Really I think about it like this. I know it truly is uncensored as it is on the blockchain. I even know steps I can take to go view the blockchain. Yet, if I need to do those steps am I likely to even bother?
Then there are the majority of people that would not be comfortable doing those steps, so effectively it is no different to them than Reddit, Facebook, etc hiding something at the database level. They will have no clue how to access it, and likely no inclination to learn, so it is effectively censorship from their perspective.
If there is an easy way that anyone can toggle a full view then that negates that concern. Without such a thing it is possible you may not even know comments were hidden that you might have been interested in. So without knowing, how will you know that you should look at the blockchain.
I believe the censorship free aspect of steemit/steem is a critical part of its attractiveness. I'd like to make sure people do not begin using and then due to hiding decide it was a "lie" and get very vocal. I've noticed negative attention often spreads faster and more out of control than positive.
Do 10 positive things and all it takes is 1 negative thing and some people will focus on that negative.
EDIT: What would be REALLY nice is if the icon to REVEAL hidden items only showed up when there was something hidden on that post. So the presence of the icon itself would be all that would be needed to let you know that things had been hidden/moderated. If the icon was not present then you would know that you are looking at the unmoderated FULL data related to the posts/comments.
By that logic, facebook is effectively censoring twitter, because you can't read tweets on facebook.com.
We think authors should get to choose what comments, if any, appear below their posts on steemit.com—full stop. It's not censorship because several other sites will choose to publish those comments. Anyone who wants to read them can view them elsewhere.
I would suggest that this feature be optional and presence or absence of this moderation be clearly displayed at the post or community level so people can be so informed when they choose whether to participate in that particular discussion (or even, perhaps more importantly, when reading it)
Yep that is basically what I was getting at. The presence of a simple icon could reveal that. Though I believe being able to click on it to view what was hidden is important. Ideally people shouldn't have to leave steemit to search for what was on the block chain.
Use of our website to access the Steem Blockchain is 100% optional. It is likely that other sites will have different opinions about what moderation opinions to heed.
Ours is not to be a neutral site, but a slightly opinionated one. There will be block explorers for people who want to see all the data. We are building a very specific environment for social interactions.
You are projecting your abilities and desires upon "everyone".
"Anyone" who wants to read them can read them. That is a false statement.
Anyone with the technical ability, or willingness to learn how can read them.
Just like anyone could technically file a Freedom of Information Act request and supposedly get the information they want. This is an extreme example as it is far more difficult and slow to get a response, and it may be redacted all over the place. Yet it shows that ANYONE can submit a FOIA request.
If there are barriers then the perception can be of censorship.
If you note my original comment you responded to I carefully chose that word "perception".
You can argue that they were not censored all you want. That won't stop the average person from saying they were censored and that negative press spreading all over the place.
My proposal is to make it so there is something built into the platform that makes your statement TRUE.
"Anyone who wants to read them can view them elsewhere."
The difference is I don't believe elsewhere is necessary. If there were an unobtrusive icon telling you that this post had hidden elements, then WHY would it be bad if that user decided to click that icon to see what they were?
You would still get to show what YOU WANTED. The difference is you are no longer expecting people to jump through hoops to look at what was hidden. The default is hidden, yet you've made the ability to see what was hidden something ANYONE can do, and not simply certain people technically inclined.
If a user can access our website, they can access other websites. This is not an unreasonable assumption.
Filing a FOIA request and navigating to a different page are not comparable.
We intend to provide a specific type of experience for our users, and that involves encoding some of our opinions into the product. Of course, the whole thing is open source and we hope people take the code and run it on many other domains with their opinions supported.
Ultimately due to the nature of the blockchain it becomes impossible for us to censor anything, and we are going to take full advantage of that to provide strong moderation tools on steemit.com for a censorship-free, yet enjoyable reading experience.
I think I can speak for most of the team when I say that we welcome lots and lots of negative press accusing us of "censorship". It's laugh-test inaccurate, and is free promotion. 😝
I disagree with you... I think @dwinblood described a elegant and very simple solution
You could create a platform-level or GUI-level per-user setting to prefer seeing censored comments in posts, and just disallow replies and collapse / grey them out in the UI. It might discourage fraudulent posting.
Replying to your nested reply, I think you missed my point. As the original post author or community creator I would like to be able to commit to visitors and readers that I have irrevocably waived my moderation rights, and have that commitment displayed on the web site. In doing so I can differentiate myself from those who are unwilling to accept unmoderated replies, feedback, and independent input, including critical or contrary views.
Why require that this feature be enabled for authors who explicitly do not want it?
You keep saying "the web site" as if steemit.com is the only window to this content. It's not.
There are certain types of content (an example being the encouragement or promotion of pedophilia, or posts promoting violence against minorities) that we will never permit to be displayed on steemit.com, regardless of one's settings.
You can of course expect a post about this and full transparency regarding our decisions at such time deploying our already-drafted policy becomes necessary. I hope that we as a community can forestall that day as long as possible.
We also hope that once we've shipped the communities feature, with the associated blockchain-based advisory moderation, that we will expand that to all users and all posts, allowing anyone to publish their moderation opinions into the blockchain, allowing anyone else to subscribe to their opinions to filter the site based on the set of opinions they choose to apply. That is a reader preference, and if a reader decides to subscribe to the moderation opinions of @someterribleperson, if they decide a user or community is garbage and should be perma-muted, any readers that subscribe to them would then have those posts hidden.
It's at least 6-12 months away before we tackle such things, though, so there will be plenty of time for input from users during the process. In the short term, the deployment of communities will give us useful real-world data on the social dynamics created as a result of such a model.
No, I said "the web site" because I was giving feedback (on the roadmap, which covers, among other things, the web site) and a suggestion for the web site. (Also, to the extent that the feature incorporates blockchain-enforced features, that as well, but I don't know exactly how it will work.)
Now please reread my comment with that intent in mind. It is perfectly reasonable that the developers of the web site have different ideas about how it should work and may decline to act on my suggestion, but my suggestion is a perfectly reasonable one based on the premise of censorship-resistance and (optionally) uncensored discussions (meaning uncensored by the author, not the site operator) being a value-add for the greater ecosystem including the steemit.com web site.
This has nothing to do with the author- or subcommunity moderator-based moderation feature. You won't allow it whether or not the author wants it.
I also well understand the distinction between a reader preference and otherwise. I am making a different suggestion, that author or subcommunity creator be able to visibly, verifiably, and irrevocably waive their ability to publish moderation advice that will be disseminated to readers via the blockchain and/or website using the feature. A small amount of thought will reveal the utility in this and why it is distinct from a reader preference.
Good approach
All of the moderation features will be purely UI/data layer. No censorship will ever be enforced at the blockchain/consensus layer (short of the bandwidth constraints based on block size pressure, which are old hat).
100% agree and the solution you provide is KISS approved :)