I don't have a dog in this fight, but the fact that you point to the people you tagged while ignoring the fact that @haejin / @ranchorelaxo (the same person) has been the worst abuser and downvoter of small accounts is pretty interesting.
The reward system of Steem tends to make a lot of users turn into brown nosing kiss assers. They often don't care about anyone aside from virtue signaling and fishing for upvotes on their content. Some of the more successful witnesses have found that you should play nice with people in hopes of getting their support instead of being open and frank about the problems that abound.
@slowwalker, I don't know much about you but your allegiance with @haejin / @ranchorelaxo most assuredly didn't help your reputation as someone that just wanted to share his blog and writings with the world.
Pretty much anyone that bought STEEM and powered it up has likely seen a decline in their "investment". I wouldn't take it very personal in that regard. One thing I notice though, you call downvotes "censorship" when your content has not been taken down or removed from the blockchain or pretty much any of the frontends. A few of your posts were probably downvoted into negatives which caused them to be "hidden" behind a button that users first had to click to read; but still, never were you censored.
Your posts appeared on the Trending page of SteemIt frequently. Moreso than many many other users that spent a lot of time researching and writing their content. Maybe they feel some kind of way that your mediocre content was surpassing theirs, though I can speak only for myself.
Hopefully you find a way to move forward from the drama and nonsense that runs rampant here on Steem. Hopefully you find a more lucrative "investment" if you indeed decide to relocate your funds.
Finally, if you don't care about rewards, you can always decline them when making your posts. That will send the loudest and most visible message that you really do not care about them in my opinion. When you decline rewards, they are returned into the rewards pool for all other authors.
Have a good day.
This argument is made over and over, however, censorship is not absolute removal of information. Censorship is also suppression of information, which downvoting something and making it hidden does. It is also demonetization, something that has become a hot topic for social networks and content producers. Isn't Steem suppose to be an oasis from those kinds of things? I guess not...
Cut the horseshit.
When you wind up like some users who are actually blocked from the frontends, then complain about "censorship".
That is the stronger version of censorship, however, censorship is commonly understood to simply be intentional inhibiting of a message, concept or person. Journalists have referred to Hollywood blacklists of certain actors as a form of censorship.
A growing number of professional provocateurs and small businesses are calling Youtube demonetization as well as Patreon and major banking institutions refusal of service as a form of censorship. The refusal to allow the Proud Boys to have a bank account for selling their online products is one example. Another example is how Patreon deplatformed Jordan Peterson over his ideological viewpoints.
If the intent is to shut down or severely diminish the capabilities of a person due to your disagreement with that individual it is an act of censorship. You don't like the idea because you want the power to do with without having to face the heat of public opinion against censorship.
You wish to control the narrative, but Steem going down a censorship path is a very dumb thing to do considering the kind of people usually attracted to cryptocurrencies. You can call it horse shit all you want, you can pound your fist and tell yourself its not censorship until Steem is truly dead. But look at the reality of what is happening, major members of Steem are sick of Steem's toxic negative energy.
They brought it upon themselves with their greed.
There's literally no difference between having to scroll through comments being upvoted to several dollars and me clicking a button to reveal someone's "hidden" comment.
They both serve to diminish, or censorship, by your logic.
Only fools think downvotes are the only means to suppress messages.
But the information is not suppressed, it's literally one click away from being shown. And that's on steemit, there are many frontends where those posts aren't even hidden.
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It’s about money. It’s always about money.
Respectfully, please read the definition of suppressed. "Removed" is not a requirement for censorship, that is just the strongest version of censorship. Censorship is the taking of any action to eliminate OR diminish the message of someone else.
For example, I enjoy listening to Dave Rubin, who is a mild speaking libertarian. When he gives public talks it is common for people of opposing ideologies to sit in the audience and begin making noises with bells or some kind of jingling thing. These people are not preventing Dave Rubin from speaking, but they are trying to diminish or hinder his message by creating distracting noises. That is censorship.
Taking an action to diminish the visibility of someone's message is censorship, in whatever form it takes. The only reason people are arguing against the dictionary definition is because they like to pretend they are not on the side of censorship when in fact they are.
Upvote is censorship then as people have conveniently voted the message they want to be visible to the top.
Let’s be real here.
That is called competition, not censorship. Upvoting someone is drastically different from picking an individual out to demonetize and reduce visibility. You are grasping for whatever poor excuse you can make to justify the way you want things.
Many people believe the solution to a lot of the censorship and crony capitalism on Steem is to remove POB from STEEM rewards and make it an optional feature of SMTs. That's what I am rooting for, otherwise, the downvote behavior is going to taint the entire platform.
If that happens then all you folk that like your downvote button can enjoy it with your own SMT. And I will not be bothering with that token.
Nonsense. That's assuming "proof of brain" actually exists. Look at this bloody thread. The only reason why people voting stuff up is because they think their comments need to be the ones that's visible.
Ever heard of "upvoted for visibility"?
If we make a SE token that can only be earned from being downvoted, then it’s okay?
Face it. It’s never about censorship. It’s always been about money for the likes of you. Only exploiters ever argue against downvoting.
That, sir, is just stupid.
People are attracted to Steem for multiple reasons, one of the reasons obviously is money and there is nothing wrong with that, and if you think there is you don't even understand how and why Steem was made. In fact most of the downvoters are claiming they are doing it with the objective of raising the value of the network, so if anyone is out for money it is the downvoting crowd.
Others come to Steem believing in the immutability and anti-censorship claims Steem's community falsely promises people. Just yesterday I read a post from a guy new to Steem mentioning that he came to Steem because he believes Steem's values are the same as his in respecting free speech and open discussion. Poor bastard...
Look, at this point, we just need to decouple POB from STEEM and let it be a part of SMTs (optionally) instead. That will most likely solve a lot of the toxic behavior from the downvoters and they're have to make an SMT to have their little power trips within their tiny community of unpleasant people.
Peace.
Suppression:
The need for one more click is not preventing me from seeing something. Again, this is on Steemit only. On other frontends you don't even need this click, so this is not censorship.
I agree that this is a kind of censorship, but this whole situation is completely different from ours. If someone is making distracting noises so you can't hear a person speaking, is completely different than the need for one additional click to see the information.
It would be the same if you for example just could into another place in the room, where you can hear this guy speaking without any problems. Or when you wouldn't even be able to post on Steem in the first place.