A CENSORSHIP THREAT TO STEEMIT
New accounts are now being set up explicitly for the purpose of flagging/censoring content they want to suppress. These accounts are not regular users who like flagging a few posts - they have been set up specifically for the purpose of censorship.
And they have enough wallet power to potentially hide most people's posts. This is not from earnings, because they don't actually post or comment, they just flag/censor.
There is one simple solution to this problem, and that is to ditch flagging.
I've been saying this for 10 months now, but it feels like pushing shit up hill.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@sift666/six-changes-i-d-love-to-see-on-steemit
Today several people on Steemit are trying to discuss the real agenda behind entities like Fakebook, Youtub, and Gooble.
And a key part of discussing that is who really owns and controls them. But of course this is one of the subjects that is being censored.
I'd like to do a post about it myself, but I suspect that it might be flagged. In fact I'm not even sure now if this post might be looking for trouble.
Even after the financial spanking we've all had over the past week, my account is still worth over $4000, and I'm the 1343 richest person Steemit! But that is probably not enough power to keep my posts visible if the new censors decide to grey one of my posts out.
And the vast majority of Steemit users have a lot less in their wallets so are more screwed than I am... I really am not into this flag war crap, but I suspect if flagging stays, this where we headed.
There is always some bullshit reason why flagging is "necessary" - whales regulating payouts, stopping spam comments - whatever! - Spammers are like fleas, while this is potentially full blown censorship could make Steemit just like fakebook, and flagging hands the fascists the tool to do it on a plate.
I know I usually like to take the piss a bit, but today after seeing several posts and comments being censored/flagged, this is winding me up...
There are three main reasons I want to have a spazz about this:
Firstly because I hate censorship.
Secondly because a bunch of fascist nazis could potentially screw up our supposedly uncensored platform
And thirdly because this is all so easy to fix. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck - we just need to ditch bloody flagging!
This is what I wrote 10 months ago:
Ditch the flagging thing
This one is very controversial, and I have three ideas. The simple way is to get rid of all flagging. Even Facebook, which is certainly not an example of free speech, doesn’t have flagging (it does have many ways to do the job less obviously). I think flagging is bollocks, so this would be my perfect solution.
Failing that, I’d make all flags (downvotes) carry the same weight, like they do on Youtube. But it’s harder to do that on Steemit because the voters here all carry different voting power, so that’s probably not an option.
My third best option is to make a downvote equivalent to the power of the median (middle) upvote on that post. By that I mean, if there were, say, 11 votes ranging from .01 of a cent to $100, use the value of the 6th vote from the bottom (which is also the 6th from the top) which might be more like 10c.
Possibly some whales won’t like this suggestion much. But most whales view Steemit as an investment, and want to encourage a larger user base. Many of the 99% of people on Steemit who are not yet whales, don’t much like the idea that a whale can potentially come along and bury their post because they disagree with it. As happy minnows are the key to Steemit's future growth, hopefully a lot of whales will be cool with this idea, or one a bit like it.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@sift666/six-changes-i-d-love-to-see-on-steemit
MY MINIMALIST STEEMIT SIGNATURE
For more info, see MY WHOPPING BIG STEEMIT SIGNATURE
The blockchain cannot be censored, flags only result in less visibly when people sort the content by reward. What make you think that people with lots of SP will start flagging random posts ?
I'm not saying random posts, I'm saying very specific posts.
For example, I was just reading a post by someone who was saying that delusional idiots spreading dangerous lies on Steemit need to be flagged. One of the specific examples he used was "climate change deniers"
That would include me. And over 80,000 scientists.
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/sift/global-warming/
And then he went and flagged a bunch of posts.
Another account was aiming to flag "dangerous anti-vaxers" That would also include me...
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/health/vaccination/
Your own blockchain experience cannot be easily censored because you have $222,000 in your wallet. I do think it sucks that you just upvoted your own comment to the tune of $25 when to get it to the top all you had to do was upvote it by about $2, but that is another issue.
I like to upvote my own comments too, but that is just to bring them up the feed - what you are doing is blatantly giving yourself big payouts.
If I was into flagging I would probably flag all your appalling porn posts, which appear to be all you post on Steemit - but I'm not, and your comment also gets to stay here right at the top as a monument to show how people with money can manipulate what is seen on Steemit. Thanks for helping to make my point!
Anyone who questions climate change?
These communists need to be bannished from Steemit. We already have FaceBook and Twitter for politically correct intolerance of opposing views.
Calling for bans in a community inherently against moderation or authority over such things.
If you are saying what I think you are saying - that banning communists on Steemit would be against what Steemit stands for - then I'm amazed to find myself agreeing with you.
Make the most of it, I'm not so on your wavelength with your other comments
This raises the question, if you are inherently against the nonsense of banning people, why did you curate it as good content?
Because I upvote every comment I reply to - but from now on I'm going to make an exception for you because you are looking like a troll.
That's 15 comments on this post now - holy crap!
And you have even set up a second account to troll Christians - and posted a comment here from that one as well.
Maybe if you run round in circles really fast something exciting will happen!
If I was into flagging, I'd flag you!
You think that other account is mine? On what basis do you accuse me of trolling people?
You know voting for everyone that replies to you, spam or nonsense, could be considered noise, since there is no selection over what you're voting. I just want to remind you that I have explained numerous times on this thread why flagging is required, and why it cannot be censorship, the problem is that you think those things are "trolling" since I contributed to the conversations "excessively" in your eyes, and I don't see how it's trolling by a long shot. Yeah I get it, my screen name implies troll, my engagement also?
Even though what you said is completely correct and in line, they still have a good point:
The blockchain cannot be censored, flags only result in less visibly when people sort the content by reward.
I have to say I'm a bit perplexed by your comments - and you have posted 15 of them!
Your Steemit name is Bah FucYou, which kind of suggests "troll" tendencies. Your wallet contains $745 so you are not a whale and would be pretty defenseless against the censorship accounts I'm talking about here.
You mainly resteem rather than post yourself, but even so I only had to scroll down 14 days before I saw a post on your timeline that has been censored.
Hello, my name is Urma and I am Baah's caretaker.
I think it's great that my little baah baah black sheep has learned so much about this topic, however there is something that you should know.
Baah was injured with autism after receiving the Varicella vaccine and as such struggles when he wants to interact with people.
Please remember this when speaking to him, as he is my little randy dandy boyo.
Hi Urma
Sorry to hear that Baah is another of the millions of vaccine damaged children.
He certainly is difficult to interact with as his position on a range of issues seems to be hard to decipher.
http://www.frot.co.nz/design/health/vaccination/
If you saw it how was it censored?
It was downvoted and greyed out, same as all censored posts...
How is that censorship, when you can get the information even so?
Anyone can look, but few people make the attempt to read grayed out posts. I am new here and was told to skip them as I browse by one of the first people who helped me. I have looked a couple of times, and in every case, I could see a good reason why the post was down-voted and I will not make another project to look at them again.
So when a post is gray - a majority of people do not look. In my case, I am sensitive and have the strongest nsfw setting. I'm here to promote my health and weight loss content, not get into controversies.
Right on, they can only make it less visible but never censored. Everything is on the blockchain.
I am for muting, that will hide them from your feed
Yes, with muting you decide what you don't want to see - fine. Flagging on the other hand is deciding what you don't think other people should be allowed to see - fascism...
agree 100%, its a top heavy system which i understand but when bigger fish can wreck your reputation on steemit just because they dont like what you post is as you say censorship - which is not what steemit is about
It's censorship because people don't like your post and "wreck" your reputation? People curate posts and your account, you can still post, comment and curate can you not?
It's censorship because hiding things from people is part of what censorship is
It's not censorship since everyone can click the obvious button REVEAL, and the content is still there where it was posted, as it was posted, nothing is BLACKED OUT like that picture, it's not censorship to curate things.
If you can still post, comment and curate and the content is still there and unaltered then it's not censorship is it.
please write a full complete post explaining what you are apparently explaining here...but not quite.... what can I do to make sure ALL my posts remain viewable to EVERYONE who wants to see them? TROONATNOOR
They remain viewable by default. When a post is hidden it still remains viewable, the button that replaces it provides that simple function of revealing the post with just one click and the images subsequently with another. There is nothing to fuss over and when some ungreatful asshole calls the platform that is Censorship Proof based on the principles of decentralization blockchain transparency as engaged in Censorship they are Ignored for the most part and when someone points out that it's not Censorship but Curation (rating something as too offensive to be displayed by default and instead defaults to a warning that lets users know "LOW QUALITY" "NOT OK FOR WORK") they usually rage about "no it's still censorship" or correct their misconceptions and if not they move on to where they are grateful for being and not a sour bullshit artist.
👏👏👏👏👏👏 upped and resteemed!!!
Thanks - Taxi Driver is one of my favourite movies!
haha mine too !! Glad you liked my GIFT from giphy.com ! 👍👍👍😂😂😂
I really like this post; it made me think about an option I hadn't put much thought into before. And yet, I lean very heavily toward the arguments for full weighted flagging that include plagiarism, spam, scammers, and directed abuse/harassment of other users.
But on the other hand, I have seen several posts getting flagged for difference of opinion, and it wasn't just new users doing this. This, to me, is a critical failure of the system, and it may be worth sacrificing the entire flagging feature in order to avoid steemit becoming a stagnant hugbox like so many other places.
The big fish here do have a vested interest in making this place more valuable, but it seems that some think shaping steemit according to their dogma is more important than allowing unpopular opinions to propagate. There are no real mechanisms in place to stop one disagreeable big fish from swallowing minnows who happen to peacefully state their opinions or views, and time and time again that has proven to be a formula for stagnation or ruin on so many other blogging sites of past and present. Also important to note, this also means that people are using their weight to bring down content instead of uplift content they want to see, which I consider to be a net loss on the platform in general.
Perhaps a 4th option (that, for all I know, may have already been suggested elsewhere) could be some kind of proxy mute list feature that completely replaces the flagging system. Think of adblock for steemit, but users with services similar to steemcleaner could instead direct their focus towards muting plagiarists/scammers/spammers/abusers, and other individual users could enter their names to use as a proxy muting service if they agree that they're muting the right users. Perhaps they could offer an appeals process to get off the mute list, but however it works, as long as there are multiple options in users offering these services, and there is the ability to choose as many or as few mute lists as you want, I see this being the best course of action to a delicate situation.
Considering your experience on the platform, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this other option. I would also welcome others to chime in with their thoughts as well. If this doesn't make as much sense on paper as it does in my head, tell me why I'm wrong, or ask me to fill in any details I didn't include.
A stagnant hugbox?! LMFAO that's what I am saying. I'm not going to kiss anybody's ass no matter how much money they have.
did you say ass?
I don't kiss any ass, but I do try to pick my battles.
A lot of good ideas BUT what I'm really saying is none of these complex solutions are necessary if flagging is dumped.
The main reason it remains is because it allows whales to control the content.
As an example, lets say I took offense at your thoughtful and in depth comment because I feared it weakened my position.
All I have to do is flag your comment and nobody will look at it. Because I have a bigger wallet than you there is nothing you can do about it.
Nobody will look at your comment because they will assume you are just another spammer saying something like "nice flowol me and i bak you flowol" Dissenting view eliminated.
I always click reveal and read what's there. Also on other sites with a moderation system for the comments first thing I do is change the setting so I get to see all comments, even those with are down modded. But maybe that's just me.
It would be great if there was a reveal setting on Steemit (note for boffins)
Those examples of abuses of the flagging system are enough to make strongly consider getting rid of it. I'm just thinking that, at least within the current mindset on steemit, there may need to be some kind of compromise in order to achieve the dissolution of the flag feature. You say you've been lobbying for this change for 10 months now, and a decentralized mute list service that users sign up for voluntarily sounds like a very fair compromise, and could satisfy many of the concerns on all sides of the argument.
Previously the flagging was mostly whale revenge and control flagging, but this new trend is pure censorship using downvoting as it's main tool
Flagging has always been a function of the blockchain so that people couldn't just game the system for a guaranteed reward and then cash out at the first sign of price drop.
It allows everyone the same.
People can still and still do look at it, I've been flagged by bots a few times now, and people still look and respond to your comment, it doesn't mean nobody will look at it.
He can still do something about it, he can spam that comment, he can make a post about how his comment got flagged, he could also simply ridicule your flag and maybe he could even convince you otherwise.
That's not true, people still look at those comments, it's in human nature to click buttons that say "reveal".
Just try copying and pasting some b-grade porn and posting it like the whale at the top of this comments thread does all the time.
I suspect that unlike him, you would find yourself flagged very rapidly!
Flagging serves one major purpose - protecting the interests (maintaining the control) of whales
The interest of the whales isn't exclusive to the interests of the community, or the fact that influence is incentivized. What's important is that if people can still post, comment and upvote or otherwise curate content in spite of "being censored" and their content isn't altered, then it's not censorship.
Flagging is here to stay because otherwise a large account could methodically rape the reward pool for themselves and nobody would be able to do anything about it, it makes sense because it would guarantee themselves a steady source of income. This would make sense to just about everyone, why spend the voting power on someone else when you can concentrate it all on yourself as the large accounts would do. You're getting author and curation rewards, duh, and nobody can disagree with that, because censorship, whale control.. because people post NSFW material in NSFW tag and make money.
My work is health and weight loss. I do not use goog ads or yt ads for this reason. Many, many, many of my friends over the years have lost their accounts as soon as they monetize. It seems we fly under the radar until we get into those programs and then the kill is quick.
It recently happened to a whole pack of related alt health people who were working together on yt. They all monetized about 2 months ago and their lives have all been never-ending hell since. I found out about it in a fb group discussion and SO MANY people chimed in to say it happened to them as well.
Those places have money and are threatened by the alexa ranking here. People like me can talk about toxins in the food supply and rank in a day since that stuff is censored everywhere else. If they see a way to shut it down - they will. It's big on search, but most results will tell you, "It's ok to eat YYZ chemical! Don't worry!" But in my autoimmune disease groups we all know to avoid XYZ.
I've read a lot of arguments about downvoting in my 3 weeks here and I have to say this is the worst one for me yet. I've been only posting pics into challenges for the most part, but if I go off on a tear about some of the specific problems in the us food supply, I can see myself getting killed.
Before I read your post I was 100% against the idea of downvoting already. I have yet to read one argument for it that I thought had validity. There is a mute button for a reason.
So my question is - can we find out who these accounts are and mute them in advance of them attacking or do we just have to wait until they do? If we mute, can they still downvote? How would I even know if I was downvoted?
Steemit is not easy, and that is for sure. But I am still swimming :)
If you mute someone, you can't see them, but they can still flag your posts and comments, and if they have solid wallet, you are history.
I know people say there are two sides to things, but flagging is a mystery to me - I say it's not complex at all - flagging is pure bullshit
On other platforms I am aware of, the mute/block function means the person cannot see you at all. Thank you for letting me know this is not the case here. Then I should not mute, since if I do - I will not even know if they get onto my posts.
the mute button comes in handy when you pick up a troll. A post of mine picked one up the other day, and the support from the community was awesome but I muted him, I can still see the comments if I look at the post and I am not logged in, but I no longer get notifications every time the asshat trolls my post. Before I muted him I looked at his comments and all he does is troll on post similar to the post I posted. So I muted him, don't have time for trolls, but I also looked and he is just a minnow so I didn't worry about muting his ass.
Interesting. What was the general topic of the post or of the trolling? I agree that I am not worried if the person is under 30. That only took me a day or two to get out of once I started, so if they are already making trouble???
it was my personal story on how my son was vaccine injured, he was over the top
My God. I'm so sorry. I can only imagine and I have heard all the ignorant comments too. I'm very well-versed on this tragedy. My prayers to you and your son.
Try going to fb groups for natural help and detox ideas about it. Some of that stuff can come out - some not, I guess. Strides are being made. You probably already know.
I was in those groups for a few weeks last year for research and my heart was broken 1000 times. I'm a single mom with a son who is now 25 and I regret every shot.
I promote natural help for obesity, autoimmune disease, and ptsd. All are hard. Yours is magnitudes harder but still the same. An anti-inflammatory lifestyle helps everyone if you can swing it.
We done most of the Detox methods but a couple we are waiting till he is 18 to decide if he wants to try them because on though rare could have a serious side effect and the other is not legal here in the state we are in.
But yep well versed, he stopped receiving them after his injury.
If we don't have flagging how do you stop a whale from raping the reward pool every single day for as long as the community still has some room to swim around all the self voting that will happen, just so that people can make a couple cents, if that, because when the whale pulls out the world of steem is fucked, and another whale will quickly step up to the successive rape of guaranteed rewards. The reason for flagging is game theory crab bucket mentality.
That is exactly what some whales are doing.
Including the whale who posted the top comment on this post.
You just upvoted him yourself FFS - now try flagging him and see how $745 vs $222 000 works out
Thankfully smack down kitty just had a crack at him and reduced his payout from $25 to $10 - but smack down kitty only has $100 000 to play with
if we don't have flagging how would that work without flagging, you missed the freaking whole point crying "that's what's going on now, look flagging doesn't work because it's not fair".
Sorry but flagging has a purpose, and it's not for whales to keep control, it's for people to remove rewards from content plagiarized, from spam, and from voturbations like above. Yes I voted for him before I realized he was the power voter who was voting for the comment, he is still correct even so.
Although I liked the third option at first, the problem with this is that a lot of (low SP bots / accounts) can sensor just as easy...
My option would be this: let the flag/option cost 2 or 3 times as much as an upvote!
I like to hear your thoughts on these things!?
For the people with the money, cost is irrelevant, so no, I just want to see the option to downvote removed
Maybe this is part of how we get to the truth. At least with flags we get to see that someone is actually willing to pay to hide certain things.
I haven't used a flag yet and hope I never have to, but I would get into a flag war gladly with those creating accounts for the purpose of censoring.
I admire your attitude, but honestly, unless you have some serious backing you will get chewed out and spat out - I did just manage to unflag a post by a margin of 3 cents recently, but it's only a matter of time before the censors have bigger wallets.
I like to think that Steemit users are not just contributing for money but because we like the idea of not being censored. That is what makes me believe there would be backing to combat censorship by way of flag neutralization. It would be very difficult though, I admit that.
Agreed and resteemed! No need for the flagging tool when there is a MUTE button
So true - but flagging does censorship and revenge so much better than mute...
And that is what most flagging is really being used for I suspect
Yeah you could say that, but flagging being used for revenge or to remove rewards still doesn't censor the content.
I gave out my first flag in the year that I've been here two days ago. It was to a guy that was just spamming the 'new' feed with the same comment. I saw it a few times during the day and then he sent me the same comment on one of my posts. I checked his comments and he send out like 47 of the same comment in 30 minutes. I confronted him about it with the flag, he said he won't do it again. He hasn't posting any spam since so it might actually have worked. The flag was only the spam comment on my post, so if there was an option to control the comments on your own stuff, that would be great. Not that we should be able to censor those comments either (they should at least be visible on the blockchain still), but marking them as spam in some way is possible just like other sites.
But aside from that, I think there will certainly be accounts created to control the information that governments and large companies don't like. If a company doesn't blink an eye spending millions on advertising, they won't blink an eye spending a few million on a steemit account to block info that hurts their company.
Yes - up until now nobody on Steemit seems to realise how easy it would be for a company like fakebook to set up say 20 half million $ accounts to flag stuff they don't like.
Yeah, and how our platform would boom overnight because of the value, but how easy would it be to drain those account's voting power by spamming as well.
I don't know if spamming can drain accounts - is that what you are trying to do? How is that working out for you?
If they are autovoting or voting certain content negatively, spamming the content will drain their voting power, yes.
I only pointed out one way to negate all their effort with just one account, and granted they couldn't survive on reputation if they were to be autoflag bot accounts, because if they post content it could be flagged way down the line by anyone that sees the harm it is doing to the community (your evil whales), at any point, so they would only be affecting payout and not visibility or reputation, and even then, not going to stop anyone from speaking, and if someone stops because how their content is curated, or their account they hardly have a place on the internet or on a platform where people are free to speak their minds.
It's kinda odd that you have methodically avoided addressing the fact that the purpose of flagging is none other than to give people a way to police abusive and collusive self voting, which would be rampant otherwise (with a flag ban/upvote only) simply because people don't pass up guaranteed returns or free money.
Yeah noticed this is getting abused as well as people with a lot of steem seem to be allowed to promote scams whilst if they tried to do this with a smaller account it would immediately get flagged down.
I never liked flagging or downvotes on any platform and I never used it. I think it is always counter-productive and will just create a negative sprial of emotions and reactions. Steemit works by honoring content producers with upvotes to give value to their valuable post. There is no need to censor anything. Maybe there could be mechanisms to prevent someone from earning from stolen content, if reported in time. But so far I have only seen abusive use of the flagging option where ALWAYS one party felt like having the subjective duty to stop the other person. Usually both parties don't have the upper hand ethically. It is all heavily subjective. And on Steemit all that it takes is one wealthy person to ruin everything for another person. Who needs that?
Coming to your actual topic, the censoring or content: This is indeed very bad and must be prevented or Steemit will not thrive as it could and should do. All my reasons above are not considering this possibility of flagging abuse. One very good reason more to get rid of this negative function inducing further negative behaviour and actions.