@papa-pepper, what do you think about the soft-censorship on Steemit Inc that lay in the hands of anyone who has the Steem power to abuse the flagging system?
I came to Steemit in good faith that their was no censorship, but that was because when the Steemit developers bragged that there was no censorship, they were talking about the Steem blockchain itself, and not their social networking platform. At the time, I wasn't learned enough on the two, to comprehend the difference.
Anywho, feeling a bit bamboozled and abused. One dev in particular is exercising his inner snowflake to try and shut me up the best that he can, and well it's not going to work.
The flagging system is broken, and when Steemit has a dev running around willy-nilly soft-censoring people's posts because he doesn't like what they are saying; that's ultimately going to kill Steemit's reputation in the long run.
Right now, people have been jumping ship from the popular censorship platforms. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, they're all losing people who think they are coming to greener pastures (steemit and other companies) who purport to not censor.
The cake is a lie when it come to Steemit not censoring. The fact that anyone can soft-censor on this platform, makes the whole platform a very contentious place.
I think your idea is probably a good one, to slow down the reward pool rape. However abusive flagging because of ideological differences. It's going to kill Steemit's reputation in the long run. I'm hoping that large steemholders like yourself have some kind of say. Or influence with the Devs to come up with a better solution that people can't so easily abuse.
Thanks for reading...
[/end of rant]
I did a post, on an alternative idea for the flagging system, but it was immediately censored by the same dev. I know my idea isn't perfect, but I just wanted to put it out there. I think that flagging should only be something used to stop spam/and/nsfw.
My recollection is that Steemit is touted as 'censorship-resistant', rather than immune to it.
Ultimately, I completely agree regarding @sneak.
This is exactly why appealing to devs and whales to fix the problem is like asking a firing squad to set you free. @sneak is a senior dev, and Stinc serves the whales as the vast majority of Steem is in their hands, and thus Stinc is dependent on them for it's profitability.
You and I have also been graced by flags from @blacklist-a as a result of @sneak invoking it on us with his flags. This is a mechanism that prevents an army of upvoting bots from doling out rewards, which is a means of encouraging accounts 'approved' by @sneak and his cohort. If it's any consolation, @ned and @dan are both also blacklisted =p
I also note that @dan left because of the issue, I think (it's what I've heard from them as claim to know), and I like his proposal to counter stake, rather than limit such interactions to votes on posts and comments. @bloom (who describes himself as a 'professional flagger'), for example posts but little, hardly even comments, leaving a tiny window for his victims to fight back. Since he is funded offchain, he isn't dependent on upvotes to be able to fly his flags here. As an aside, @bloom should alarm folks interested in free speech, as he exemplifies a mechanism whereby hostile parties can suppress Steemers from without, for whatever purposes they choose.
Folks don't need to open an account on Steemit to promulgate their views, or suppress voices they don't like. They can just fund @bloom to censor for them, and if he doesn't post, there's no way to fight back directly. The hospitality industry probably funds @sweetsssj in a complementary advertising initiative (just my private speculation, but a valid potential mechanism that may well be far more widely undertaken on Steemit than we might suspect, as propagandists are going to seek influence here, just as they have flooded 4chan, Twatter, and ZeroHedge).
Being able to counter stake instead of flags would neutralize the ability to censor, prevent flags from crushing rep, as has been done repeatedly to @skeptic, as @dan did to @berniesanders himself, and more recently @sneak has done to @iamstan, and also enable folks to counter abusive whales without being drawn into flagwars.
I haven't seen the post you linked, but will have a look at it now.
Thanks!
That's interesting, I didn't know that dan left because of that issue. You got a link that demonstrates that?
I've been told that during my rounds commenting. I'm sure a devoted search with a staff of data analysts could find it in my comments in only a couple weeks.
I doubt also that just one issue was the cause. Also, no one gave me a link that I recall. I'ts definitely hearsay.
Interesting hearsay nonetheless!