RE: I filmed this video of @ned @pkattera and @sneak talking about the SMTs and the future of Steemit
There's no such thing as "soft censorship". Nobody's entitled to hosting on anyone else's domain name. If I have a blog on example.com and I write there, and you come to example.com and comment on a post and I delete your comment (thus denying you access to my audience at example.com), that's not censorship; that's editorial control. Every single domain name owner gets to decide what is or isn't displayed on that domain name. To prevent them from deciding what content they want on their own website, ironically enough, would be censorship.
The beauty of the Steem Blockchain is that nobody gets to control what is or isn't in the blockchain.
That said, nobody is entitled to the attention of another's audience. A lot of people like to claim that when someone exercises editorial control on their own website, that that constitutes censorship, but it's not so. YouTube gets to decide what is displayed on their domain name, youtube.com. So it goes for Twitter, or Facebook, or any other website in the whole world. If YouTube doesn't like your hair and takes your videos off of youtube.com, that's not censorship—that's YouTube running their own website how they see fit. You can run your website how you see fit, and YouTube can't interfere with that.
But Steem isn't a website. Steem is a censorship-free, distributed platform. Nobody owns it and nobody gets to stop information from flowing through it. Even if one website displaying content from the Steem blockchain were to selectively hide certain posts, those same posts would remain available and visible on many others run by entirely different people. No information placed into the blockchain would become unavailable.
Regardless, though, that's not the kind of editorial control you're complaining about (because that never happens on steemit.com on the basis of principle); literally 100% of all of your whiny shitposts are still available, in full, unredacted, for reading right here on steemit.com by anyone on planet Earth. You haven't even been editorially redacted by the owners of this domain name, steemit.com. Your claims of censorship, "soft" or otherwise, are entirely invalid on their face. Everyone can still read all of what you wrote on several different websites that aren't yours. Your posts are now available at dozens of different URLs and will remain so no matter what actions I or anyone else could ever undertake.
You've simply been downvoted, and now you're lying about being victimized for attention because you decided you were entitled to a few bucks in rewards (which weren't actually yours yet) for reposting inaccurate rumor (read: lies) that you didn't bother to fact-check, before posting (during presumable ignorance) as well as after posting (after being notified you were posting falsehoods). It's ridiculous and you should stop.
If you think other people disagreeing with you in the form of votes is "abuse", then the Steem platform probably isn't the right place for you.
I will spend no more time refuting your complaints.
I think I would agree with you that the Steem blockchain does not censor. However, the Steemit social networking website that runs on top of the blockchain is what allows for soft-censorship to occur based on vote weight, meaning the editorial control that you speak so highly of lays in the hands of whoever has the highest voting power.
Meaning, anyone can be a jerk to anyone else, like you've been doing to me for the past few days, just so long as they have enough Steem to do so. It's fucking retarded and untenable, and you'll come to realize this when some asshat chooses to stomp on every post, and comment that you make, simply because they have the steem power to do so.
To be quite frank with you @sneak I'm pretty disgusted about the way that Steemit devs brag that the Steem blockchain is not censored, when they know full well that Steemit.com (the application running on the blockchain) puts soft-censorship in the hands of any user who has enough Steem to do it. It's a dishonest tactic.
Every time censorship comes up, as a selling point for steemit.com you guys say that the Steem blockchain is not-censored, and although that is true, it has nothing to do with the soft-censorship/editorial control aspect of your product.
So Yeah I'm calling you out on the chicanery. It’s clever PR don’t get me wrong, but not everybody’s a fucking idiot. And if it doesn’t end on the Steemit.com platform. I promise you that the smart money is going to leave, and Steemit.com will end up bleeding out just like YouTube, and just like Twitter.
Someone will end up cloneing the Steemit model in a generic way, run it on the Steem blockchain, and they’ll do flagging the right way. Fix it, you’re the tech guy think of something smarter, put your heads together and come up with something quick.
People have been leaving the popular platforms and coming to steemit.com because your PR was so god damn clever, but even PR cannot break through the truth of what the facts are, and the truth is that your platform allows for soft-censorship.
Call it by whatever words you want to call it, but people know in their guts what it is, it’s that feeling that twitter gave them that caused them to leave, it’s that feeling that facebook gave them that caused them to leave. It’s that feeling that YouTube gave them that caused them to leave, it’s that feeling that you’re giving me right now.
The king, he has no clothes!, Steemit.com engages in soft-censorship, and Soylent green
will turn you into a soy boyis made out of people!Replace the flagging system with a dueling system, and figure out something else for spam, and nsfw. This way every time your abusing your power and swatting other people's posts down like flies, we can hit you back, to let you know how it feels!
UPDATE: I see your response to this comment was to flag my latest post. Thanks for that, apparently, you never cease to be a golgothan. No gatekeepers right? But that's the steem platform, and not Steemit itself, and you know damn well that the uninitiated aren't sophisticated enough to comprehend the difference. Such, clever clever PR. You're not just a sneak, you sir are a snake.
I also believe @thoughts-in-time is making a good point. It is very clear that whales are abusing on flags, just because "they don't like the content", not because the content is truly offensive. What I can't understand is this felling that whales do so, because they "earn more" of the steemit.com domain. So they can act like the "content-editor", only based on the size of their pocket. As a business model, for me it sounds like a future failure. People fear to be flagged (because this tends to lead to being ethereally flagged by some whale downvoting-bots). And people are leaving you "earned Steemit.com" because of that.
... and also because of the voting-bots, which keep promoting low quality content.
I am a new user. It only took me one month to understand all that.
Although I see the tremendous potential behind Steemit birth-ideology... I also see the sickness spreading on it... and I am still not sure if there is enough time to fix that, given that new platforms are coming and might overtake tempestuously fast.
b.b.
Well said, @thoughts-in-time - I agree. After over 10 years of professional work with social networks, including dealing with billionaire VCs, social network CEOs and large community admins, I agree with your main message here.
I have just been flagged by sneak and liberosist for daring to mention 'alternative views' (actually science) on the topic of vaccinations. Sneak has claimed that it is not right to flag just due to personal opinion/bias, but that flagging due to posts containing lies is acceptable. On this basis it seems he has flagged my post because he thinks it contains lies - yet in reality it contains material from one of the actual inventors of early vaccines and also a qualified microbiologist and researcher into vaccine science who state their own evidence and to which I referred. If he thinks it's acceptable practise to place himself as judge as to what the truth is and to reduce payouts based on that, the least he could do is back up the accusation with some evidence or logic - but instead he resorted to ad hominem attack, the classic MO of the intellectually dishonest, gutless and lazy.
I commented on this here:
Let me guess; did you mention Maurice Hilleman and or SV40. It probably didn't matter what evidence you pointed to. The guy comes off like a total SWJ spacecadet.
SJW's soft-censoring people on Steemit, it's really unfortunate. I've responded to this type of a thing with a few different initiatives.
FFF-SOS Has Infiltrated Steemit!
FFF-SOS 'Patient Zero' Petitions @randowhale
Create Memes Against Steemit Censorship! – $25.00 SBD in Prizes!
That in addition to a commenting campaign where I'll be continuously pointing out the soft-censorship until many of the libertarians who joined this platform, realize they've been duped.
I encourage you to adopt the FFF-SOS creed if you find it agreeable. It's mainly about spreading a message about right behavior on Steemit. By 'right behavior' I mean spiritually abiding by the the NAP on the platform.
If this is something that's of interest to you I would encourage you to help out in anyway that you can to cause it to gain visibility. For example the video that you did, I'm sure that is going to help out allot. I haven't watched it yet, but I did preemptively resteem it.
FFF-SOS is just getting on it's feet. Maybe if you do future posts about censorship on Steemit you could consider using that as one of the tags.
I'll go watch your video right now.
I did put the video of maurice hilleman in the post, but that was really just a background reference - the rest of the post isn't even about vaccines - for the most part - it's about bill gates and his denial.
I am quite surprised to say that although I don't like the term SJW as it devalues social justice, which is itself a sacred requirement for balance in life, I do understand your viewpoint and see some merit to it. I would not use that phrase though as I prefer to look at the full, holistic psycho-spiritual mechanics involved and that requires the rejection of all judgements and labels in order to see/feel clearly. That said though, when I interact with him I can still find I get psychologically drawn 'down to his level' and speak from my gut/heart without careful consideration! ;)
Thanks for letting me know about FFF-SOS - I will mention it in my post on this topic.
I hear you, the variety that I was speaking about were the types of social justice warriors that have totally jumped the shark. In America things have gotten really weird.
This video is a good example. At first I thought the video was a parody, and I found it humorous.
What I didn't know that this was probably inspired by this man's experience in either high school or college at the time.
Then a couple years later is when the phenomenon started hitting the media. Students going bat shit on their professors because Halloween?
People confronting people about cultural appropriation.
Then there's just the purely insane variety too.
I'm thinking we might be thinking about two entirely different things.
Or these crazy people infiltrated an existing movement, and brought a really bad name to it.
Were you aware of that stuff at all, what do you call those people, are they social justice warriors or? Or even advocating for true social justice as you see it?
I have seen that video before, yes. We are currently in a process of emotional and psycho-spiritual balancing and unfortunately the vast majority are unaware of this and thus we see from them various forms of denial rather than health and balance. This applies just as much to those who are stuck on the more masculine 'thinking' end as it does to those who are stuck on the other end, the feminine 'feeling' end.
Thoughts that are not balanced by guidance from feelings are psychopathic and feelings that are not balanced appropriately with conscious understanding of the present moment may be out of balance and appear dangerous or judgmental. This partially explains what that video is pointing to and also describes what this 'SJW' logic is fighting against.
The evolved self has balance between thoughts and emotions, such that balance radiates throughout.. This is what has been largely missing from humans since the beginning.
Social Justice is defined as essentially egalitarianism, which is defined as:
To be equal in society does not mean though that everyone is homogenised, non-unique and that individual qualities are denied. There can be no balance in life while denial is involved. The fact that many are so internally divided and injured (in denial) and thus they cannot manifest equality in a balanced way, is not itself evidence that equality is a false or dangerous priniciple.
Equal voting rights is an example of equality that makes sense (albeit that the actual voting system is corrupt, fake and rigged). Equally allowing everyone the 'right' to 'educate' your own child is an example of alleged 'equality' that does not make sense since it over-rides free will. The essence here always comes down to whether free will is being over-ridden or not.
Denial of free will and other denials are at the root of all of our problems. When denial ends, problems are solved.
"Thoughts that are not balanced by guidance from feelings are psychopathic and feelings that are not balanced appropriately with conscious understanding of the present moment may be out of balance and appear dangerous or judgmental." – @ura-soul^That was very wise!
We are probably going to have to agree to disagree on egalitarianism, mainly because I think it's impossible to achieve in the sense that you might mean. However, in another sense; I think that America had achieved it on paper with the 'immortal declaration'. Yet they made the BIG mistake of not applying 'men' to all men, and to women. Even if they said all 'people', with their mindset at the time, they still probably would have justified slavery with the trick of wordplay (legalese).
I made a post in jest where I poked fun at that issue, just to portray how ridiculous it can get. For example their are so many different genders, faiths, nationalities, religions, and ethnicities, that if we attempt to raise, or "equalize" any particular slice of the pie (, or group) in an attempt to achieve parity, that it many times results in a disparity for an an individual.
That's why as a libertarian, which is how I lean politically, I prefer to only look at individual rights. I don't know if that's the ultimate answer, but it seems like more of a pragmatic one to me anyhow. There are probably some laws that they created for groups in the past that didn't result in too much harm. Yet they still may have resulted in unnatural results.
In the above I was thinking specifically of if someone highly qualified for something is overlooked for an opportunity in favor of someone who may not be nearly as qualified so that a company can fill a quota to prove that they are not discriminating against this or that group.
If an individual witnessed something that happen to them first hand, it might be as dispiriting as getting censored on a platform that was supposed to be about free speech. LOL, I think I just came a full 360 with that one. Anywho not trying to talk your ear off, you made very interesting points!
I Don't know if he fancies himself, as future leader of the New World Order or what? Until then, he'll have to be content in his position as Steemit's resident Trollflake.
erm.. i thought you had done a particularly outstanding photoshop edit there, but it appears he actually is standing there in that photo.. hmm..
ikr, click the image. I got that from his link, he posted it.
i saw, yes
Or change the flag parameters to spam-&-nsfw, and then when people like you abuse it to blot out people who have differing ideological differences from yourself. Those people (like you) should not be allowed to have editorial control. No one person, should be able to dictate what is readily visible to the entire platform, outside of spam-&-nsfw.
@sneak while i do agree with you 100% from a technical and ideological standpoint. I do also agree with @thoughts-in-time from a product marketing standpoint.
He brings up a very good point that the reason #deleteyourfacebook is trending on twitter is very largely because of what they view as "soft censorship"
@sneak what if you had a bot that was for flagging content would that help?
Hey @theuxyeti. Maybe you could make and donate a bot service that submits a comment on posts that were flagged by devs?
It can be an image that says something like:
"Post Censored by @whicheverdev."
I think that would be a great service to the steemit platform!
Then steemians can start to get a feel for which devs encourage the free exchange of ideas, and which devs would rather just control what other people can think, and say on this platform.
I think this would be a real community service, and I think if you put "I accept donations" in the about line, I think many people would donate to the bot. You could probably earn allot of Steem doing this!
I know I would donate!
You could also maybe keep a record of how many times and which devs censor posts that are clearly not pornography, or spam. That way the people of the platform might be able to get a good idea about which devs are abusing their power, and which devs believe that people ought to be able to speak uncrippled by flagging.
What do you think @theuxyeti should people be able to speak their mind on steemit without fear of being censored by the developers? Or should the developers be able to control the minds of the masses?
Im not too sure. My opinion is more over how to quantify the quality of the content and is it truly Organic. It seems there is an MLM pyramid scheme thing going on on this platform where there is a mechanic that exploits organic content with bots to increase the bid whereas the quality of the content no longer applies to the users of the community. Its a rush for users to get on a trending page or something. As for censorship of content and regulating it, I think if there were smart machine learning UI in place, itd be ideal to have NSFW content categorized in a way to keep the platform tidy and safe for the 80/20 rule. Perhaps if you go down that rabbit hole and have the checkbox NSFW unchecked youd never see the content anyway, so it doesnt apply to you. But youd still have to figure out when i user posts content to identify if its NSFW and what the parameters are for that.
At some point there should be rules to the way content is intermixed for accessibility but as far as turning that content on to see, should be as easy as checking a box in your UI.
Well, it's food for thought. I hear you though
about the bots, they really did change the dynamic of the platform. Unfortunately, they are a natural progression reflective of user values. People like money, they get wealthy, they get lazy, but they want more money.
So all of that plus the ingenuity of the programmer that built the first of these bots is what led to the vote value selling. You might want to chew the fat with that guy and see what he was thinking. He may not have even considered the devastating effect his bot would have on the platform.
I tell you what though; if you want to build @sneak a flagging bot, you may as well be helping Darth Vader to construct his death star. It's all fun and games until he decides to fux with your planet.
I have no beef with @sneak. Quite the complete opposite. I want to know everything @sneak so i can help build things for the community that build not tear down the community. If sneak can provide me some insight to the overall drive of steemit Im excited to be a part of it. There will ALWAYS be pain points with builds. its the habit of progress.
I hear ya, well if you can come up with an algorithm that prevents flagging based on ideological differences. I think something like that would be a major benefit for the community. It really is a shame to see voting wars and the like.
I think they ultimately end up tearing the community apart, and wasting creative energies on negativity. I don't know how possible or impossible something like that would be to design. Hell, maybe even a switch, that auto reveals flagged content.
That way people who believe in free speech could simply tick that button, and they'd never see a censored post again. I mean it should indicate it was flagged, but it should be unhidden if the button is ticked.
Good luck with your programming, if it's benevolent anyhow!
I don’t program I’m front end :-) but there will always be pain points in a platform along with things that are discoverable good and bad based on use. How the platform is evolved and updated is what will happen. Your argument has value and it’s reactions like these that help surface an issue to be discussed for future updates
@sneak could you look at my redesign series on my post wall and see i have the voice of the people, have spent 40 plus hours ideating, imuser testing, and rebuilding your home page ui. I’m in the process of reskinning it now and moving onto the other pages. I’ve received a LOT of community positivity and pain points and would appreciate a follow and a comment. I have worked for all the big places and I’m providing my services for free so far rebuilding the horrible ui so far. So many broken areas for users. Anyway please check out my redesign series and get in touch with me please! I’d love to help! Would love to be your vp if product creative. I’m making huge impacts on your ui through great testing and community