I think people are misunderstanding the idea behind the flag button (or maybe I am). I see it as a way of flagging spam, illegal, or inappropriate content (drugs, child pornography, spam links, etc). From my early experience, it seems like a few users here are simply using it as a dislike or thumbs down vote. I can only imagine the idea they had when creating Steemit was that you simply wouldn't upvote if you didn't agree with the topic, not that you would flag it as illegal and hide it from everyone. We should still support freedom of speech, regardless of personal views and opinions.
I wonder if adding a matching down arrow opposite the up-arrow would discourage flagging and instead just allow users to show their dissaproval of the content. This would be a way for them to say they don't agree without removing/hiding the post from others. I would imagine this issue has already been brought up or suggested somewhere else.
the flaggers could be an adult and just mute the person they don't want to see posts from. they would rather use the downvote as a weapon to try to censor people. the last 2 days it is all I have been dealing with on steemit. I want to get back to having fun and posting, not this whole trying to not be offencive to people that an find offence in anything if they want. I just had some chick go off on a ost because it used words like "poor baby and asshole". they are deemed as unintelligent I guess. im starting to think the steemit community is supporting actions like this because they wanto make a safe space to echo chamber in. :(
I actually thought steemit might have been a good site, I have been proven wrong daily by this crap. I have brought it up a bunch of times. here is my most current post about whats going on.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@skeptic/desmonid-is-proud-to-censor-steemit-out-of-opinion
It's an interesting dilemma. I think that the spirit of the crypto space, which obviously Steemit stems from, should continue with this platform and we should place a premium on allowing free speech and avoiding censorship based on opinion at all costs. It just seems counter-intuitive to the nature of this industry to allow censorship in this manner.
I agree fully,
also If you see what is happening with twitter and youtube it should be plain to see that censorship kills social platforms.