Censorship on social media prevented progress for Bitcoin's most pressing flaw. STEEM has the ability to stop censorship and to lower the effect of controlled opposition. This will become a growing issue for Steem's network, and it is a matter that should be handled sooner than later. I, and many others, have found a fundamental flaw with the social design, not a technical flaw. Steem's #1 Crippling Flaw is simply enabling users the ability to...
Flag Blogs / "Downvote" / Remove rewards on a post.
I am proposing that the STEEM developers remove this feature from the protocol entirely. This is important to preserving the relevancy, honesty, and anti-censorship for the Steem community. More information below...
How to tell if material is relevant and worthy
Here's how you tell: you vote on it! Having a stronger vote based on Steem Power works well, too. After all, corporations and privileged share holders have had much success with this model.
However, we have a problem...
When weighted share holders can "flag" or "down vote" on Steem's system, this effectively allows the "flagger" (or "down voter") to remove the value assigned by other individual's votes. This is effectively silencing their vote. This is effectively removing their vote. Does that tell us that a blog material is less worthy? No, that tells us that some voter's opinion matters. That's about it, and that's not valuable information.
How to attack the STEEM community
1: People have a message that just pisses you off? Here's how to censure them!
Do you see a post that you do not like? Or even better, does a post compete with your business and you do not less people to see the post? No problem! The STEEM protocol supports this. Here's what you need to do:
- Purchase STEEM.
- Power Up your STEEM. This gives you more influence to assign value and remove value from a post.
- Find that person's blog and flag it.
Success! You have just invalidated the votes of many others who found that blog useful and want it to catch the attention of others.
This is called "controlled opposition". Research that term to learn more.
2: Want to ruin a small-time blogger's income stream? Say no more, fam!
- Purchase STEEM.
- Power Up your STEEM.
- Look through this dumb blogger's posts for each day and flag all of them.
Let's say your flagging can remove as much as $100 in rewards. You can look at the last 7 days of a blogger's posts and then remove nearly $700 worth of their contributions to the network. This is a great way to prevent bloggers from spending their time on STEEM and moving onto another "decentralized" community.
This is called just being vindictive. Best of all: no one can stop you from removing the votes and tips of others.
3: Don't want anyone to know about this STEEM flaw?
...down vote it! It's a proper way to silence this blog. If 10,000 people vote this up, and you are in a group of 3 people that can silence 10,000 people, then do it! :D And in the end, who benefits: the STEEM community, or the few who wish to censor a message?
In the image below, 4 people found someone's message relevant. For the contribution, the author of the message (comment) would have received nearly $0.50 for their time. These 4 people's votes were eradicated with my vote. I do not agree with myself having the ability to do this, but screw it: STEEM allows me to do so!
Closing Thoughts
But I should be able to Flag Posts!!!
Sure, then people should decide what they do not want to listen to--it is not right for the privileged few to decide what materials should be hidden from others. Furthermore, it is not right for us to decide what other people should not see. I propose that Steem's protocol--or the website itself--allows the ability for you to hide posts from certain artists. This would be a personal preference, not a preference decided by Steem whales.
Let's steal money from the starving artist's tip jar!
...or how about we don't. Having the ability to flag posts and remove revenue from the author is the equivalent of stealing money from their tip jar. It's wrong. No one needs this ability.
Saying that Someone's vote does not matter...
...is not relevant to whether or not something has value. The "flagging" of posts is something created by the centralized social worlds of Reddit and many others. As for Reddit, that obviously didn't work to keep an open and censorship-resistant community. The biggest example that us crypto individuals will be familiar with are....
Totally agree Robert thank you for talking about this because if we are going to be truly censorship free then allowing people to remove rewards does also allow individuals especially with a lot of Steem Power to censure.
I know we can all work together to make others aware of this and inspire the developers to make a change with the STEEM protocol :D Thank you for sharing your words on this, Jerry.
You're welcome Robert and it is certainly worth talking about whether they make the change or not!
Yes, I agree that improper flagging is a threat to the system and you did the right thing by retaliating with more downvoting. But more than downvoting, I fear the capitalist economy system here. If I had a large sum of money, I could flag all posts here and upvote all my and my fam's content to earn all the rewards on offer! The two most objectionable things I find here are:
Anyone with deep pockets can purchase a lot of Steem Power and interfere the reward system here by upvoting or downvoting any content. However I agree that investment into the system do give some value to the Steem but investors should not be given any voting rights on the content platform. They can earn the interest and speculate on Steem's appreciation or downfall. But should keep away from judging the quality of the content.
Even if someone haven't got very deep pockets then too he / she can upvote / flag any content by purchasing the whale power from certain bots. All these bots who vote merely in return of money are bane to this system.
In fact, I was mulling over flagging the very content being cited as an example in the OP but I didn't. Infact I requested one of my friends to upvote my comment there. Unfortunately, we don't have any significant SP to make any difference. And I thought probably, the 4 upvotes were 50 times more valuable than my voting power so my downvoting wouldn't have made any difference.
I haven't flagged any one so far. I believe flagging is an offensive action and would invite retaliation from the one who receives a flag. It's like a war ...and wars can never establish peace. So if @dantheman thinks flagging has some important role here and is a must then we need to develop more prudent system here. Flagging should be like nuclear bombs. No single person controls the nuke system. Some sort of consensual model should be devised for flagging.
It's easy for whales to think flagging is necessary. THERE IS NO CENTRALIZED AUTHORITY FOR STEEM. Therefore, "flagging" is useless. @dantheman didn't think this part through, unless he intentionally wanted initial coin holders to be able to silence others--after all, large whales or large initial coin holders can be paid to silence others. It's valuable!
but we do need a mechanism to fight spam and plagiarism, too?!
how do we protect the reward pool from attacks like this one?
Btw, thanks for the link!
Plagiarism is going to happen. At least this will give someone (the one who was plagiarized) a reason to voice their concern. Recently a lady made $1000 from STEEM by calling out a plagiarizer of hers! This is awesome, because she was rewarded either way.
Yeah, it's great if a victim can be reimbursed in such a way. But I don't see where this touches on an alternative to protect the reward pool from abuse. Is flagging not a legitimate way to utter concern?
I think the problem with whales being able to just silence an opinion, does not stem from the ability to flag someone, but rather from the disproportionate power of whales around here. But that's a valid concern not only in terms of "silencing" opinions, but in all economic and social aspects of this community.
Flagging introduces extra problems. It's better to not introduce extra problems. "Plagiarism" isn't a problem, per se, but it sure does piss people off. Besides, if people truly love the author, they won't follow those who plagiarized. After all, plagiarism brings unexpected benefits to the author--the author can reach more followers by commenting on the plagiarized articles (and of course voting their comment up!), and the author will be rewarded for calling out the plagiarizer! I saw a girl make $1,000 USD doing this. During her complaint, she forgot to be thankful :) Besides, if an author's comment does well on the plagiarized post, technically they ALSO get rewards. It's a win-win! Plagiarism isn't a problem in STEEM--it's a problem in the old-style world of content and media.
so you are fine with people taking rewards out of the pool with stolen content?
or worse, as in the link i mentioned initially, without content at all and just a laborious scheme and fake-accounts!?
We all understand that this provides a larger opportunity for the one who was plagiarized, and TECHNICALLY, someone who is also promoting your brand and content should get paid for their effort to do so!
Fake accounts are going to happen. It is not something to solve at the protocol level. The protocol needs to be COMPLETELY neutral...and then allow the protocol services to decide what to censure from users. I say this from experience in the crypto world... this tends to be a good thing. Nothing wrong with neutrality--you cannot make everyone happy, and in this new world we are heading towards, we are sick of censorship. Aren't we?
I believe we both agree that:
yes, we DO agree on that!
but beyond plagiarism, there's still that problem with fake accounts.
Whale's have a right to their "disproportionate" power, as bloggers can even become whales. HOWEVER, if Whale's can take away a blogger from rising up and becoming a whale themselves--through the means of flagging / down voting--then this is obviously a problem. STEEM's protocol is unknowingly allowing this, and it is a deep flaw in the long term sustainability.
@jerrybanfield ----^
Technically bloggers can only become whales if they are helped by whales. Look at the distribution of rewards and where the voting power behind these comes from.
I am generally sympathetic to a "no-voice-can-be-silenced"-policy and unlimited free speech.
I just don't see flagging as the issue here! Maybe the way steemit.com handles reputation scores and the fact that posts with enough flags get hidden... that might be an issue.
I still stand behind the fact that the community needs a tool to protect the rewards pool from being drained with scams or ill-gotten-content.
The problem that flagging can be abused to silence opinions stems from disproportionate power (both in highlighting or hiding content) and the way content is presented.
eh! gotta stop you right there.... technically, bloggers can become whales by pumping their normal day-job paychecks into STEEM :D steemit.com handling "flagging" is a totally different thing, I do believe that the websites should be able to have content flagged. However, at the protocol level, flagging will remove rewards from someone. This effectively invalidates other's votes. This is where the problem lies. Does anyone have the right to remove your vote? Of course not!
still love you fraenk:)
I made a longer reply to your link elsewhere, but this is still the crux of the matter that I don't "get." Imagine 10 of us vote on whether or not to remove flags, (Steemit has agreed to implement our ruling we'll say), myself and 3 other people say we want to keep them, thereby losing 6 to 4. Has my vote been removed? Have I been censored?
You may be looking at it from the standpoint that everyone got a positive (+) vote, so no! But it's the exact same consensus mechanism we achieve with flagging.
This vote could be structured as two different posts.
Post #1: "I want to remove flagging!" Gets 6 up votes (+6) and 4 flags (-4) giving it a score of 2 (+2). 6-4=2
Post #2: "I want to keep flags!" Gets 4 up votes (+4) and 6 flags (-6) giving it a score of negative 2 (-2). 4-6=-2
No matter how you frame the process, the result is that I voted and my vote was removed, censored, and didn't count if I follow your thesis.
I don't ascribe to that though. Voting for one alternative is the same as down voting the other option. The idea that only positive voting is valid is flawed. For example, if you have done no voting today, and then proceed to use 20 full power votes on content you find to be good, the amount of value you contribute to their rewards is pulled away from all the other posts on the platform. You have weakened tens of thousands of votes and decreased rewards on thousands of posts through your upvoting actions. You are removing rewards from far more people then you are giving them to!
Alternatively, if you go find 20 posts of plagiarism and spam and flag them, the value you remove is distributed elsewhere. With 20 clicks you have done the same as going around and giving small up votes to every other piece of content on Steemit.
It's mathematically the same. Period. Arguably flagging is far more effective at distributing rewards more widely to deserving users. 20 * 100% flags are a lot easier to manage then 10,000 * 0.2% upvotes.... but they do the same thing.
Perception is entirely different, people may take flags personally, but that speaks to a need for rebranding and educating, not removing.
well, yeah... buying a whale-share is of course an option, too :P
I totally understand your concerns, but I stand behind the argument that we need a tool to combat scenarios as the one linked.
Without the ability to negate the 3000 votes from fake accounts, this could go on indefinitely, without anyone being able to ever do something about it. A network of thousands of fake accounts would keep growing upvoting numbered comments.
It's a tough nut to crack. I'd really like to see an approach where voices cannot be silenced, but at the same time i wouldn't want to open the doors for capitalizing on fake accounts.
love you too! I'm enjoying this thread!
More Steem, and more power you have. So with Steem one can be to someone, what Hitler was to the Jews.. lol. Does the other person gets to know about the person who has flagged his post? I would appreciate an answer.
That's true. I really abhor that power-play here!
Yes, you can very well know who flagged some post. Presently, I don't think there is any notification for it. But you can click to reveal that blurred (flagging collapse the post to hide it and make it blurred) post to you and then click on the no. of votes it had received. There you see all the names who had voted that post. Those who upvoted will have a '+' sign before their username and those who flagged / downvoted will have a '-' sign before their name. Check the example cited in this post here
@xyzashu
Thanks for the valuable info. I need to ask one more thing from you.
Well, Ashutosh ji, I just visited your profile and I see that you have reesteemed a number of others' blog post. Does it earn me anything if I reesteem a post of other?
Not exactly. I resteem the content which I think should reach more audience. And since I don't create too much, I feed whatever content I think my followers would probably love to read.
Secondly, if I've a bonding with some Stemian or some issue is close to my heart and I come across some post which I particularly find worthy of resteming, I just resteem it. It just take two clicks. So I don't expect to earn from them.
In the beginning, I used to participate in various contests which used to compell you to Upvote, Follow & Resteem their posts to make yourself eligible in those contests. So I used to resteem them. But after a week of resteeming, I didn't find them worthy of resteeming to all my followers as they used to earn only a couple of cents at best. So now, I don't participate in contests which makes resteeming mandatory.
While resteeming a few posts spread out over time is quite fine but I'd never like to flood my followers with resteemed posts.
ok, that was a good explanation, so we reesteem just for the sake of our audience, while earning nothing from it. I should upvote your post but no voting power left. Anyway, thanks!
You are welcome. And thanks a lot for your intention to upvote me. I checked up your profile and found that you joined here only couple of days back. But the way you are posting and voting, I'll consider you a hyperactive person 😊 Following you now!
Congratulations for reaching to Rep.. 34 so quickly. All the best for your journey here. Steem on!
Totally agree with you @robertgenito
Flagging and downvoting can ruin community. I believe it is not ok for someone to have that much power.
You have some excellent points here! Although there is a need to prevent spamming and other counter-productive practices, that should be based on the rules and social agreement of the society/community NOT based on the subjective opinion of someone with more or less money. Thanks for highlighting this for all of us!
Good point on the spamming. I'm not sure how much of a real problem that is....I'm sure it is, but I just don't want to assume it :D
Dan has pointed out many times why downvote are essential and if they were to ever be removed he would instantaneously set up experiment to prove his point.
Also downvotes of many dollars don't pose the same risk for the downvoters as downvotes equal to a few cents.
Is it true that a whale's downvote is worth much more than a few cents?
@robertgenito How about this: If a person flags/downvotes a post, the downvoter looses the equal value of any steem that was removed by the flag/downvote. If the downvote is for outright censorship this solution may not work. If the downvote is just to be mean or anti-competitve the downvoter may think twice. Thoughts...
That's an interesting thought. I do see the solution as simple: if you like something, then it is boosted for higher visibility in the community. If you don't like it... well... then keep looking and move on with your life! :D
I also don't agree with the flagging system as it stands now. As you said it can be a way to silence voices you just don't like. On the other hand I think it is necessary to have some sort of system in place that marks 'bad' content, like spam etc.
Here's a thought: shouldn't the "flagging" happen on the level of the website (whether it's busy.org, steemit.com, etc.) instead of effecting the protocol level?