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RE: Can You Explain Why This Post Exposing an Alleged High Profile Scammer on Steemit is Censored, Despite a Ratio of 44 Upvotes to 1 Downvote!?
Someone down voted me for an honest mistake when posting to promote my post on Steemit chat, I used the wrong hashtag and the owner said he didn't take to spamming lightly. My post was hidden so I just reposted it. Sometimes I think things get taken to the extreme and there should be moderators to moderate that as well. And a checkbox to see the legitimate reason why you are being flagged.
Yes, definitely - I got involved a while ago where 'steemcleaners' were downvoting everything from a guy and it all started by him just including a couple of basic image links at the bottom of his post.. Something that many users do here, including some of the ones at the very top of the system.
I learned there that Steemcleaners isn't actually an 'official' part of steem and they aren't even acting on an official policy, it's just some guys who are acting as vigilantes to 'clean up' steem of content that they personally don't want on here. :/
I too got involved in all of this because of @Steemcleaners.
@adm is another Proxie account that appears to be pretty crappy.
I really don't like my posts being Flagged this way unless I was attacking someone.
But to be construed as a "Plagiarizer" and a "Parasite" by ANYONE on an Open Platform is a bit Absurd. I don't need someone else's BOT telling me what content I should or shouldn't look at. And Flagging should not affect rewards... that's just asking for trouble.
Thank you for posting your concerns. They are valid and shared my many.
Too many...
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
You are welcome - exposure leads to change!
That and bots operating with whatever logic they are using can quickly create havoc, especially if backed by a decent amount of steem power.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
Some guy that the community allows to do that, rewards their efforts. Again the project is open source and there aren't any admins or "officials", there are developers but one can fork the project whenver they wish, they can distribute the tokens, and implement whatever policy they wish.
There is an issue here in that there is a Terms of Service for steem that actually could be said to prohibit the actions of Steemcleaners. Despite their claims to be supported by the community, there are many who disagree with their decisions and for justifiable reasons.
There are no terms for steem, none that were explicitly agreed to anyway.
Yes people will disagree but it's only an issue if it's consequential like a lot of people, or a large majority, but what are some reasons that you consider justifiable for people to disagree with spam, tag spam and otherwise curation for those ends?
Oh, I meant to say that there are terms of service for Steemit, not Steem. Since Steem and Steemit are both created by the same group, I combine them in my mind.
The terms of service for Steemit specifically includes a term in section 17 that is relevant.
Cases of blatant plagiarism with no added value from the author and deliberate malicious misuse of the software that amounts to criminal intent are valid reasons to downvote, i think. Deliberate propaganda and misinformation is also a valid reason. Some might say that some of these are subjective, but ultimately I feel that the absolute truth can be known in all cases - though it might require a lot of research to find it.
Nope, it's irrelevant what someone writes as Terms of Service if nobody agreed to anything.
Not at all, Steemit Inc. Is subject to local laws and as such could be compelled to comply with them or face termination. As such they could choose to remove accounts from Steemit and, although I am not familiar enough with the licensing for Steem, could potentially also be forced to effectively enforce laws on Steem too. It's a new technology, so the case law is not clear - i think - however, a blockchain is not an ungovernable system.
Unfortunately that doesn't mean anything, the point remains, that if I didn't agree to any terms they aren't enforceable, it doesn't matter what Steemit Inc the company is subject to, the data on the chain, the tokens, the account is mine, it's not theirs, and they have no right over the blockchain or the data in the blockchain.
I don't want moderators, I want better code logic for down-votes. Moderators become a huge problem as we've seen on youtube, facebook and twitter. I would hate to spread that cancer to steemit.
Yes, totally makes sense.
My suggestion was somewhere in between whereby the community's own self regulating up/down vote process is made more functional. I will always lean more on the side of doing nothing than on censoring and control, since bias is all around and I am regularly (unfairly) censored on FB/G+ etc.
It' s not censorship if it's replaced with a text telling you that it's curated as low quality shit and therefore hidden, the text is followed by a button and clicking it makes the content it replaced visible, effectively making it not censorship.
The process of curating is not coded for negative bias which creates a lot of harshness from the community, at the same time it cannot be called censorship simply because things are curated to initially be replaced with a cautionary tell of "low quality, proceed with full face mask, shit everywhere. click to enter".
In terms of internet and censorship it's hardly censorship, it's more like a proudly dawned black eye as a child, your content gets delegated to the realm of mystery and intrigue, what's behind this button.
While the situation on Steemit is better than Facebook, for example, in that the posts can be viewed by anyone who desires to - the reality remains that if there were no 'censoring' qualities to the act of hiding a post then there would be no value in the function of hiding a post.
There are so many posts in Steemit that some users will simply glance over hidden posts and assume that the hiding is just. I don't have any figures for it but I think that it is probably true that hidden posts get less views and upvotes as compared to when the same post is made and not hidden.
In my own case, a perfectly valid post that was part of a popular and important series of posts was downvoted and hidden only a few seconds after I posted it, thankfully I recovered it by (ironically) the use of randowhale - a bot.
My post on this specific topic that contains suggestions for improvements, goes into all of this in some depth.
It doesn't censor as it invalidates censorship to make a button that uncensored wherever there is censorship. It's not the quality of censorship, that is a stretch, it's the quality of hiding a post, or making content not visible initially that is worthy, that in itself is what makes it a staple here for curating shit content.
It's not censorship, addressing it by what it is, or flagging, curating, hiding content is correct, calling it censorship because of "censorship qualities" is a stretch and a meaningless one, either it's censored or it's not, so far people on the internet distinguish between flagged content and censored content, and they are very distinguishable, as one simply offers a warning instead of the content, or a black box, or usually no trace of the content, while the other simply warns as it presents the content. It's the difference between content being available and content not being available.
Even if you can demonstrate that hidden posts get less views than unhidden posts on average, the factors that are responsible for that includes where, when, the subject, the author and the audience and that data would be inconclusive at best because of those factors. I guarantee that you will find that posts hidden get less views, as it's completely to reason, but at the same time I bet that certain responses and posts get more views because they were initially hidden.
i have no problem with not calling it 'censorship', but if something is hidden it is by definition now not fully available in a published format alongside the other posts. obviously, i don't make posts to steemit for them to be hidden. i personally feel that what i am posting usually will draw enough attention without me needing to add 'mystery' to it by having it hidden. i do though think it is justified to say that hidden posts are 'semi censored' - since they do result in some of the people who would have potentially encountered the material from not encountering it, just as if it was fully censored.
this though, is not the end of the issue, since the author also loses money and reputation due to the downvotes - which is a whole other dimension to the equation.
It is fully available in published format, it just requires one press a button.
That's not your choice, the community curates content as they wish. Curating content affects visibility, lower curated content will be obviously further down the list than better more curated content, and that is only if you sort content by curation, if you go to the author you can see the content alongside their other content as it was published.
If it's hidden it's hidden, if it's not available then it has to not be available, if it's censored it has to not be available anymore. Obviously it's not any less available because the user is presented with a warning instead of the content directly.
It's not semi-censored, it's either censored or it's not. There is no "somewhat censored". It's censored or it's not.
You cannot argue that they lose money when the rewards are still getting voted on, the author didn't lose money, they didn't get all the rewards they were expecting because people voted against them. The reputation is a metric that more or less is based on what others curated your account as, so if it affects reputation it's because it's their right to curate content, negatively or positively, they can give you a zero start or a one star out of 5 or 5 million, they have given their opinion.
'published' implies full access alongside other published items. If I publish a book via a publisher, I am not going to accept it being put behind a hidden door in the shop's bookshelf just because someone else decides it should be because they have more money than me.
That's all well and good in theory, but it's not 'the community' as some kind of perfect, altruistic and balanced entity. What is actually occurring is that those with the most money have the capacity to limit the reach of specific posts and publishers with impunity. The decision is currently not based on merit, but rather on wallet size. If 40+ people in the community decide that something should not be hidden, it may make no difference because one single voter with more wallet size disagrees. Democracy doesn't work that way, oligarchy does. Your position here smacks, ironically, of a communist dictator who decrees that 'the people have spoken' when in truth it was actually just one individual speaking who holds an unbalanced amount of power in the system. Yes, it is possible for the rest of the community to rally around those who are unfairly treated, but the system itself contains no specific facility or that and that is why I suggested to include one in my post on the topic.
I am aware that Dan has specifically included some kind of conflict resolution system into EOS, so it is obviously not just me that has a concern - though I don't yet know the details of that.
As already stated, marketing theory and practise makes clear that visibility is king in many cases. Information system theory shows the same in terms of human- computer interaction. The human visual cortex is virtually hardwired in many people to be drawn to shiny things - sad but true.
They do literally lose money since payouts are directly reduced due to downvotes, as I understand - they also get less payout due to less visibility and thus less downvotes. That's fine for validly downvoted posts, but that is not what I am highlighting.
The cancer has spread... unfortunately.
I'd like to see @steemcleaners and @adm close their accounts.
They are only used for abuse on the platform; probably by a very immature and simple minded person, but nonetheless, those accounts do only harm and no good. IMHO of course.
I have just created an addon for steemit that mildly improves the situation with downvoted posts being hidden. ;)
I'm on my way to check your link, thank you and a lovely Monday to you!
Sadly, there isn't always a 'valid' reason for flags.