@ned -- please get in touch with Infowars and pitch them on the value of building on this platform. They're in the censorship war and it is a perfect opportunity to land a big fish in the anti-censorship argument.
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Infowars? Goodness please no! Do they really need another platform to spew their hate fueled message?
Yeah, it's basically a hitlist of the worst possible people on the internet if Steemit wants to be seen as a credible platform.
Naturally they get upset about censorship as they peddle untold amounts of bullshit, get shot down, and then go have a big cry about it in front of a world map.
Twitter is literally a trading den of child pornography, and you're claiming that a news outlet with the reach of millions is not 'credible' because of "untold amounts of bullshit".
Anyone should be upset with censorship, particularly the politically motivated type.
Care to explain why you're a fan of centralized control in a place like this?
im a lil late to the party but @crystalandbones, @fourfourfun do you really think that steemit content is in any way being taken seriously the way it currently is?
Even myself as an early adopter cannot take Steemit seriously until more professional content comes to the platform. Currently I'm afraid to pitch steemit to my friends because I know if they were to look at the platform currently they would view it as a pyramid scheeme
I know as someone who disagrees with the political message of infowars that its hard want to share the platform with them. But their viewers and associates are the exact demographic that blockchain technology was designed to help. If we ignore people because they hold unpopular opinions than what are we even doing promoting a decentralized platform aimed towards circumventing online censorship?
Steemit has some challenges. If you spend any amount of time on here, you pick up on the frequent discussions on bot usage, loopholes to game the system, the reliance on single large entities to assist with rewarding users (on this, I've heard an argument that distribution is fine because all Steem ends up on the market in some shape or form, but that's like arguing that it is ok for people to be thirsty as long as someone else in the world is drinking water).
Some serious users will have ethical questions about using the platform. It is easy for publishers of misinformation and those who engineer incredibly negative agendas through subtle and incremental social compliance to find themselves rewarded and emboldened. You don't really want to be sharing a platform with them through choice. There is also no mechanism to address negative content beyond flagging. Ned has publicly stated to Polygon that this is the control method for the community and it has frequently been demonstrated to be as useful as pissing into the wind against power users. Nutshell is - if you have enough power, you are a) guaranteed that your voice is heard and spotlighted, b) able to slap down dissenting opinion at a whim.
That's all directed at the core fundamentals of the system and with no sense of recognition that there is anything that needs to be done, we can only assume that this is how it will be forever.
Outside of this, there are the functional uses with some of the apps. For disposable content with a short shelf life, dTube, dLive, Steepshot, Zappl... these are all fine. But what about the creation of something that is a slow burner? Music, film, books, art. You've got 7 days to earn everything you can, and then that is that. dSound already has competition from Musicoin--which pays per play--and this will be joined by its EOS based successor Emanate in the near future, both offering more for the target audience. Also, speaking of 7 day time limits, the idea that you cannot edit post-payout is not suitable for some media. You're trying to entice in creators but essentially they only have control over their content for an incredibly limited amount of time.
I also have big questions over IP. You're a one man band owner of a vinyl only imprint, proudly in control of your catalogue and everything to do with it, doing little more than breaking even but happy with your ecosystem. Some bod comes along and rips a stream of your tracks and uploads it to dSound/sticks it in a mix. You look across and think "hey, you're earning money off the back of MY work". Where do you go to address this? Everything I've seen again loosely points towards the sentiment that the community *may *do something about it with flagging. That's not really good enough. Start off talking about controlling content on Steemit and you're into the big war of censorship and it becomes a stage to go and wave ideologies around for an infinite amount of time.
In terms of the development that IS happening, SMT's sound like they are going to have a difficult time getting off the ground for smaller entities. As far as I can see, your ability to adopt it is centred around the amount of SteemPower you can throw into the pot for your users. Where are enthusiast platforms going to get that sort of money? Then add in all the issues with regards to actually moderating the content that goes onto your site as laid out above, and it becomes a really messy principle. Let's put it this way - enthusiast hobbies are plagued with terrible people who maraud around as gatekeepers, users whose past time is to idly tie up discourse with bad faith argument, or even those who spend their time belittling the very people who create the thing they like in the first place. Sites are now more about debating how they can *remove *comment threads rather than implement a gameable and unmoderated wild west into their site. "Don't read the comments" they say about YouTube. "Just remove comment sections" appears to be the solution.
All I see at the moment is huge push to replace every single social media platform out there but without any form of housekeeping to get the basics in order first. I'm heartened by the communities on here who are trying to push things towards the utopian vision of the site, but it increasingly feels like fighting against the stream.
Instead, if the front page continues to be an advertisement dominated by bot promoted trash, drama of the day, or even devolves into a hotbed for the conspiracy misinformation nuts, then people are just going to hold their hands up and walk away.
BLACK HELICOPTERS
I know -- lets ban all ideas anyone doesn't like so we can be like Twitter and YouTube.
Kindly GTFO with that nonsense.
thank you
I did notice with the addition of messaging and groups, it will be a lot like Facebook.
The two most powerful entities in every social situation is who has the most financial power and who has the most man power.
You don't have to agree with their perspective, lord knows I don't, But Steems strength is it's blockchain's ability to act as a public record and platform for free speech. There is absolutely no reason to ever discourage anyone from speaking earnestly.
You message is hate filled as well, you hate infowars. Though it was important to point that out. I think it is important to treat others as we would like to be treated and I don't think you would appreciate your speech being shut down.
Food for thought
That would be a great idea if soft-censorship didn't already exist on this platform, and wasn't being blatantly abused by one of the devs in that video.
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 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.
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.
@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
Interesting. Which dev?
Lord
@sneakerr um Volda.. I ahh.. had better not say. [learn more]Is it abuse or is it just how capitalism works? What is the difference? Or is there a difference? I understand and I may sympathize or empathize with that. When I first joined Steem in 2017, I was feeling that there was soft censorship or abuse or something in Steem. But I'm now thinking that Steem is ok maybe.
@joeyarnoldvn Flagging (or soft-censorship) on Steemit allows people who have amassed large amounts of Steem to nullify the votes of dozens if not hundreds of other users, and change a posts potential rewards from:
$X← to → $0.It also simultaneously causes the flagged post to be hidden (or dithered out). If you've ever run across a post that says click to reveal, it means that post has either been downvoted, flagged, or soft-censored.
With respect to the element in flagging that hides the post from view, it's closest real-world parallel is censorship. With respect to potential rewards being diverted, there are various parallels.
Capitalism might be one of those parallels depending on how you choose to view it. Steemit can be viewed in many different ways. A casino gulag, a business, a social networking platform, a way to receive value in exchange for posting user content, or a way to troll people with your whamhammer like some devs choose to do.
I would recommend reading the updated white paper, it's a curious experiment, what I found particularly interesting was the last paragraph of page 16.
Image via Freedom Feens
"The fact that everyone "wins something" plays on the same psychology that casinos use to keep people gambling. In other words, small rewards help reinforce the idea that it is possible to earn bigger rewards." – SteemWhitePaper.pdfEx-FaceBook President Admits Facebook Exploits a Human Vulnerability
If it were censorship, nobody could see it any more. Your claims are total bullshit. But you may consider yourself lucky that you obviously don't have the slightest idea what censorship is.
very nice post
Capitalism is exchange. Capitalism is a casino. I like voting. I do not down vote because I think it is better to reward, to focus on grace, on what I like. I guess people can down vote too but it is dangerous to go down that path. Is down voting part of capitalism? Not sure about that. I upvote. I comment and share. I may never down vote and flag for a lot of reasons.
I'm closer to your view @Joeyanoldvn I don't flag much. I did flag phishing scams.
Lovely.
It also costs them to exercise that power... sounds fair to me.
Steemit's plan would work, except people realise (after a few months) that you need money to gain popularity.
Steemit is like capitalism set loose... It only works for those at the top.
That's how capitalism works. Benefit the few at the expense of the masses...
Same fundamentals de-centralized.
In a way so that no-one can regulate it. It's pretty bad...
if you really believe that, why are you here?
what do you define as "works"?
I'm here to complain.
In elite Marxist circles, I believe that's known as 'useful idiocy'.
What. Protesting is idiocy?
Last I checked, capitalism is winning. In a world of scarce resources, some do better than most. And while many may feel excluded from the big boy's club, it doesn't meant the club itself isn't doing just fine for those participating.
Which is precisely why we should equal things out.
Us whales buy steem. Do you? If not, it'll be hard to get there ;)
That's a classic response. I'm not talking about whether or not I can make myself a lot of money on steemit (I use it to blog) but the fact that a few people recieve all of the reward pool is bad, and will drive users away from the platform.
Is it abuse or is it just how capitalism works? What is the difference? Or is there a difference? I understand and I may sympathize or empathize with that. When I first joined Steem in 2017, I was feeling that there was soft censorship or abuse or something in Steem. But I'm now thinking that Steem is ok maybe.
It depends on who wanna listen to infowars propaganda..however this is a free decentralised platform and more audience will be welcomed.
@charles1 gets it! Unlike some of the clowns above (ie @fourfourfun)
👏
😸😂😸😂😸😂😸😂😸😸😸😸😸😂😸😸😸😸
Blake, I love Info Wars, Cernovich, Molyneux, Drudge, Gab, Mug Club, Paul Joseph Watson, Scott Adams, etc. We can at least share their stuff here. I've been sharing stuff on Steem since 2017. I've been telling others about Steem on other social networks. We can continue to try to get more to join. There is an account with the name of Molyneux which may mean he may be here if it is not just a sock account. But at least his content is here.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Stefan_Molyneux has a good take on the value of Molyneux's ability to reason about the world. He used to be fairly reasonable some years ago, but seems to have gone off the deep end lately and is known these days for his racist, sexist rants. One has to do a bit of digging to see how nuts he is, it's not instantly apparent because he wasn't always like that.
Gab, on the other hand, is simply a haven for nazis since its inception, run by a founder who got kicked out of Y Combinator explicitly for being a raging asshole man-child: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/12/pro-trump-ceo-gets-booted-from-y-combinator/
Scott Adams demonstrating his competence: http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/fossils_are_bul.html
Let's hope these sorts of people take a long time to get with the program. They're the kind of content that mainstream (read: reasonable) audiences run screaming from (and rightfully so).
How is Molyneux racist? Is he racist for pointing out history, statistics, IQ variants, the patterns we see all around us? Is it racist to say there is more black to black violence on average, it seems, based on numbers, based on statistics?
lol @ u
That's a great idea, get em on board!
yeah so true
I think he should look into the matter
Thank you for changing the world.
No! no estoy de acuerdo con el "cambio del mundo" el mundo debe seguir como Dios lo creó. Las grandes ideas solo deben servir para que el hombre progrese mentalmente sin dañar el entorno.
Entonces para que sirve tanto esfuerzo, si no esta la armonía cuerpo espíritu. Disculpe mi osadía de interferir o molestar con mi inquietud.
Bill Gates is behind killer vaccines and agenda 21 and depopulation programs and more.