This is something that I've been noticing on Steem for a while. When I first joined I thought that there was freedom of speech, but that changed once I learned about flags. In other places, downvoting or disliking may only hide the post, but in here you actually lose money and reputation and may have long-term consequences (even the inability to post due to a lack of bandwidth).
I've seen people censor and hide entire accounts because they were against them. All posts greyed out because they held a different opinion. They stop posting eventually, feeling bitter about the community.
Steem, being decentralized, filled with spammers, scammers, people with conflicting ideas (spam war, etc.), is definitely not designed to be a safe place. It's a place that is meant to be regulated by communities, but communities always seek to homogenize their environments to their own liking.
You seem to sugges that something can be done, but what could be done about it? Some hardfork with more freedom? I think that instead they'd look for less freedom to stop people like Haejin from posting so much, scammers from posting fake links and spammers from posting the same thing over and over everywhere. Those are on people's lips more than censorship, it seems.
Thanks Sharon. Great comments!
I agree, the negative consequences of being on the end of a flag attack can be devastating, resulting in people losing heart, censoring themselves or even withdrawing from the community.
Solution: remove flags altogether and encourage overly sensitive types to use the MUTE button.
Yes, everyone's raging about Haejin and other steemit celebs abusing the rewards pool. This makes front page news. As I see it, they invest a lot of money into steem and get a ROI, just as I do when I upvote myself or pay a bot to do it for me :P
Those that organise flag attacks on opposing opinions are doing it sneakily though, covertly censoring people. Hardly anyone is taking it seriously. Certainly there is a problem with this and it's growing. That's why I called on three witnesses. I hope they can discuss this and find a way to deter those that repeatedly flag in attempts to censor opposing voices.
Thanks for your brilliant comment.
Anj x
Woah hold your horses. The argument that you invested so it entitles you to get that maximal ROI is way off base. I'll tell you what happens if you take this to the extreme: blank posts voted optimally every 2.4 hours. The platform health as a whole needs to be taken into consideration here.
Such a platform needs to keep an eye on disproportionately assigned value.
Removing flagging is not the answer, unless it is paired with a change to how value gets assigned to a post to prevent dumb scenarios like this. And it's not that easy either because there are less obvious ways to do the same.
I wouldn't say I get maximal ROI Eon. I make hardly anything here :P
Definitely that extreme scenario would be a disaster for the platform and I think we each have a responsibility to create quality content that makes it desirable to passing readers.
If all the millionaires decide to power down and take their money elsewhere, doesn't that mean the value of steem will go down for all of us? What is the incentive to invest one's money if there is no ROI? You're the maths guy, so I trust your analysis better than my own here.
Well, yeah. But the ROI shouldn't be from the voting and post payouts as far as an investor is concerned. It should be from (1) value of platform increasing, (2) possible "dividends", which already occur in the form of assigning interest to shareholders.
Participation is a separate matter, and I think it makes sense to separate the two. They can of course gain some from doing so, but they should follow the same etiquette as everyone else in thinking about the platform health as a whole.
I absolutely agree that anyone invested should be considering the platform's health as a whole. Unfortunately, some are in for the quick kill and don't seem to have the patience to wait for its overall value to increase. That's how it works in the real world too for some investors. Make a quick profit while it's possible and get out when the mainstream jump in.
It's beyond my knowledge, solutions to the problem of shark investors.
Yes, but only if it's text :D!
Steemit can unhost your images as can any content hosting service you find. And here we are encouraged to use third-party software and we only store a portion of what we post.
Even your photo could disappear in a rampage of censorship. We'd be left, if not for my comment, without any idea of what it says.
Nicely said and written Sharon! BTW, I want you to join the Womens History Month contest. :p
As I mentioned in a reply to the post the flagging feature could be a self-policing way to punish people whose opinions are outside the platform norms in support of political correctness?