RE: A Short Overview of @Steemcleaner
Edit: It looks like your website it back up and running. Thank you! It is still lacking a lot of information though. Let me know if any of my concerns plan to be addressed.
Please revise your systems. These are my 10 Complaints I have against @steemcleaners.
- Can't be expected to respond to comments on this ONE and ONLY post for the @steemcleaner account. There aren't very many comments here to be addressed. People do not comment here very frequently. For some people, the blockchain is the only place they are familiar with to reach you on.
- Can't always provide proof of crimes. Burden is on the accused to prove innocence. Normally law enforcement does not penalize crimes unless charges are made by the person the crime was committed against. Privacy and information security are often damaged by demanding proof be made on twitter and youtube. Many authors can easily verify their authenticity by responding to a confidential email or confirming a verification code for instance on their public social media account.
- Rewards for flagging provides bias against the accused. Rewards for flags encourages people to flag more content. Penalties for flagging content incorrectly is not enough to discourage people from reporting more erroneous violations. There is no incentive to protect those who are wrongly accused from those who seek profit by ruining them. Rewarding investigative advocates who can prove a person's innocence for a crime they are wrongly accused of would be a good start, and help avoid ugly altercations. It would help resolve issues quicker, and encourage teamwork between both parties.
- Reviews against the accused are potentially made by the same people who investigated them and/or flagged them. A better due-process to fairly review appeals needs to exist.
- Hostility from people who are wrongly flagged is being mistaken as rude and abusive behavior. When presenting themselves in discord, the accused are risking further countermeasures by voicing more of their complaints. Under the threat of retaliation, it is understandable that a person might want to fight back by voicing threats of their own. Yes, your group members do not deserve to be treated badly. Neither does the person who is wrongly accused, and they are right to be angry against the person and organization who did this to them if it was done so wrongly. Perhaps they should be better rewarded for damages against their good work and good name.
- Condescending responses to complaints. The violation should be the subject matter of responses given, not the person, their organization, or the nature of their other work. Most people prefer a short statement only pertaining to the matter addressed, to avoid further public embarrassment or escalation. Decorum matters even when dealing with the filthiest scum, because it is the reflection of your character when you treat people with variable degrees of justice than for others.
- Continually flagging on ALL future content for a single violation is overkill. Continuously flagging obviously original content does not help anyone. This is a form a revenge flagging that your organization openly approves of.
- Permanent inclusion of a person onto the blacklist is overkill. Crimes, especially petty ones, should be forgiven after a certain period of time for one-time offenders. It's quite a severe punishment here on the blockchain when a person realizes their profile has been marked in a manner they cannot control. It can lead to sudden rage quitting from long time users as well as new ones. This needs to be better prevented. Offenders should be encouraged to be rehabilitated into becoming healthy contributors who abide by the accepted rules, rather than permanently deemed irredeemable wastes of RC and steem. Yes, you do this by inviting people into discord to reconcile. I think it is not a very effective system.
- Ganging up against people in discord when they make an appeal. Making jokes, threats, and demands of strangers. The accused risk much by humbling themselves in a discord channel filled with people who have an offensive bias (they get rewarded) against them. The dagger memes I witnesses in my first 30 minutes on the discord server were overkill. There is no need for a bot in the channel to also perpetuate taking pleasure in a person's misery. The bot psychologically dismantles opponents by ruling on a person's guilt, sometimes prior to a person's ability to finish providing a justified defense for their innocence. As an onlooker, I would not wish for anyone to have to suffer through this charade to clear their name.
- Lack of public posted rules and policies. It does not need to exist on an exterior website or github. Sure, other services might make a pretty, well-organized, searchable list to host things, but right now you have nothing. Not even an unfinished rough draft for people to view is provided when requested. A well-organized committee that makes decisions together should have no problem assigning the task to a single member to post updated rules here on the blockchain for all affected users to learn from. It would actually save a lot of time in the future to have so many questions answered plainly in view for all to see. On the blockchain it is easy to edit at any time when rules and policies are changed. Surely @steemcleaners has rules, policies, and procedures somewhere. We can't see them. Please put them all in one place.
There are so many flaws. The reason I posted this is because I believe many people are receiving flags who do not deserve them. Many people are being accused by @steemcleaners of things that are untrue, or misrepresented.
By labeling a person is likely a plagiarist, identity thief, or spammer lumps them all in together as equally bad. It also accuses them of actively continuing to commit these crimes, which is not necessarily so. The courtesy comments left by @steemcleaners to warn users about the blacklisted authors is also a form a spam if, in fact, it is stating something untrue (slander) on all of their posts. On many front-ends, like steempeak, the spam comments are also redundant and unnecessary because the blacklist mark also exists next the user's name at the top of all of their posts.
I am happy to discuss these things and edit/delete this comment if it is inappropriate in any way. In fact, I will likely remove this comment within a week or so after I have confirmed my points have been acknowledged, and it no longer needs to remain. I welcome others to also state their own grievances.
I am not on the @steemcleaners blacklist, and hope I will not be discouraged from offering criticism. I say these things to support people who I feel are wrongly blacklisted, and perhaps to compel @steemcleaners to improve their systems.
Please continue to do your awesome work flagging clear violations, @steemcleaners. I hope you will continue to improve your abilities. It is not an easy goal (To eradicate the endless spam and information abuse on steem? I am also unsure where your mission statement is.), though I think your group is reaching greater heights every day.