Steemit and steem are a great thing. They are also a very new thing. There are SOME places where we can make historical comparisons to what it is. Yet, in reality it is a hybrid of many concepts and as such that makes it a totally new thing that there really is no historical precedent. This means there are also a new set of problems that have never been encountered before in history. We as the community as well as the developers of the blockchain and various websites and apps like Steemit will need to seek solutions to issues that have not really ever existed in quite the hybrid combination that they are found here.
Source: WondersList
I want this to be a more positive post. I've had enough negative ranting posts on the topic here in the past, and calling for people to change behavior, expressed my concern over negative PR implications and such.
There are A LOT of new people though and you were not involved in the cycles of discussing these issues.
Please keep in mind that EVEN with these blemishes that we haven't implemented a solution for yet Steem and Steemit are still the best community on the internet in terms of social discussion, dialog, and creativity inspiration that I am aware of.
Eventually it is unavoidable that you will notice something. The down vote (aka flag) and the negative impact it can have on perceptions. This is more a perceptual thing.
This site and project are billed as being anti-censorship. Technically this is true as you cannot delete anything from the steem blockchain. It is there if you are willing to look at the blockchain with tools that can see everything.
The steem blockchain is truly a wonderous thing. People can design websites to view that data however they want. If for example you wanted to move an online newspaper off of its current host and onto the steem blockchain you could move that data over as blog posts, and you could build your news website to ONLY show posts from people that work at the newspaper. In such a case people like us using steemit.com would see their news posts mixed in with the rest of steem posts. However, people visiting the news website could get essentially a customized view that ONLY showed their articles. This means you could move traditional websites based around blogging, news, etc to the steem blockchain and your customers and business could benefit from being part of the steem ecosystem with voting, rewards, rewarding your readers, etc.
So that is a positive. It also explains why people argue you cannot censor things. The data is there, you simply need a way to see it. However, most of us for the time being will tend to use the flagship website steemit.com. There are already alternatives such as esteem, and busy.org.
The problem comes in when you see a post voted into oblivion that is not plagiarism, is not spam, and is not abusive. The only problem appears to be that some person(s) with a lot of steem power decided for some reason they didn't like the post. So if there is a big enough ding it will hide the post in some sense due to their down vote. It will be there, but grayed out and lower visibility unless some people with sufficient reputation come along and rescue it by up voting it. This is only one side effect though. Another thing some people may view as censorship if say they are a newspaper like above is that the potential reward for that post could be forced to $0 or greatly reduced. If the funding is important to being able to produce what is being produced then that could effectively end such a publication. "You are not censored", "I can't afford to keep doing it for free", "If you are here for the money you're here for the wrong reason", "This is what I do for a living, don't you want as many people as possible to use this platform", "We can do without some people", "Okay, I'll let my subscribers know why I am not using this platform". That is just me making up a dialog of back and forth between a person who was down voted and the person that down voted him. They usually are not that pleasant.
The problem is this. There were people that were in the right place at the right time and mined steem back when you could still mine. When steemit was launched back in July they already had a lot of steem power. Being in the right place at the right time does not mean a person may not be a jerk and feel a need to decide what other people should or should not have the right to see. This is very real. However, it is not due exclusively to them having this power at the beginning. The platform could support anyone with a lot of money instantly buying steem and powering themselves up to be at equivalent power. So WHEN (it will happen) steem truly explodes and a lot of people join we could end up with more powerful people overnight if they are willing to spend the money. Having a lot of money or power doesn't mean a person may not be intolerant, biased, and feel the need to oppress topics and/or people they don't like. This is human nature. It has been a problem throughout history.
The only positive to instant super powerful accounts being created is that this will drive the value of steem up a lot, and those of us that have steem will see the value of our accounts increase by quite a bit.
There has been a lot of debating and discussing on how to handle this. Technically the down vote IS the opposite of an up vote and you would think the impact of each would be equivalent. In a purely rational/logical sense this is true. By observation over many months I have concluded that for most people the down vote has a much larger psychological impact here on steemit than an up vote. This appears to be tied to the monetary aspect of the site being a force multiplier on the psyche.
The initial design of steemit was clearly modeled after reddit, and you can even see that in the name steemit. Reddit can become like trench warfare with it's down vote wars. It can be pretty hostile. Some people love it. Others hate it and avoid reddit primarily for that reason. It'd be nice not to have brought the same potential baggage to this design. This is amplified by the presence of money. People are more ecstatic when they get an up vote that rewards them well, and on the flip side when it takes rewards away they feel down trodden. Observation has shown me that on a purely psychological level the negative seems to have a larger weight. It can lead to depression, anger, etc. It can lead people to leave steemit, and if they have a following that can lead to negative PR against steemit.
This problem exists. It is a tricky one to navigate. Part of being decentralized and censorship free is that you cannot create a controlling group to monitor and police this. Such groups eventually can become biased themselves, they also CENTRALIZE operations and give a point of attack if someone wanted to take down or control the blockchain. This means some of the obvious things people have tried in other locations cannot be applied here if we wish to remain decentralized, and if our goal is to be censorship free at the blockchain level.
I do have some things I can tell you that might help. Besides the fact that there are simply always going to be jerks in the world, there are also some perceptual things that are colliding here.
There are really two things that have combined on steem. We have a market that has also combined with a boardroom/shareholder type environment. The problem is that markets and boardrooms treat votes very different from each other, but we've kind of combined them.
If you view steemit.com as a market for ideas, creativity, dialog, etc as I initially did then you view it much like walking into a store. When you walk into a store you BUY the things you are interested in, and you IGNORE the things you are not. You don't walk into a store with a black sharpy and start drawing big black negative check marks on the things you don't like. This is not how a market works. Instead you buy the things you are interested in, and people who like other things buy those. You don't get to decide "I hate caviar so no one should get paid for it". You don't need to. You simply let the market manage those things. Supply and Demand. It is not Supply, Demand, and Dislike. Dislike is not really a factor in a market. The factor really is how many people LIKE it (Demand) and thus will pay for it.
A boardroom on the other hand you call for votes on motions, ideas, etc and it is a YES or NO type of situation. Down votes make sense in this regard. Your steem power can be viewed as shares in a company. That is essentially what it is. It is Proof of Stake.
The interesting without historical precedent situation we are in is that we are actually using a hybrid. It is both of those things slammed together. This means we have a new set of never seen problems, that WE need to work together as a community to solve. They cannot magically solve themselves, and there is no red EASY button to press. In addition, people will suggest fixes based upon other historical situations that actually don't apply here. Some fixes may seem to address this problem while creating others.
Even with this voting issue steemit and steem are still one of the greatest things out there.
So what can you do? The only thing you can do is try to convince a person through reason not to be a jerk. Obviously calling them a jerk, and ranting at them is not going to work. In fact, it may simply get them to flag all of your posts. So the best course of action may be to be civil and plead your case on a purely rational sense. There are some people this may have no impact on. There are other cases it may work. The up side is if you DO succeed then perhaps how that person votes in the future may change.
We all can vote however we like. That is not going to change without centralizing and giving control to something/someone. We actually want people to vote how they want, I simply believe most people are viewing it as a market and the way the down vote works is very ALIEN in a market environment.
Realizing it is a hybrid might mentally shield you from some of the psychological impact of a down vote.
I have always been an advocate and defender in my life for the underdog, the bullied, etc. I have been anti-bully and would get right in their face. I personally have not been target flagged by anyone very powerful. I have had dialogs between myself and one of the more powerful people that would sometimes do this. I tried to keep it civil and when he resorted to name calling and belittling I did not. I did not take that bait. He did not flag me. I know he realizes I care about the community and I did treat him with civility even though we strongly disagreed on some points. Other people have bumped heads with him and become on his auto-flag bot so everything they post was flagged by him. I avoided that. SO FAR. Perhaps you can too, and that is why I shared how I approached it.
I challenged him and others not over me being flagged, but simply one of my TRIGGERS that I feel the need to stand up to those I perceive as bullies. When a person reduces potential earnings of someone for purely subjective reasons (i.e. other than plagiarism, spam, abuse) it can come across much like being bullied. This is an aspect of viewing it as a market rather than a boardroom. What we must remember is it is BOTH. It is truly something new, which means it has a new set of never before solved problems.
We can get angry and storm off and yell about it, or we can try to be part of the solution. We can work with the community and eventually we are sure to come up with solutions to these never before encountered problems.
Steem and Steemit are great. This is one of the big blemishes that EVERYONE eventually will get a glimpse of. It is the elephant that is there, but you don't notice it until it happens to step on you, or someone near you. Your face turns pale as you see it's massive bulk crush something. Fight or Flight then kicks in. Resisting the Fight or Flight mechanism is what we need to attempt to do.
"By observation over many months I have concluded that for most people the down vote has a much larger psychological impact here on steemit than an up vote. This appears to be tied to the monetary aspect of the site being a force multiplier on the psyche." -Money again is at the root of a problem lol
Great article, @dwinblood, and I loved the photographs - especially the shiney "NEW!" sign! XD
I was once flagged by a rather large account after my post had made a bit of money and in one fell swoop my post had gone invisible by the singular downvote. My post was an original video of me reviewing a product. I messaged the individual who downvoted me and tried to reason with them, and it came out that he literally just did not like the video. I tried to ask why to try and create more quality content that everyone may enjoy in the future and they stopped replying.
Sometimes rational discussion goes nowhere...then what? lol
Human nature. Yes, it won't always work. Yet we must still make the attempt.
Also changing a persons mind is not instantaneous (or rarely so). You have no way of knowing if what you said planted a seed that took time to make sense to them and some time down the road you may have changed them in some way.
I absolutely agree that every time the effort should be put forth to be civil, but at the point of which they continue in such a way that is divisive what do we do?
And you're right, I'd never thought about the fact that I could have "planted a seed." Change often does take time.
What you can. Yet don't drop to their level. Act like the person you'd hope other people would be like. Don't sully yourself due to their intractable nature.
I think in any controversial subject or where you have someone acting in defense of their beliefs it almost always takes time. The cases where it does not are actually pretty rare.
I like the analogy in relation to downvoting, when you go to a store you buy things you like or need and don't break stuff so others can not buy it anymore. Also is there a relation to the downvoting system where people with higher reputation have more power to downvote than others in relation to the upcomming Hardfork 19? Or doesn't that have any relation to each other?
Reputation is purely a WEBSITE side feature of steemit.com. It is not actually part of the blockchain. So if you were say on busy.org or another blockchain viewing website the reputation system may or may not do anything. Since it is not actually implemented in the blockchain it really has no impact on how you vote. It is basically a cosmetic FIX for the Steemit.com website.
Right, that makes it clear enough. Thank you
It is interesting to consider where it will go, whats in store for SteemIt as we grow?
There will be good times and bad times. This is unavoidable and is an aspect of life, and human nature.
Great Post @dwinblood ! I agree with your premise and reasoning. I liked the approach and introduction to the main problem on steemit basically being aimed at new people to steem, and also a reminder to all that yes, there is an elephant in the room and we can do only one thing about, use civility and reasoning for dispute resolution. Everyone must remember the entire legal systems of the world were originally established for one reason, Dispute Resolution ! Personally I believe in the Non Aggression Principle, where civility, reasoning and conversation is first and foremost in a dispute resolution situation. As you have said to new people and to all, I say also, There is in fact an Elephant in the room which we have yet to be able come to a resolution, but how we personally deal with this problem is what, I believe in the end will contribute to a positive resolution.
In other words, Don't be a jerk just because someone else is !
Read More, Reason More ... JTS
I like your problem solving method of just focusing on what you actually can do and being very conscious of what is outside of your agency to change. Just keep adding positive to the world and pay attention to the things you like whilst ignoring the things you don't. Steem on, amigo!
Important topic, but I can not really come up with any approach to solve the problem.
I am in favor of the different power of accounts, even tho this could be a little more balanced (wasn't a future fork supposed to do that?). It prevents a lot of shady methods like spam creating accounts. I also think people who invested more time and money on Steemit deserve to have more influence.
I also never seen an unfair downvote. Bernie downvoted a comment of mine, but I essentially called him a racist, so it was not unjustified. I have seen some justified downvotes for tag abuse and identity theft and I thought it is kind of cool, that everybody has some sort of policing power, well at least if you got Steem Power.
As a new User I can ofc see how frustrating it can be to have your account be invisible and unprofitable after you put a lot of energy into it to get going.
I can only offer the centralized approach of having some sort of Steem Police, similar to trails or even more like witnesses, but with the official power that every downvote has to be double checked by them to be effective, to make sure it is not just a bully downvote. But there are also a ton of problems with this solution, mainly the potential abuse of power and corruption. So yeah....
It's hard to say. I don't know if he is as active at it as he was. I know he was auto-flagging anything stellabelle wrote recently or so she claimed to me, though I noticed some of her stuff was not flagged. I'm not sure, and didn't really look into it. Bernie has the potential to do great good and great harm. I simply hope he comes out on the balance of doing good, and I am optimistic that he will.
As to solution... it will not be easy. I wasn't actually asking for a solution.
I was more or less just going over the situation for the benefit of all the new people.
It is probably the biggest BLEMISH/FLAW in the system at the moment. Yet, we haven't really come up with a solution.
If I see a problem I start thinking about solutions, does not matter if I am asked to or not ;)
To be fair I had a rather unpleasant convo with Stella, I like her and had some good talks with her before, but I really hate passive aggressiveness.
Yeah, I don't always agree with Stella either. She's written some things I strongly disagreed with. Yet I won't follow her around flagging her. She has also written pieces I strongly agreed with.
I actually will NEVER flag a piece because I dislike it. I'll only flag spam, plagiarism, and abuse. In such cases I'd likely negotiate with the person before flagging.
I very much dislike the flag. I prefer the market approach myself.
I know you do, but I think the fear of downvotes helps Steemit. Flagging for disagreeing or other reasons is a shameful act and I would personally never do it, but we have to live with people doing it or we need actual police, imo.
Yep, they are going to do it.
Then our job is to try to convince them to hopefully change their ways. We simply cannot expect them to say "Gee you're right" and instantly change. That likely won't happen. We however may influence them in ways that over time could lead to change.
What is an elephant in your room
It is a euphemism. Sorry I forget some people not from my part of the world may be unfamiliar with the term.
It is essentially hinting at the concept that there is something REALLY BIG in the room with you, but everyone is trying to pretend it is not there. They act like they don't notice it.
The Elephant in the room basically refers to that.
To be honest, it's difficult for me to understand your article, because of the small knowledge of English, but it seems to me that I understood the main thing ... Do you want to make life better ...? ...)
The main purpose of the article was to point out that steemit is combining too types of environments that have not been combined before. How you VOTE in such environments is different. They don't exactly go together smoothly. So if you see down votes, don't get angry and attack. If you believe the down vote is not deserved then discuss it rationally and with civility with the person who down voted.
Other than that yes "Do you want to make life better" also could be part of what I wrote. :)
Thank you, I will try to improve my English)
It's not a problem. I am glad you are here. I can get VERY wordy. That can be hard for many people that speak English as their native language. For someone who does not I imagine it can be quite challenging.
I'm also glad that I'm here)
everything will be fine))
jerks can be found anywhere and it is not easy to ration with them. In my opinion, a post should be flagged only if it is flagged by a specified amount of the post's viewers.
People have actually proposed this before. It is something worth trying.
This is true. Though there are a lot of NOT EASY things. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try. :)
I am one with the STEEM and one WITH the FORCE
Great post! I'm thrilled to be a part of this.. I believe in this community!
Beautifully done!!! Definitely worth a resteem! I try to take the "store" approach to things with which I disagree... Just keep scrolling, nothing to see here. I don't remember ever having a post flagged- I have had a comment or two. I tried to point out the error in the ways of a SJW and she and all of her little cuck friends flagged my comment lol! By the way... did you check out Lawnmower Deth? They're Spoof Metal (a category Sam missed) but musically, they're pretty tight.
Yeah I listened to it. It was interesting. :) I hadn't heard it before.
Any device that judges between spam, trolling, and unpopular opinion is going to be managed by a human's subjective thinking. For the most part , that hasn't abused to the point I have been afraid it could be.
I won't name anyone in the biggest counter-example, but the guy who got censored the greatest here made it a point to shove his thumb right back in the censors' eyes, sometimes in pretty vulgar ways...the Don Quixote of Steemit. You could say that his confrontational mode of engaging the subject was going to take him to where he is now.
The next biggest case I have seen was that of @knrel; again, he made it a point to call out that behavior, but he did it in a reasoned manner. His decision to quit writing as much for the platform after the fallout should be considered one of our biggest losses.
That is going to require Steemers with both persuasive and courtesy skills. It's going to take Steemers who aren't afraid of bucking whales and/or the community at large. It's going to take Steemers with knowledge of the platform beyond the DEU point.
Because it is going to take respectful, knowledgeable persuasion to change the mindset of what should be flagged. people, whether wale or minnow, usually don't change their minds.
Very passionate and detailed writing in this post. Thank you!
Yes, this is a risk. It's also the only choice we have at the moment. :)
Yeah @krnel was telling me to POINT out names when I was challenging them before him. That was not my goal. He and I had different approaches, but I also wrote posts against some of the same people he did. I actually changed some minds, but not the minds of those @krnel ended up going after.
It highlighted the problem to those that were not already aware, but ultimately all it did was result in @krnel leaving. I don't necessarily consider that a WIN. It seems like a LOSS to me. Which you seem to have indicated as well.
I've done so. It can be done without resorting to name calling, belittling, etc. Those things don't typically turn out too well. They tend to be more for the sake of the audience rather than changing the minds of the target. Yet it is the people that are performing these actions and have so much power they are difficult to counter that must have their minds changed if possible. I don't believe you will change their mind by name calling, belittling, and attempting to shame them. That is simply a path to escalation. You also cannot expect their minds to change instantly. If you are reasonable and what you say seems to make sense then perhaps over time it will change them as well. They need time to think on it. The ideas need to take root and grow.
That is my approach. I realize people do things differently, and people respond to things differently. I no longer expect instantaneous change and capitulation. I consider it a mental war of attrition fought with civility and reason.
Difficult things can often provide the best rewards.
Very thoughtful article. I joined steam it a few days ago and am still learning how this all works. From what I gather - certain people with higher Steam Power have used their influence to purposely down vote for no apparent reason. Hoping somethings changes to even things out for the rest of us. Otherwise noobies will give up and move on from this platform.
Yes it does happen. Yet don't let it make you leave. If you don't lash out they move on and anyone can do just fine.
They are few in number (handful) but very powerful. Though the system allows it so WHEN things explode (which I expect they will) and a ton of people join I suspect some people might spend money and power up and we could have more of these, and we could have people that spend money to power up and counter them.
It is also possible the new linear voting curve that is coming will help with this quite a bit.
If censorship took hold here, couldnt someone make another website that integrates into using Steem blockchain?
They already have. Yes, that is also why they say you can't truly censor. It is still in the blockchain so you could totally make a website if you wanted that ONLY showed everything that was "censored" from steemit. So yes technically STEEM is censorship free... unless you require funding. In that case yes someone can remove ALL of your funding and whether it is in the blockchain or not does not stop that.
I really think the idea of someone putting together a third-party subscription-based (Steem powered) DRO (Dispute Resolution Organization) could solve this problem. The one major concern with this idea however is that there's no provision for it in the network. The only recourse anyone has right now is downvoting. Downvoting by a collective agency (voluntarily participated in mind you) could be very powerful in certain cases, but if someone just sets up an anonymous troll account and uses it only for attacks, there's no way to fight whatever Steem Power they've funded it with. A dispute resolution function needs to be built in, and needs to function in such a way that bad actors with lots of Steem Power can be nullified in their clout.
Meeting down votes with down votes tends to just escalate. I've seen this tried. It goes from an incident of problem and can flame out into a big war.
Dispute Resolution is great as long as it is decentralized and is not biased. I don't know of a way to prevent bias.
People also say you cannot censor the blockchain. This is technically true. The payouts of the blockchain can be censored though.
Someone with power can do everything they can to try to make certain that certain people, or topics receive no reward.
So financial censorship is possible. I believe this is a problem. It is also a problem to which I have no clear solution.
I think the decentralized nature of a DRO could come from two qualities. The first would be the voluntary nature of participation. It would essentially be an insurance policy to protect people who are making their living posting in the Steemit environment. The second would come from the DRO's financial structure. A portion of the subscription fees could be used to pay the officers of the organization, and another portion would then be used to power the entity up and give it clout. The provision for DRO's would require that instant divestment would be possible.
For example, if your DRO was abusive, once exposed people could just withdraw their vested interest in the entity, stripping it of some of its power and income, and transfer it to a competitor. The incentive for the DRO to avoid this circumstance would be huge. This would be the self-regulating aspect. While not completely decentralized, it wouldn't be concentrated into a single entity, especially if abuses were apparent. Competitors would have an incentive to pop up to take advantage of the vulnerability.
The last part of the formula that is glaringly absent, is that there is no recourse for anyone on the platform to counter powerful troll accounts (or even non-powerful ones) that abuse their financial authority. There has to be a way to destroy a troll's reputation points (only in just circumstances of course), not just in their ability to receive payouts for posts, but also in their ability to have clout flagging or even upvoting others. It's obvious that we've already got some pretty heavy hitters on here that are just going around flagging people arbitrarily and they don't care about payouts for their posts.
Trust me. This is having an impact. My daughter and I picked out people we want to avoid before we ever signed up. My daughter and I both have blogged in the past. And various rounds with various social media. She was definitely hesitant. In fact, she has yet to create her first post. I don't know if it's a real life issue or if she's still having doubts to be honest though.
My husband said it this way, "A whale behaving like a troll is a troll. There's no other way to see it. And it is disturbing."
I do believe there should be a way to report people who are just down-voting because they are challenged by the material. Is there not an abuse reporting system?
There is another thing to consider here. Some people practice being a troll to stir up attention and create an emotionally charged division ... and also create an emotionally charged bond with people who decide the troll is on the "right" side. And this is their business plan as well. Sad but true.
It is decentralized so it cannot be taken down by the governments and people that would want to shut it down and censor it.
Really to be able to REPORT it to someone you'd have to centralize it. You'd have to give some group of people the authority to do something about it.
It is a problem, but this is super new so we have some never before seen problems to encounter. There have been things similar to these problems, but not quite the same.
It is worth hanging in there though. If you keep it civil even in the face of them being a jerk you'll do quite well.
TY for the info and the encouragement :)
This is something that I was just starting to dig into, I am glad I read this article it is very good.
Here is something that I was getting ready to address.
can I please have some of your and your followers input on
hmm... I sense a disturbance in the post's,articles that one of my followers is trying to share. IT seems as if almost everything he post is getting hidden.seems to have started about 6 days ago,almost everything he post get hidden except a couple of posts he resteemed . check out his page and tell me what you see.and what you think. @jtest please I want some out side opinion before I go and get my self in hot water writing a post and maybe end up in same situation...but if what I am seeing is right ,then I am probably going to pick a fight I probably shouldn't... thank and namaste!
I have a little of that stand for the underdog in me too... trying to talk to Mr. Peabody so he can explain to poly pure bred what happened to the UNDERDOG!
:-)
namaste
Here are the people down voting them:
Are these whales with an agenda?
Or is he really doing something wrong?
I understand that some of it is being called plagiarism or copying and posting .
But I am not a expert at this,I see a lot of post that are doing basically the same ...
Thanks for the names .
Namaste
Yeah that are not even close to whales. I'm not that big. I have 16K Steem Power but I am bigger than all of those guys.
It takes at least 100K Steem Power (sometimes 400K depending upon who you talk to) to be considered a whale.
🤠
Thank you.
Something to do tomorrow,dig a little deeper.
HGN or HGD😎
Namaste
The don't look like whales to me.
You have highlighted some valid points. Awareness is good!
Thanks for a great article
found it very sobering and insightful. I understand the blockchain tech but am new to Steemit so still learning how it works.
i am very concerned about the censorship in social media today.
so my immediate thought is - what about a site without the rewards consept?
that way the info could be posted on the blockchain without problem of censorship.