, but nothing more. And when asked directly, Ottman didn’t elaborate. 

That’s not even mentioning the other large withdrawals from liquidity by key individuals that continued to happen after that. Not $2 mil large but significant enough to make the more autistic of us sit up and take notice. Again… none of these were given any explanation aside from “we’ll have to follow up”. Which… never happened. 
 

Highlights Can Be Removed Now

So you know that annoying section of the main newsfeed that just plastered the same handful of posts you’ve already seen several times smack in the way of your scrolling? Well, that can be removed now! Rejoice! Many users were not fans of this addition to the feed, finding it repetitive and pointless, especially when for a good amount of us, half the posts in it were our own. 

But no more! With a simple click of a mouse, it poofs into the void! …At least until the newsfeed is reloaded and it comes back. Still got a bit o’ polishing to do.

*Downvote Rollback

Last year when the spammers really began screwing with everyone’s engagement rewards, the devs tried a number of things to cut them off from token earnings. One of those things was scaling back what engagements counted towards those rewards to simple upvotes and downvotes. Upvoting added one point to the score, downvoting subtracted one point. Simple concept with the intent being that users would downvote spam content into oblivion and ruin their day. 

This… didn’t really end up working out as anticipated. What we frontliners discovered was 1. Spammers are stupid and very easily butthurt over getting downvoted, so expect retaliation in the form of ganging up on you and mass downvoting your entire wall with their twelve thousand alts, and 2. We actually don’t want to end up harming other people’s engagement by downvoting. Accidental downvotes do happen, and even if they’re quickly removed, that minus point isn’t. Many also don’t like the reinforcement that a downvote is an attack, as opposed to a simple disagreement.

Thankfully, that’s all gone. The downvote has been removed from engagement completely and no longer affects it, so with any luck it might be able to shake some of the ickiness associated with it. 

What’s Coming

Plus and Pro Getting Reworked

Some of you may have seen my post not too long ago about how the current token value stacks up against the lifetime membership fees for Minds Plus and Minds Pro. If not, basically after some simple mathemagic, a lifetime plus membership (priced at 2500 tokens) would cost $750 while a lifetime Pro membership sits at a lovely $6000. No joke. 

But it would seem the Minds team is aware of how silly this is, and some even admit that Pro is definitely not worth that asking price, and are intending to rework the entire service. When and how this will be done is anyone’s guess, but this is a much needed change. A lot of users, myself included, find Plus vs Pro confusing, and while Plus has some merits and sits at a far more comfortable price, Pro is just flat out not worth it. 

The current time frame for these changes appears to be sometime this year, but as we all know, for Minds, that translates as sometime between this year and the heat death of the solar system. 

*Jury System Revamping

Did you know that Minds has a jury system built into reports? Oh yeah, it’s a thing. A bit of a broken thing, but a thing. Some users here have been prompted to participate in “jury duty” while others… not so much. But the devs want to give the whole system a good sprucing up in the name of decentralizing.

As opposed to the admins taking on Hammer of Justice duty, they’re working towards having account strikes, bans, and appeals all run through a jury of randomly selected accounts. There’s still some kinks to work out, like not allowing accounts who have blocked each other judge each other, but this would be a very unique system should it succeed.  

*Multi-image and QoL Features

Good news! All of our shouting about multi-image posts has not fallen on deaf ears! Progress seems to be a little slow, but it is happening. Minds’ Product Manager Ryan spent a couple days speaking one-on-one with some users about the implementation, myself included, and I made sure to impress as much as I possibly could during Townhall that this NEEDS to be a thing. 

If Minds is going to compete with the likes of twitter, it has one very big problem that has to be resolved immediately, and that is function and quality of life features. The free speech/decentralization/security aspects are what draw people to the site, but ultimately, the things that are going to keep people’s butts in the chairs are the little things. Features like multi-image posts and polls are things we don’t think much about on the mainstream sites, but when they’re absent, that absence is felt. 
 

*Minds Possibly Uncapping Rewards Pool

Not gonna lie, this one is a big deal for us token fanatics. The way the rewards system works is as follows: we are allotted a pool of 4000 tokens every day that gets divided among everyone. What determines our shares of that pool is our personal engagement score, which counts all the valid engagement we receive, and the overall network score, which counts all valid engagement across the website. Our scores are divided by the network score and the resulting number is our token earnings. 

This being that case, spam that creates inauthentic engagement specifically to game the system is a problem, since it takes a very large bite out of the pool and leaves less for us. Hence why so many of us are dead set on making spam accounts commit die. However, uncapping the pool could potentially nip a lot of these problems in the butt, since spammers would no longer be hogging most of the pool like obese children at a sprinkler party. 

The logistics of doing this however, would probably need to be handled delicately. The Minds token isn’t considered a full blown crypto currency in order to avoid a bunch of regulations, and uncapping the daily limit would present challenges for the coin’s value. Inflation, thy name is “Screw You”.

*Algorithm Control

This also seems to be a big thing for the Minds crew. Instead of the company controlling the algorithm, you get to control it via a ton of settings. This whole aspect of the site still seems to be in concept status, but if implemented well, it might turn into another game changing innovation for social media. Since not a whole lot is known yet about how this is going to function, there isn’t much we can do but wait for the devs to figure more things out. 
 

*The Dreaded Twitter Cross Posters (hiss)

There seem to be mixed feelings about these accounts… Minds allows users to sync their twitter accounts and cross post so that whatever they post on twitter also gets posted to Minds. However, this leaves us with some problems, particularly of the token variety. Yes, these accounts can make tokens, and some feel that they don’t deserve them. This reasoning isn’t entirely unjustified, since someone can just post to twitter and completely ignore Minds, but still ultimately benefit financially. Obviously, this is unfair to those who put a lot of time and energy into using Minds legitimately.

The other side to this is that bigger accounts cross posting can be a good way to draw in new users. People who otherwise wouldn’t be on Minds are given a reason to stick around. Also understandable. How this sticky little issue will play out in the future remains to be seen.
 

Community Happenings

#FridayMemeWar Tag Get Infested Again

The spammers are back, soldiers. And they’re getting worse. Every Friday now, our tag becomes a siren song to bots, spammers, attention seekers, and token farmers, and draws them all in to start smearing their garbage quality posts en masse. It’s our duty to show them that our tag is not for their nefarious activity, so rise up and help us drown them all in a vast ocean of kek!

Kit Proposes Some Challenges

Not many details are known about this project yet, but it sounds promising for those looking to learn some new practical skills or brush up on them! @MrsKitKennedy (who has since retired this account and moved on to @magnoliapilled) has proposed a monthly themed challenge for this exact purpose, from fermenting, to herb identification, to artwork. So far the reception has been positive, so go check it out if you’re interested! 

https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1375600334176522247

Lokean Bob Ross Returns!

Last year I was given the nickname “Lokean Bob Ross” because of my love of landscapes and my style being similar to everyone’s favorite afro sporting art whisperer. Ever since then people have made light hearted jabs about it  or ask if I intend to make videos. Well the answer is yes, I am, and with any luck it’ll stick. Digital only for now, since I don’t have the equipment I need to record physical. 

Check out muh bideo here: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1374975572303679499

Amy Sutphin Has a Vella Thing That You Should Read

Another of Minds’ more well known authors has a book available on Amazon Vella! You may have seen Timo going around offering high fives in exchange for likes on his Vella novel, and that’s because Vella is a chapter-by-chapter service that pays more if you get good updoot numbers.

Amy’s story seems to have some spoopy dystopian vibes going on, so if that’s a thing that piques your interest, here ya go: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1340726080725585924

If not, she’s also got a fantasy novel available: https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1315873628373389324

Steve Punches Himself in the Face to Make the Newsletter

Congratz, Steve.