@masteryoda: you are overreacting and throwing baseless accusations.
First I'm not aware of any slander having occurred. The discussion in the slack channel was respectful and constructive as far as I can tell. If you feel that you have been slandered, this must be the action of an isolated individual, and not the community as a whole and I would recommend that you settle the matter with the individual in question instead of throwing the blame piecemeal at everyone around.
You are also slinging mud on the curators in #steemitabuse. Are you aware we are spending hours of our personal time to detect and counter spam and plagiarism to keep this website clean and do not receive any compensation for doing this job? I can understand you resent the difference of opinion between your definition of "fair use" and that of the community. But do you really need to belittle the work of tens of volunteers to express your dissatisfaction?
Last but not least you imply that there is some sort of conspiracy that lead to the concerted downvote of your latest posts. This is simply absurd. Look at the votes on your two last posts: as of the time of this post, you have got a single (ONE) downvote on the latest post, and 2 (TWO) downvotes on the previous one (out of dozens of votes), and the Steemians who downvoted you were not even involved in the Slack conversation yesterday. Basically you are crying out because one or two individuals who used to support you changed their mind after your annual smithsonian photo contest post sparked controversy around intellectual property rights and probably made them reconsider their support. Are you seriously thinking it is proper to blame the whole Steem community because you lost the support of two individuals after one of your post attracted a lot of negative attention?
Please calm down and look at things objectively. The situation is what it has always been: contents are being voted based on the aggregate community opinion of the relative value of each post. As any society, the Steem community is evolving and what it considers to be valuable or acceptable changes over time. It's everyone's responsibility to remain aware of societal change and adapt accordingly. It doesn't mean that posting external content has become unacceptable, but obviously awareness has risen around intellectual property matters and it has now become more important than ever to strike the right balance between fair use under the "right to quote" and original content.
I am a frequenter of steemitabuse and as an individual with opinions which were shared there I would be happy to discuss them with masteryoda 1 on 1, but he is not obliged to do so if he does not want to.
Let it be known that I have shared my personal views directly to masteryoda on the slack, sharing honestly and openly things which he obviously did not agree with or enjoy, and did not respond to (he does not have to respond). But that is how life works. I have never downvoted masteryoda nor have I lobbied to have him downvoted. I would not characterize the content of the opinions shared on the steemitabuse slack as slander or hate. Neither would I consider all of his posts as plagiarism once attribution is given. My issue is more philosophical, and I think it has already been said and there's no need to go into it any more.