So I've been reading some weird comments here and there, and not only on this platform, but on, let's call them, "legacy platforms" too. I'm being censored, I'm being censored, Censorship... Ok, yes, it happens, but you are conflating concepts.
When it comes to blockchain, there's no such thing. Unless you can block someone from transacting, then it's not really happening. Yes your comment or post might be hidden, it might require another click, but it's not gone, it's on the blockchain. Calling it censorship because you are not making money is just ridiculous.
What if I decided to change the concept of censorship some more, and make it to where I demand a payout on my posts or I will scream censorship. Let's say, just to be arbitrary here, that I want at least 1 STU and 2 PAL or I'm being censored. Why? Because of all "the work" I put into this blog, and you are literally robbing me.
Question: How stupid do I sound? I would guess incredibly stupid. So, as much as it may be annoying to talk about semantics, for the sake of fighting real censorship we must. We are blunting our ability to discuss the subject in a meaningful way, and we are doing that at a crucial point in time.
Now, as I said in the beginning this conflating is not only happening on here. Some youtuber's are saying they are being censored because their videos are being demonetized. WHAT? Can't they see how it's hurting the cause. Those who are losing their channels, getting their worked destroyed by Google's arbitrary application of their TOS are being balled up with the entitled idiots.
Listen, this is not me saying that if a Youtuber lost his or her revenue stream, that's not a problem, but again that's a different conversation, that's not censorship. In the same way that here, if you are being flagged to 0 because you are an asshole, that's not censorship. You may even have a valid argument as to why the flags are unfair, but you are not being censored.
I realize some trolls will come out of the woods and flag this post, so I guess, to be in line with their stupidity, I should say they are censoring with their 0.01 worth of censorship powers. Maybe they'll see how ridiculous they are being, but that's just wishful thinking from my part.
MenO
I have been trying to understand the "That's Censorship" argument. It boils down to, if you have a lot of influence in the industry and you don't let everyone say everything that's on their mind, it's censorship.
The funny thing is, historically, if influencers are accused of bad thing, often lawmakers go to the influencers to have them write up the laws to deal with bad thing. And those laws tend to excuse the original group, only limiting the newcomers.
What a racket.
It's a nuanced subject, no doubt, but we seem to be lacking the ability to be effective about it. Lot's of entitled brats playing the victim olympics, trying to blend in with people who are actually being targeted.
Despite humanist drivel, humans have no "right" to speech; they are granted previlege of expression by those who own the media, upon which men communicate their thoughts. These media, in turn, are subject to regulatory oversight of the state that provides sociopolitical stability for the media to be able to operate in reasonable security. Limits to individual expression, censorship, is a fundamental necessity in maintaining a civil society. Such limits are even more necessary in economic enterprises that peddle entertainment for the masses; allowing for unrestricted expression of fringe opinions will be the surest path to business bankruptsy.
According to your definition of rights, humans have no rights. We are granted the privilege of breathing, eating, sleeping and everything else necessary to our existence by overlords with the power to end our lives. If such overlords don't murder us, they have granted our privilege of living another day.
The actual fact of existence is that I was born with the ability to live, and speaking my mind is potential to me as a natural consequence of my existence. That is a right.
Despite that some attain to power during life to end the lives of others, in reality that is the only mechanism - raw power of violence - that can be effected to prevent me from speaking my mind. Thugs can give all the orders they want, but unless I agree to comply with their demands, that is the only way they can enforce their will on me, by violently preventing my body from following my will.
All the social constructs you discuss are merely mechanisms we provide to enable our rights to be more useful. It is obvious that we have not arrived at perfection of society, and censorship is but one example of our failure to perfect society. Civil society, further, isn't very civil. Ask any mugger. As for your apparent advocacy of only speaking as overlords prefer, I note that we domesticate animals that pretty much make it easy for us to eat them when it suits us, and the kind of society you advocate isn't competent to promote the security, prosperity, and enjoyment of the members thereof. It is intended to maximize the power of their predators.
Since they're nothing but sheep that have overstepped their bounds, often due to malformations and disease of their brains and mental processes that prevent them from normal socialization, such aggrandizement is sub-optimal. Fortunately, their possession of power is dependent on limited circumstances only extant presently due to lack of nominal technology in the possession of free people, and that is being rectified as we speak. The parasitization of wealth and power that enables overlords to exist is increasingly being eliminated by people able to provide their own goods and services themselves, or in voluntary cooperation with their peers.
The laws of physics cannot be altered or decreed by society, not even by the most powerful overlord conceivable. Rational people will effect rational society by their action to prevent vampiric overlords from parasitizing them, at their sole option, because physics makes it possible, and profitable, to do so. The present distortion of power will not last much longer, and while there are sheeple that prefer their slavery, once we slip the surly bonds of Earth, the wilderness of the universe will never be fenced to prevent free men that choose to from going where they will, and doing whatever they want, even if you fail to acknowledge that people on Earth will be as free as they choose to be. You cannot deny that the infinite universe will enable that freedom at their sole option.
Well, you can, but that's because you are free to continue to be wrong.
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Humans are social creatures. The much venerated "individual" owes his life to the sociocultural and sociopolitical circumsatances of his birth. What "rights" can a man claim to be his when his entire being is borrowed? In a more ancient and elegant civilizations, every man recognized his duties and obligations owed to his station from the dictates of fate. Only in our degenerate era does the "individual" declare himself a claygod, dictating to Heaven his whims, imagining himself created ex nihilo by his will, claims "rights" owed to him from the universe. The overweening hubris of the modern "individual" makes Oedipus seem like a humble saint.
That all men are created unequal is an immutable fact observed by every rational human thinkers and societies. Those who are born to rule have a duty towards his subjects, not "rights" to exercise his whims. Those who are born to serve have an obligation towards their liege, not "rights" to rebel according to their base desires. This modern world, built upon false premises, is not only ensuring the extinction of the human race, but the destruction of all life on this planet, as has existed since the beginning of creation.
Bad ideas has killed more people and caused far more destruction than all the collective actions of psychopaths and sociopaths combined. Only in this degenerate era will a sociocultural perspective allow "free" spread of toxic ideology, while imprisoning those who have killed or harmed at most a few dozen. Bad ideas ought to be treated as epidemics of small pox or syphilis.
Regarding more ancient and elegant civilizations, where men died chock full of worms and poked full of holes by other men on the other side of ditches pretty regularly, I doubt strongly that there were major differences in the minds of men than there are now. Many were sheep, eager to serve them they considered their betters, and others were not, choosing the way of flint and steel to make their way as they saw fit. History, such as we can glimpse of it, seems to support this conjecture.
In every period of history we do have glimpses of, we see both kinds of men grubbing in the dirt, and hacking their way across continents with little more than ambition and what they can pilfer from the former on the way. Through it all we also see that pernicious and self-serving men tricked and coddled them into effecting their aims, so that they might lord over them after.
Those tricks and flatteries seem to me to be the 'bad ideas' you refer to withal. It is from such bad ideas that the parasite laden soldiery died, more than the clubs and spears of their opponents, and I absolutely agree that such manipulative sociopaths should be treated as lepers, and cast out of the brotherhood of free men that is being empowered today by means of production delivering to their hands the powers once inconceivable by even the most whimsical of dreamers in days when foot was the only form of transport.
Those were the bad old days, my friend, and ahead lies the golden age of men, potent to effect their will at their sole option due to their power to secure themselves, kith, and kin from the sociopathic parasites seeking their wealth and power, and further able to go where none have gone before: the very stars beguile and lay ripe for plunder at our feet. The good days to come promise freedom and prosperity never dreamt of in opium fevers, religious prophecies, or besotted rampages before.
I wish you the best of it.
There have been, and there always will be those, that ignore their duties, obligations, and station, causing misery and mayhem for other humans. Yet, the sociocultural system the merchant scum advocate are founded upon ignorance of a man's station and duties as the cornerstone of their matrix. Any viable sociocultural system will seek to limit the overweening hubris of man, not encourage and fostet it. You envision a future, derived from this pernicious system, in which the base-born muck despoil the entire universe, even as they have yet to completely rape this planet. "Freedom" is a terminal illness of a man's soul.
Perhaps a bit of the difference between us might be resolved, as I note what seems to be a misunderstanding of my conception of the technological development and concomitant increase of personal agency ongoing.
No. Prior to the advent of states, centralization of wealth and power was far less potential, as parasitization was also, and folks retained their own to far greater degree. History has been both deliberately obfuscated regarding such societies, and otherwise largely lost from our purview, so we can know little of societies largely free from parasitization that have previously existed. We can be certain they did, because parasitism depends on numbers, and many societies existed which did not concentrate nominal numbers to support parasites, if for no other reason (and I can think of many, besides).
After the industrial revolution, centralization of wealth greatly increased, facilitated by greater wealth withal, as the increase in technology delivered to ordinary and overlord alike more and better goods and services, except as inequity and corruption continued to debase the ordinary to favor overlords.
While continued advance and development of technology is the basis for my predictions, it is not based upon mercantilism, but rather upon the crafting society that pre-existed the industrial revolution, because that is the production, distribution, and wealth creation mechanism it most resembles. It's just a vastly improved wealth of goods and services than handwork makes possible. Security technology prevents the parasitism that centralized states have heretofore committed, because WMDs aren't suitable to making slaves obey. They can only eliminate them, and with them the potential profitable parasitization. Weapons wielded by individuals are necessary to subdue and force their victims to obey, and as security technology has evolved it has become impossible to such a gang of thugs to survive nominal defenses and even get within range to deploy their weaponry. Firearms are 1000 year old technology, and there is a reason that they are how wars are fought, and how police gangs are armed. It's the peak enslaving tech that is possible.
More advanced personal arms utterly preclude gangs of thugs, and through various institutional mechanisms, such as censorship, understanding of such tech has been concealed. The advent of personal means of production enables folks to not only make them themselves, but to invent them. Clearly overlords had no interest in even allowing such tech to eventuate, as it destroys their ability to parasitize their victims, much less mass produce it.
I won't go into much detail here, but with a moat of microwave ovens around my home, no unwelcome persons would overstay their welcome, nor ever approach without my assent. Firearms have been obsolete for a long time, and I cannot count other security mechanisms that preclude their utility by thugs. Today we buy all our microwaves from merchants, and they don't sell moats of them.
Free men will make moats of them, and far better mechanisms to ensure their security, and it will be impossible to project force as a result.
It is not ordinary folks that have effected such antisocial measures as Enclosure, or The Clearances of medieval Scotland, or war. It is overlords empowered by those merchant scum we both revile. Ordinary folk in communities I have been part of tend to be pretty good neighbors to each other - where none employ nepotic connections to overlords.
It is overlords and merchant scum that rape this planet, society itself, and who will never debase the breadth of the universe similarly, because they will not command hordes of hapless slaves to do it. Free men working together have no interest in such rapine, except when availed of the ability to parasitize their peers and thereby become their overlords.
Decentralization is the end of such parasitization, and of the very way of life vampires undertake. I don't see decentralization as derived from centralization, but the end of it, and a restoration of the natural relationships between individuals in society, nature, and whatever gods may be.
Freedom is our natural state. Slavery is the hell that destroys the soul.
How did the "individuals" come to own property? How did the muck define boundaries? How did the people even assign value to creation around them for "fair" exchange? It is not the crown and the central government that are parasites, but the humanist muck that refuse to render their dues owed to the state, while enjoying, no demanding, the benefits provided by the state. Those who prattle about "freedom," "voluntarism," "human rights" are no better than squatters claiming their previleges to some public space as their private domain. What does man truly own anything, when his entire being is borrowed?
You write of "individuals" carving out a portion of creation and "defending" said arbitrary boundary with weapons and force; then what of the others "rights" to use of the said piece of creation? By what legitimacy do your set of "individuals" claim priority rights to use of creation over another set? There are several million Central and South American individuals who challenge the legitimacy of the USA in assigning arbitrary limits to the "rights" of movement into and out of the sociopolitical entity known as USA. Will you also argue that the "parasitic" US government and citizens desist in border enforcement?
Humanism is born from the hubris of mercantile scum and secomd-rate nobility in their ignorant rebellion against their betters. In their inadequacy, these rebel scum sowed the seeds of not only their extinction, but of the entire human race. The blood orgies of the French Revolution, the French Commune, the Communist Internationalism, and capitalist rape all stem from the ignorant arrogance of base-born merchant scum who dare imagine themselves equal to God, demanding "rights" from the Universe existing beyond their pitiful ken. All the miseries and horrors of the so-called "modern" era stem from men losing faith and principles. Now men only value rebellion, power, egotism, and crass desires. Rather than embracing their station and purpose, men rebel against nature, community, society, and God, in the guise of "freedom" and "rights." Remained unchecked, humanism, as the true parasite that have infected modern man's soul, will affect the extinction of man.
I think the vast majority of users call it censorship out of ignorance and they actually think they are being censored because the frontend they use makes it seem that way.
If it quacks like a duck, what could it be?
If our posts are suppressed, they are censored. Information cannot be eliminated. Defining censorship as only the elimination of information renders censorship nonexistent. Since censorship definitely exists, that is not a correct definition.
All credible sources define censorship as attempted suppression of information, and greying out posts is suppression.
Right, but the ignorance of the blockchain leads people to believe that Steem is censoring them or that the downvoter is the censor. In reality, the frontend is censoring... and anyone can make a frontend. There are no permissions involved in how the data of the blockchain is organized and displayed.
Anyone who uses Steemit agrees to their censorship rules, even if they don't realize it.
Very few people are able to parse the blockchain data without using a front end provided by others. Since front ends are all prone to censorship to some degree, that effectively censors the blockchain.
My point is that it is false to claim that suppression of posts isn't censorship. Flags are censorship, since they suppress posts. Demonetization on Youtube is censorship, even if the content isn't deleted. Deletion of content on Youtube is censorship even if content remains up on Bitchute. Censorship isn't either complete or nonexistent. It's impossible to eradicate information totally, and therefore censorship is any attempt to reduce the availability of content, and that includes flags.
This means nothing to me. I've wrote several posts about the Halo Effect and how people keep projecting their past experiences falsely onto the blockchain.
The most notable thing is the Dot Com bubble. Everyone is going to be damn surprised when 90% of the open source projects in the space don't fall off the face of the Earth.
Just because the Halo Effect exists doesn't mean that's all that exists. Clearly some of our experience is valid and appropriate on the blockchain, even if some people misapply some of their experiences sometimes.
If something resembles things we have experience with, it is the only appropriate response to compare it to what we do have experience with. Pattern recognition is really all we have.
What most on YouTube are discussing when it come to censorship and being demonitized is removing the ability for them to continue content production itself.
Kind of like you publishing a book and me removing the ability for you to get fu ds to keep printing said book.
It's a backdoor way to hurt those you disagree with while acting like you are not doing anything wrong. Additionally, when it comes to YouTube the main problem is their standards that are applied in any manner they see fit without proof or backup.
Just explaining the side of those I know of. Dosent mean there is not someone out there confusing censorship and targeted attacks from a corporate entity. Thanks for sharing!
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I agree with most of what you’re saying here. Censorship resistant is better than censorship proof. Do we want Steem to be a high value blockchain or a low-value censorship free blockchain where anything goes? Correct me if I wrong.
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In order for the blockchain to have value, it must be immutable. But, this does not mean it should guarantee anyone upvotes.
That being said, the ability for front ends to clean up illegal content is not unreasonable. The blockchain would technically always have it all, including death threats, but they don't have to display them.
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I think we can all agree that the user experience needs to improve.
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The blockchain is not immutable. The Earth isn't immutable. Nothing is immutable.
Agreement of consensus witnesses is all that is necessary to alter the blockchain. This agreement is attained every time there is a hard fork.
Code is infinitely mutable.
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In no definition of censorship from any credible source of definitions generally and commonly accepted is censorship limited to the complete eradication of information. All such sources define censorship as the attempt to suppress or alter information. Clearly, hiding text, using threats of economic harm, and similar means is suppression, and happens on all the front ends on Steem. While information may remain on the blockchain, it is necessary to parse that information with a front end, which very few people provide for themselves. Therefore, front ends being the means of accessing blockchain data necessary, censorship on front ends is essentially censoring the blockchain.
Further, information can be removed from the blockchain by agreement of consensus witnesses. While this may not have happened yet, it can happen. It certainly may have happened, and I would have no way of knowing.
In fact, it is impossible to completely eradicate information, and always has been. While a particular author can be eradicated, censored by bullet to the head, whatever information they sought to convey cannot be. It is fallacious to claim that since information still exists that censorship has not occurred.
It's just plain wrong. No credible dictionary agrees with that definition.
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