A Flag is a Legitimate Market Expression (it also comes with consequences).
Hey, everyone.
I wanted to talk about my personal reasons for sometimes flagging content, and connect this to my principles as a Voluntaryist, Austrian economics, and the health and well-being of the Steem community in general.
I do not flag posts often, unless they are clearly spam/junk (usually copy paste comments/vote-begging, or outright silly, baseless junk vitriol, etc), but sometimes I do flag posts or comments for other reasons. The reason I do not flag things often is because I want the community to thrive. More importantly, I want myself to thrive. And I want to be seen as a responsible and valuable member of the community.
The free market shows us that the most effective way to be successful is to dialogue and connect with—and not to attempt to take unilateral, seemingly punitive or aggressive action against—those with whom we disagree.
In real life terms, a talk or attempt at genuine understanding will usually get you much farther than a fist, build your reputation, and thus secure your place in a community or society as someone who is level-headed, understanding, and who makes a best effort to reach peace/achieve understanding via dialogue, before resorting to less diplomatic means.
As a Voluntaryist, the initiation of violence or force is never acceptable simply based on a disagreement alone. It should be pointed out, though, that a “flag” on Steemit is not violent (individual self-ownership/property rights are not violated) but is simply an online statement of market preference (regardless of the subjectively perceived quality, or lack thereof, of said preference by others) made by an individual market actor.
THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES, THOUGH.
If I go around flagging everyone I don’t like or disagree with, soon, more rational individuals in the community will withdraw their trust and market favor from me, resulting in a kind of self-imposed harm. My payouts and rewards will suffer, and, most detrimentally, I will stand to lose some of the highly valued personal relationships, meaningful interactions and networking benefits/synergy I enjoy with other Steemians I highly respect. This is, of course, not good.
Conversely, if one’s market preferences are never clearly made, one cannot be accurately said to even be a part of a given market. So, we find a kind of balancing act. We need to ensure our market preferences are expressed sensibly, logically, and in a fashion that holds the long term consequences/potential benefits (for ourselves and others) in view.
Let’s be honest. This meme/meme concept is fucking awesome. So why did I flag the post?
Example of a recent flag, and my reasoning.
I recently flagged this post by @adamkokesh.
The fact that I flagged one of Adam’s posts won’t come as a surprise to some of you. I don’t really favor his brand of activism so much these days, and remain opposed to attempting to “change the mafia from the inside” by attempting to use politics to bring about the end of politics. For those unaware of what I am talking about, Adam is running for president in 2020 as a “Voluntaryist.” This is, to me, akin to attempting to “use” the Third Reich to bring about greater rights for Jewish individuals. Who knows, I could be proven wrong. Anyway.
The two reasons I flagged this post (which, actually, is an awesome idea for a meme, in my opinion)
False advertising - The meme, in my opinion, gives false hope to those who have just become disillusioned with the rigged and hopelessly immoral political process, and are finally out, and exploring Voluntaryism. I also think the meme promotes an impossible plan, and helps to secure moentary donations from honest people for something which is little more than a pipe dream. If it were for this reason alone, however, I would not have flagged the post!
This post, along with other “one pic” or “one meme” posts of Kokesh’s are serially self-upvoted using delegated Steem at 60 USD a post. Meanwhile, other Steemians are doing really useful things like this are getting buried by self-upvoted pictures of dogs and buses, and Star Wars memes. I don’t think this is good for the platform. This is not the type of Steemit I personally want to see. I don’t feel @adamkokesh truly cares about the community here as much as he views it as a springboard for his political agenda.
Am I opposed to hugely rewarded memes and pics?
No! Not at all! Usually. Shit, I want to make as much money as I can, and want to see others do the same. What I am opposed to here, and why I expressed my market preference by way of this flag, is serial, remarkably self-upvoted, ”one snap” type content (comments as well, including past flame comments Kokesh self-upvoted from 20 - 100 dollars a comment) using delegated SP for purposes I view to be somewhat dishonest, and harmful to the Steem platform’s long term success in general.
As mentioned above, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened with this account either.
I would not care if someone upvoted their comment for a thousand bucks with delegated SP as long as the content was solid, and they were a stand up individual, truly invested in the community. This time, it is not my opinion that this was the case. It is a habitual, and slightly dishonest use of monetary awards and attention that I feel other Steemians deserve to experience.
All that said, I do not believe in the labor theory of value, or administrative, top-down arbitration or policy change from the platform to address this. This is why I applied my flag. I am not a Communist, or a Socialist, or adherent to any collectivist political ideology. I am an individualist anarchist. This is my market voice. There may be consequences as well from this post, and my flag, from those who disagree. This is the risk of being a free market actor. The other side of the coin of opportunity. We all must consider and weigh our actions before taking action in the beautifully open and virtually boundless range of possibility and peril in the free market setting.
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DTube and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
Flagging content is everyone's right isn't it? I don't think it's a bad practice as long as the intention is to help the community create more quality post.
But the problems is subjective things like what is good content? Perhaps someone really loves Hajins TA's and love the fact that he posts 5 times a day. (I'm not very fond of Hajin so..but just as an example) but you might think that his posts are just spam and bullshit.
Then at least we should be honest and say that I, ME, PERSONALLY think his content is shit, and I will utilize the power of the majority to fight for what I think, regardless of that is destructive to someone else.
Like they are saying in South Africa right now. They call them selves national socialists (the blacks that is) and they say right out that they dont care what the minority thinks. For them, a democracy is something that allows the majority to do whatever they want and not regard the minority. And in a way that is true..that is the extreme version of a democracy..and that is why democracy and "community" is a very dangerous concept for the individual.
Democracy...ugh..what a filthy and disgusting term. Mob rule always ends well for the individual. /sarc
I agree.
Important subject and good post!
I think the downvoting is a difficult one..just as the whole Kokesh concept is a difficult one.
Personally I only use downvotes on spam. But even if you consider yourself anarchist or individualist we are in this community voluntarily. A social platform is nesecarilly a voluntary place. We chose to be here, and the whole premise of the platform is the social aspect. And this platform has certain functions that anyone is free to use. And the market choses.
So if we agree that as of now the Blockchain and sites like steemit are very free market sort of concepts and we are free to create a better version of Steemit if we want to, yet we stick around on Steemit - then I see no problem with the market (people) deciding how downvotes are utilized. If people here chose to use downvotes to stop so called "reward pool raping" and those who disagree continues to use the platform..well..I don't see any problems with that. If the market doesn't like that the market will leave Steemit dead and abandoned.
I haven't been very engaged in Kokesh and the US election (since I'm a european we have more than enough to worry about here) but his methods are indeed worthy of some critics.
I agree 100%. A lot of folks don’t realize this and think of Steemit as an involuntary association of people, like in a country. But you are right. This is why using flags must be done carefully (if at all), in my opinion, by each individual market actor. Flagging should only be done in the best interest of the platform. Otherwise the market may go elsewhere.
Thanks for the excellent commentary.
Not a big fan of anyone claiming to be an anarchist who runs for president. (contradiction in terms)
I think bots should be banned as some are using them to flag others out of existence, as well as up vote themselves while claiming to care about the community. I also think the community is severely lacking in the support of those flagged to death through the use of bots.
I think flagging is a relatively useless tool as the self voting whales are not bothered by it, and the rest will not last anyway if they continue to produce bad content. I think silence is a much better tool to curb bad content. Just like market conditions; if no one buys your product, you will stop producing.
You may be right man.
I also think that the trending page should be based on views/comments/activity and not on $! Yesterday I found another post with 17 views and 144 up votes.
I never look at trending other than introduceyourself trending. The rest of it and even most of the introduceyourself? It's not worth the time. Occasionally there's a rare jewel in trending introduceyourself though, and that's worth the sorting for sure!
I agree with what you said. If we start flagging whatever we disagree on, we cannot know the real facts regarding something because everyone's knowledge is limited. No one knows everything, we are here to learn something. So the trick is to flag only spam and junk content not everything we disagree on. Thanks
Downvoting sucks. But I agree.
I think it's funny your squabbles with kokesh. And his notion of government by a voluntarist (oh God that hurt to type) is very foolish. His effort would be MUCH better spent on activism in the agorist community by starting a network. But whatever. All I can do is not vote for him, which is what most of us will do anyways.
Thanks for your thoughtful and very introspective discussion of why one might use flags here on Steemit.
I tend to avoid them as far as possible, but certainly haven't yet thought as deeply about the subject as you have.
On a semi-related topic, have you ever heard of, or perhaps attended Libertopia? Coming up next month in San Diego.
😄😇😄
Hey! No, I haven’t heard of it but I’ll look into it. Thanks. Are you gonna be going?
Yes, I hope to be there. I'm actually one of the invited speakers.
It has been several years since Libertopia last convened, and I spoke at the last couple of conferences. I don't know the reasons for the hiatus, but I'm really glad that it is coming back. I'm also very happy that they are moving back to their original venue, Humphrey's By The Bay, because I prefer it greatly over where they were meeting for the last couple of sessions.
The Libertopia conference is an amazing assemblage of voluntaryists, minarchists, and constitutionalists, and the sessions and discussions that go on are amazing. I've met some fine and fascinating people there, including (for example) the likes of Larken Rose, Paul Rosenberg, Jeffrey Tucker, and Jeff Berwick, and gotten to know a couple of them as "people" rather than "celebrities."
When i joined in steemit then i don't scare to give any comment in any post. But now i feel scary to comment because now I understand about steemit . However I am grateful to you for your good advice for steemians . Really your every word in this post is very worthy for us. Thank @kafkanarchy84 for sharing this post with us.
You shouldn't be scared. As long as your comments are not spam, you are fine. Thanks for your thoughtful comment. If someone unjustly flags your post, please let me know. I cannot do much, but I try to help accounts who are unjustly targeted if I can.
@kafkanarchy84 , Thank you very much for your support. I am so happy to get your assurance.
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It is true some people here having alot of sp whether delegated or his own,they self-promote their posts even if they don't make much sense to the community.
But yes I have seen some newbies doing the same but we should not flag them as they don't know what steemit is like.They often say follow for follow or upvote my stuff and say resteem done...i guess they should be made aware of this thing is not gonna help them.Steemit has its own protocol, it is much more reputable....
Yes. No, I do not agree with flagging those brand new to the platform either.
No what i am sahing is newbie should be given chance to and they should be made aware of how this works...i am not sayon go flagging them...
I know, I agree with you 100%.
Nice post, thanks
Why is it lovely?