RE: Open Letter To Steem and EOS Programmers and Application developers:
To address the first issue I don't see flagging as censorship because the data is still written on the blockchain and we can guarantee the immutability of this data, flagging just makes the content harder to find compare to censorship where it is totally removed. So I don't think flagging is endangering freedom of speech because anyone can still post whatever he/she wants and anyone that wants to find this content can find it. As for the mute button I believe everyone has the right to choose which content he/she decides to see (kind of the same with nsfw).
For the last issue I agree that separating resteemed and your own posts would be a nice feature which could be added as an option. But then this is just front-end work and has nothing to do with the backend/blockchain, people are free to create their own webpage and display the data on the STEEM blockchain the way they like it.
Hi Walter @walterjay thanks for reading, voting and commenting, I appreciate your efforts very much.
I had reservations about including the steemit.com controversial features into this post, as it distracts from my main point, the Mass Awareness issue and intentionally providing more discussions to increase awareness.
Sigh, the only reason I included the controversial steemit features in this post is because I thought that most likely no programmers and execs will see it but in case they do read this then as a insurance (because this may be my only opportunity) I may as well include these separate controversial steemit features topic too.
Okay, you decided to focus on the steemit features - I guess we will have to disagree on this.
I note the valid point that flagging is not a hard form of censorship, but from what I have observed some accounts are created simply to flag posts that someone doesn't like and make the post extremely unlikely to be seen by others. I think if some one doesn't want to read a post then they should simply not read it and move on to the next post rather making it difficult for everyone else. The flagged posts that I have seen (because I took the extraordinary effort to find it and uncheck the hidden qualities, then read it) are posts that I have no problem with and I was unable to learn who flagged it and why - what was the reason to object to the post?
You skipped the popularity meme Everyone wants to follow the whales...
There are ways to make quality of content more of a criteria for an upvote rather than making a buck by following the crowd or a whale.
The reason I wrote the open letter was to address the awareness issue that blockchain regulations and new policies will be enforced to protect the establishments' rollout of blockchain.
Compare this to what happened with DOS and Microsoft and imagine Goldman Sachs (or some other G-SIFI) rolls out the centralized version (steal some EOS code?) blockchain for the establishment and targets the other blockchains...
Take 'em to court didn't work for DOS and coupled with very lucrative government and other major contracts wiped out the competition, which is similar to what I imagine "could" happen with blockchain tech.
I agree that some people will always be abusing the flag button but the purpose of it was to hide(not censor) content that was abusive/spam or that people believe has a negative impact on the platform(of course this is subjective and different for everybody) The point is that the flag has some useful features and personally I wouldn't want my right to flag abusive content removed because someone misused it in the past, I have faith that the free market will figure it out and that eventually it will balance out. In the case you mentioned I guess the best way would be to promote the content that was hidden(if you believe it is really worth it) by resteeming it to your followers and talk about this author with other people.
You could also start a community/bot to find flagged content and republish the links on your own blog everyday with an explanation of why you thought that was an abusive flag and that people should look at this content. I believe there is always a way to solve those problems using voluntary free market solutions. You could call this initiative "Ron's daily hidden report" :)
Moving on to the follow a whale problem, well we can't tell people what to do with their voting power which is why I didn't reply because I don't have an opinion/solution, I guess if I found that all the content on steemit is not providing anymore value to me as a reader that I would just powerdown and leave and use my time somewhere else. At the moment it isn't the case and I still see value in spending time reading articles on steemit even if those articles I value aren't the one with the biggest payout, at least they are written here and I can still read them.
To address the issue of government take over, well most blockchain are open source anyway and if a government wants to clone Steem and use it, well they can. But if nobody wants to use their national Steem clone then their experiment will be a failure and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Ultimately it will be the population's choice of which blockchain they want to use and we can't go against that, people are free to chose to be slaves. We can only inform other people about why our platform would benefit them better but we can't force people to join.
Thanks Walter @walterjay I enjoy problem solving, the greater challenge is recognizing and addressing problems before they cause a catastrophe - sure, if there are survivors then they, as the market, will become the market solution...
During my career I was amazed at how often wonderful efforts and finished projects would later have the end users reveal unseen and unintentional problems - I have no doubt the steemit programmers did not intend for the flag feature to be abused.
And I doubt many programmers want to focus on how institutional governance will threaten the decentralized and freedom nurturing blockchain efforts.
I have no programming expertise, but I find your community-bot suggestion interesting and I will look into this.
Thanks for sharing, Cheers!