CENSORSHIP
Language is a very powerful tool because it shapes the way we think. The words we choose to use impact how we think, feel, and reason about the world around us. Today I would like to address the word censorship because it is a very hot topic on steemit.
The first problem we always face is different and ambiguous definitions for censorship. Unfortunately, it isn’t always practical to define our terms in every debate and therefore drama queens toss the term “censorship” around far too easily. I would go so far as to say that the censorship card is played about as often and illegitimately as the race card. Often those who play the race card are more racist and oppressive than those they slander, the same principle applies to those who play the censorship card.
Censorship requires Aggression
The defining characteristic of a free society is the absence of initiation of violence. This includes the credible threat of violence, fraud, theft, etc. Without the threat of aggression people can freely say whatever they want, whenever they want without fear that their person or property will be harmed. A critical distinction of a free society is that you cannot express yourself in ways that violate the property rights of others.
Graffiti is Aggression and violation of Property Rights
Graffiti is defined as writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. In a free society the Graffiti artist would be tracked down and expected to pay restitution to the property owner. No rational individual would argue that the artist has been censored by the property owner or that the property owner is the one initiating aggression against the artist.
Property Owner defines Art vs Graffiti
There are places where graffiti-style art is acceptable and is actually encouraged. In this case no aggression has occurred and therefore the action is legitimate.
Spam, Porn, Harassment, and Fraudulent posts are Digital Graffiti
When it comes to websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit, and Steemit we have digital property owned by individuals providing a free and voluntary service to society. It is not possible for these organizations to censor user content because they are not using violence, theft, etc.
The only true censorship is when government agents approach these companies and demand content be removed under threat of force or violence. Provided these companies are not under any kind of threat, there can be no censorship.
When someone demands that YouTube share ad revenue they are taking the role of the Graffiti artist that demands property owners not repaint over their artwork.
Some people may consider the Graffiti artwork worth thousands of dollars, but this doesn’t change the moral character of the vandalism. Likewise, some people may feel their humor, sarcasm, teasing, crude language, or vulgar posts to be artwork and demand that other users see it and/or up vote it for payment.
Graffiti Hurts Community Value
We all love the idea that Free Speech adds value to the speaker, but our selfish desires to be heard come at the expense of the listeners. Few people desire to move into a neighborhood where there is unfettered graffiti and complete disrespect for property rights. Likewise, few people want to join an online community where there are no standards of mutual respect.
A Perception Problem
We have a very real problem in society today. The problem is that people feel entitled to things that are not theirs. Whether it is health care, google ranking, reputation, or right for gay couples to be served by particular vendors who oppose gay marriage. These entitlements can only be delivered by initiating force and violence against innocent people.
If a particular vendor (YouTube, Facebook, Google, or your Local Florist) will not serve you, then you must take your business elsewhere. Vendors who lose a significant amount of business will voluntarily reconsider their policies.
But they have a monopoly!
To the extent that a business gains the vast majority of the market share without relying on government regulations to shield them from competition, the monopoly is deserved and was earned by providing a quality product that others were unable to compete with.
There are no laws forcing everyone to use Google, YouTube, Reddit, or Facebook. There are no regulations preventing competitors from starting up and competing. Complaining about their unwillingness to serve you is like a local mall refusing to allow certain tenants. It will certainly make business more challenging for those tenants, but the prospective tenants are not entitled to a prime high-traffic spot in the mall.
Flagging Posts based upon Differing Opinions
Some people have been complaining about users who down-vote posts they disagree with. The basis of the idea is that all posts are entitled to funding from those who support the ideas. This stance is in direct opposition to the vested interests of every stakeholder.
What should happen when one stakeholder wishes to fund a cause abhorrent to another stakeholder of equal size? The two opinions are canceled out and the remaining stakeholders get to decide.
Incentive to be Tolerant and Inclusive
All users, particularly whales, have financial incentive to be tolerant and inclusive. This grows the overall network effect and makes everyone the most money possible. To the extent any community adopts a culture of intolerance that overly restricts the range of acceptable opinion it will push people away. New communities will form to serve the needs of those who are rejected and the free market competition for mindshare will continue.
Conclusion
If Steem remains a libertarian / anarchist enclave then it will fail to attract a broader audience and that in turn will mean that ordinary people will not get involved with cryptocurrency. Likewise, if Steemit fails to curtail abusive, threatening, and toxic individuals it will also drive away the broader audience leaving only those with skin thick enough to take the abuse of trolls.
I want Steem be a healthy, vibrant community with engaging discussions from people with all points of view. Unfortunately (and fortunately?), I am only one of many users who have a say in what kind of content gets voted on. Each and every one of us contributes to the culture and we will all succeed or fail based upon how we act.
Lets stop throwing the term “censorship” around here on Steemit unless it is explicitly referring to the threat of violence. It is out of place and conjures up inappropriate negative reactions similar to playing the race card. Instead, lets focus on the rights of all voters to express their opinion for or against any post. If you disagree with how someone is voting, then focus your argument on how something adds or removes value to the community rather than whether someone is committing the “vile” sin of non-censorship by utilizing their legitimate voting rights.
Steemit is a free and voluntary platform built on the basis of free association; censorship is impossible in such an environment even if the community or steemit.com chooses to minimize the visibility of some content or block it all together.
The blockchain is open, your content is logged and recorded for all time. Anyone who wants to see your content or offer a competing service to steemit.com is free to curate and display what they like.
P.S. On Definitions
We live in a world where common words are generally used in ways that are in direct contradiction of their meaning. The unfortunate reality dramatically lowers the quality of public discourse because it allows people to talk past each other. Activists leverage the emotional response to the word censorship to provoke people into violating the property rights of others. It may well be that censorship is taking on a broader meaning that would also encompass the no coerced behavior of Google, Facebook, etc. The problem with the broader meaning is that the word censorship is no longer useful for accurately defining moral/immoral behavior. Under the broader definition, accusing someone of censorship is as meaningless as accusing them of filtering spam emails. How dare they censor spam artists!
You've made the concept of downvoting complicated by changing the concept on the Steemit front end to flagging. Flagging as a concept on other websites is meant for clear cases of user content needing removal. On Steemit, newer users seeing a flag feel directly threatened that the perfectly ok post they've made has been selected as needing removal.
Their pre-existing concepts clash with existing concepts of other Steem users, especially those that have been around before a downvote was called a flag by Steemit. I participated in a discussion on this topic in this post: https://steemit.com/steemitabuse/@generalspecific/a-recourse-for-preventing-the-abuse-of-flagging-downvotes
Is there a better concept to put forward than flag for downvotes? The concept disparity between old and new, and between Steem and Steemit have caused issues.
The switch from downvoting to flagging in the UI was a mistake. It contradicts the notion of a platform where stakeholders decide on the fate of content as a consensus between people who may agree or disagree and turns it into one where a UI designer has imposed a non-neutral value system on what it means to downvote and when that should be used.
The reputation system has its own issues, but at least all the inputs to reputation are those that come from stakeholders (over time), not a UI designer. Even if, as is the case, the rules for aggregating this input are are somewhat arbitrary and broken.
Finally, hiding content based on voting and/or rep should be configurable by the end user. I may want to filter out all content that doesn't get enough upvotes (for example at least 1 MV worth). You may want to filter out content from anyone with less than a 70 rep. Someone else might want to see the whole fire hose. And finally someone may wish to see only that which has been approved by a specified set of voters (perhaps this could be used for "parental controls" with a trusted child-friendly approval service). There is no harm in providing this choice (other than the costs of implementing it of course).
I think we are using old words or expressions said by famous people in order to establish rules in a pretty different social frame to ours.
Should not we update our language to define our present social conditions?
For me, "free" is a rather inaccurate word to gain consensus on the basics of social norms. The word "Free" carries a long semantic background of emotion and romanticism, with little practical value for settling respectful traits among members of a society. This is particularly relevant when you realize that actually is a secondary concept in terms of obtaining "social coherence" which is the ultimate goal of any rightful social construct.
It gets even worse when we still see our self decoupled from the rest of "our humanity" by obsolete concept nomenclatures, like property, or competitiveness, and considering the personal sphere as "the supreme consideration".
In order to evolve as a specie, we must start changing the narrative and semantics we use to describe the new reality.
I do not mean that Freedom is not a very relevant human concept, but maybe "Coherence" is a far more relevant concept than Freedom And cooperation far richer than competence.
Reality is emerging and exponentially faster, and we should be more flexible in order to thrive.
Inconceivable! ;)
Upvote this ^ until it is visible
Done...
Inconceivable!
I don't think that to be attracted to crypto generally, or to the steem platform, you have to be full on barry cooper or lukeawarechange. But I do think that generally, the target audience is libertarian leaning.
Call it "censorship" or whatever you like. When a single user or group of users comes together to hide information they don't like, or just arbitrarily hide information out of spite, its desirable to stop that.
I do agree with you that anyone ought to be able to vote however they like, and that its reasonable to restrict visibility based on that vote (in fact, i think trying to suppress downvotes is just as bad as trying to suppress content). That said, with so much effort expended to "police" content, i think it is possible for the pendulum to swing too far in the wrong direction.
For example, lets say that several stakeholders join forces to create an even medium-sized block, say 20,000SP. Just as an example, lets say they decide to flag any post about abortion that is pro-choice. At that point, "let the other stakeholders decide" is sort of irrelevant because the other stakeholders will very likely never see it.
In fact, a single rogue user was able to hide dozens of new users post. I was actually pretty surprised that in all the talk about how we could take away this guys vote, no one ever thought to go back and unhide all the posts that had been hidden.
Good post Dan. It needed to be written. You know me as the up votes only guy who sees flagging as being appropriate for the same things you listed. I am one of those that is against down voting simply for disagreeing. This is mainly because I view posts and content here more like a market for ideas than a board room. In a market if I choose to pay someone something for content, someone else cannot come and take that money away from both of us. Down voting on steemit can give the impression of doing this and could be thus deemed as an aggressive act. Yet, this is primarly because people do not understand how it works. Our vests, our steem power are actually like voting shares in a company. So in reality it IS like a board room yet it also wears the guise of a market. It is kind of hybrid. I don't know that there has ever been anything quite like it in history.
The reputation system has curtailed the effects of people that abuse the down vote for the most part. There are cases where we've seen a post grayed out because -4 reputation @r4fken decides to downvote a post. Yet if you look that person is on a down vote mission. This left some legit posters with their post grayed out until other people in the community up voted them. This felt like an attack to that person. They perceived it as aggression.
I too want to see steemit and other steem blockchain endeavors thrive and grow. I have zero doubts that you and Ned are trying to do the best you can. I also know this is a beta and simply complaining does not solve problems. You need something constructive you can work with.
So I DO see why you value the down vote for disagreements, yet that takes me first understanding the perspective you are coming from. All indicators I've seen seem to indicate that is NOT the perspective new people have. So they view it as an attack, and as their posts are sent into obscurity and their funding ripped away they feel like they are censored. Yet in reality it is still on the blockchain so they are not. It is a matter of perception and perspective.
We all want a lot of people to get here. They likely are not going to understand your perspective without help. All they will see is someone down voted them and the money they were excited about is now gone.
So what constructive can we do about this? We have some talented videographers already on here. Have you considered perhaps having a short introductory video for new people that they watch that helps show them this new perspective? If they know it ahead of time they might not be blind sided by it, and the may not kneejerk react.
It's kind of a heading the problem off at the pass type of idea.
I don't know if that will help or not. You are correct about the many definitions of words, and hijacking of some of them. Defining definitions is kind of critical whenever you are going into a discussion/debate that is about opposing viewpoints. How many times have you seen a capitalist arguing with a socialist and each of them having completely different definitions of those words so the discussion goes effectively nowhere.
Anyway... keep up the good work.
just wanted to point out that this long, well written reply to post about how censorship isnt really a thing was hidden by one user with an axe to grind. jus sayin
This is exactly what you are doing. A few minutes with google will convince any impartial reader that the word censorship is correctly applied in many contexts, including self-censorship, which do not relate to the use of force of violence.
For example http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship:
"a. the institution, system, or practice of censoring"
"b. the actions or practices of censors"
"censor: a person who examines books, movies, letters, etc., and removes things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc."
Government or otherwise violence-enforced censorship is a form of censorship only, it does not define the term. Please stop attempting to redefine it.
Removing content (believed to be offensive, immoral, harmful, etc.) from view is censoring it. This may be a good or bad, depending on the context and the value system of the person making such a determination.
Flagging isn't censorship. I can still read the posts and comments of the most heavily flagged and lowest rep posters here.
Denying payment to a post isn't censorship either, unless you want to argue that all of Reddit is censored because no post or comment get paid there.
I disagree with you, and flagging is also an abuse of power.
Not an argument. Care to elaborate?
Well, in this post by dantheman who is talking about censorship, I posted a meme which got flagged by non other than dantheman himself. The meme was "if god ever wanted to be a fish he'd be a whale" (I'm not reposting it because I'll probably get flagged again). I hesitated before posting it, but thought WTF, let's see if he'll flag it. Just 1 flag brought down my reputation from 40 to 9. Which goes to prove my point, that the reputation system is unbalanced and unfair to little fish. And that my meme was right and shouldn't have been flagged.
Yes, I found the comment. I was able to see it and read it. The flagging didn't prevent me from viewing it. I'm not saying it is good to get your posts flagged, but it isn't quite the same thing as censorship. Just call it flagging.
I think the best way to handle the flagging issue is that if a post gets more downvotes than upvotes it should get flagged, but if it gets more upvotes than downvotes it shouldn't get flagged. The way it is now a post can get 10 upvotes but 1 downvote it would flag it.
It was indeed unfair to flag you without warning. Unless you were warned?
I do think whales should be much much more hesitant with the use of their flag and save it for more important things like catfish and plagiarising sockpuppets.
Flagging CAN be an abuse of power. But just as its everyones right to upvote what they want, anyone can downvote what they want. And if someone doesn't like a meme you post, its within their right to downvote. But just like in the real world, actions have consequences, so if enough people think a flag is abusive, their reputation will come under scrutiny.
I'm guessing there is history between you and @dantheman, hence your foreknowledge of a downvote from posting something like you did. Knowing something will be received negatively and doing it anyway without any real value added (and from the way you describe it, that post would be a non-value-added).
Censorship does not require violence.
The concept of "self-censorship" is a testament to this.
Simply being afraid of some sort of consequence for sharing ideas is a way to shut down free and open discussion. Censorship does not require out-right physical violence.
Mental and emotional attacks are also powerful ways to control people, and the problem here isn't violence. It's censorship.
Censorship isn't bad because it can be caused by violence. Violence is not the "evil" here.
Censorship is inherently bad, no matter if it's caused by physical violence, or another mental or emotional threat.
What you are talking about is peer pressure and shunning. These are social norms that @dana-edwards discusses here:
https://steemit.com/politics/@dana-edwards/do-social-norms-trump-the-law-or-my-response-to-the-free-the-nipple-controversy
Well, with 'self-censorship', the only guilty party of the censorship is the individual remaining silent.
Censorship is just more effective when backed by violence, or threats of violence.
Otherwise, its just a social pressure situation, which I think Steemit has demonstrated, politically 'incorrect' things can be said openly all day and even be highly rewarded.
Fantastic post! Every time I read a post from you I learn. Please keep posting as regularly as you have been.
I created a proposal for bounties that I think will be useful to you and steem. Please find the time to read and give me some short feedback if u find it not valuable and why.
Appreciate your work!
I'm still in awe at the idea that YOU can;t censor ME. It's just really cool to know that and freeing. You can't BAN me. IT gives me [ and others, i'm sure] a certain confidence.
I think the mute button is enough protection from a lot of abuse but I'm sure many disagree.
On a broader sense, Steemit must attract a wider audience/ Bring them in for the money, make them stay for the community ;)
I agree with you on the topic in general. It falls apart somewhat I feel when it gets to specifics.
If a vote or a flag had simply a financial impact, then all is good, but it impacts reputation. This feature immediately when it was added became the one and only visible badge for users. A downvote attacks that and more than the money, is what I feels hurt people to receive.
The reputation system is also very necessary, I understand that. Couldn't it be split up a bit more? I am sorry if this comes off as spam of your account but I would like you to see a propsed alternative that allows users to have a reputation system that is specialized, which in turn allows for flagging of content and impacting the reward, while not automatically damaging the reputation we have earned, or been given.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@clevecross/bounties-for-badges
I think the reputation system needs to be refined a bit more, probably based upon follow / mute ratio rather than vote up / down.
I would love to see people with negative reputation lose their ability to flag posts, I think that would stop some of the egregious flagging that is going on.
That would make sense! Revoke all voting from accounts with low reputation. Finally we can lose the butthurt blackmailing r4fken who's causing new users to feel unwelcome.
I don't know about that. For me, I don't mute people for their poor character, but would like to have an impact on their reputation despite that. For the people who do damage to the platform I particularly want to see their posts so that I can downvote anything that should be.
Edit: defensive upvote
You got down voted for no apparent reason. This is another abuse of the system.
The reputation system gives to much power to already who has to much power. One downvote by you brought down my reputation from 40 to 9. Seems a little bit to extreme. I deliberatly posted that meme to prove my point.
You deliberately posted it.......
I don't know if you read my post. It proposes badges tied to the tags we use. So if you always post in blockchain/steemit (example) and I always post in writing, my rep is tied to my "field" and your vote hurts my reward without hurting my rep. Would love your eyes on it as I hope to make it a bounty when the system is developed. Thanks for response, know your busy.
Agree the followers can be a good number to use as it is earned. Matter of figuring out to balance the numbers better over time.
i tend to worry it further tightens the reigns of a popular author... I can already vote for articles I am confident will trend without reading them. I don't see how this provides a solution aside from changing the structure.
If I had to mute or unfollow anyone I disagreed with.... I would never have seen them on other posts I agree with.
Seems we all have much to learn on how to balance out these matters with the system in place that we see being lopsided in a few ways.
Yes, the ability for someone to vote without reading a post will impact the success of the platform. Steemit needs quality content, and quality content can only be appraised by human eyes. J.
There needs to be consequences for say a -4 reputation. You cannot have that kind of negative rep and expect to be given the ability to comment or flag others. People need to work for their rewards, and one of the rewards should be the ability to interact with others on a platform that people worked their asses off to create. No one should be able to take that for granted.
I think the current system would work better than that due to bots gaming the follows and mutes.
Someone already flagged this post. Vandalize much? lol
@dantheman We had a friendly exchange in your post from a few weeks ago. I said:
You replied with a lengthy comment saying This is why every community needs its own currency and needs to defend its own standards based upon how it votes. You went on to say you will probably write another blog post where clarifying your concept of censorship.
I agree with your sentiment that property rights plays a crucial role in determining what is censorship and what is not. Thanks for the clarification.
That's absolutely true, but what is Free Society? This question is rather philosophical.
Everyone gives different definitions of this term operating in their favor. E.g. from Wikipedia free society is where all individuals act voluntarily, having the freedom to obtain the power and resources to fulfill their own potential.
I personally give the following definition:
Free Society is a society where all people are equal and have the same power.
And these definitions are contradictive. As if someone has the freedom to obtain the power, starting at some point he will have more power that will be certainly used in his favor to put pressure on another member of this society. Thus, in my opinion, Free Society doesn't exist and Steemit (like many others) is far from being a free society as the strength of more powerful can be used for dominance (notice that I did not use the word censorship). And I'm not talking that this is bad, I'm just stating the fact.
Free society is a utopian ideal. It may be possible in cyberspace but it's not currently possible in any nation because most people aren't rational enough to maintain it.
My thoughts exactly.
that is hilarious and so true.
Equal in what? Same power to do what?
Free society defined as you put it is still wholly subjective.
Free society = people are free to engage in whatever behavior they desire PROVIDED that it does not restrict others to engage in whatever behavior they desire. THAT is objective.
A society where "all people are equal and have the same power" is the sort of naive nonsense of utopian thinking that historically leads to mass graves.
Another nice philosophical definition, but still doesn't change the subject. Do you believe in the existence of free society? If so, give me an example, where there is no "restriction on engagement".
Nonsense is to introduce concepts that do not exist in real life. It's useful when you reflect on something insightful but in fact, doesn't change the real situation somehow. Therefore, I don't deny that my description of this term is nonsense as well
"If"
the point here is every one needs to be responsible for their actions.
Too bad steem isn't a free society.
I am surprised to find myself explaining this to people who I was fairly certain understood economics on, at least, a basic level.
Thanks for your beautifull pictures and information
Yes indeed.
I flagged someone who came to my posts, my content, and started to "graffiti" me , not even dealing with the content at all, but targeting me, calling me names, saying I do drugs, I'm a bullshitter.... And then they got upset when I flagged them for harassing me... jeez... And then I ended up making a post in this trolling behavior...
As a community, people should focus on the actual content of the posts, and not target people themselves. When that doesn't happen, and the content poster gets targeted, that hurts the overall reputation of Steemit as a mature responsible community.
As a sidebar on definitions, if anyone is interested in learning more on the power of words, symbols and language, please check out my work, @dantheman has upvoted some of it, and I greatly appreciate his support. My recent post is about definitions specifically, so please take a look: The Magic of Definition, Symbols and Language - The Power of Consciousness (Pt.6)
I make lots of high quality content with the goal of improving how we think, how we learn, and as a result our overall condition on the planet. Steemit is revolutionary, and it can really help to change the world for the better. That's why I am here!
Thanks! Take care. Peace.
I had someone tagging along replying to me like that too. @feminism was my trolling guy that followed me around for awhile as well as quite a few other people. Was that who trolled you as well? I will say that he is the only one in two months which is very impressive. MUTE stopped me from seeing his blog posts, it did not stop me from seeing his rude and aggressive replies, but at least they were grayed out so it was easy to ignore them. Still way better than any social media platform in this regard than I have seen.
Read the reply I got here. The dude has serious issues. "i didn't insult you":
"please P.M the drug combinations you are doing to write these"
"Now you are flagging my comments @krnel?
Started getting sour I see.
You are just full of it. I seriously believe you need mental supervision."
Yeah... that's not a guy who's purposely being a troll on my content and insulting me... no... of course not. Not like he could unfollow me. The "grown up" needs to actually grow up. What a two faced liar projecting his shit onto me. Dude has some issues and then wants to claim I do... lol. Even @dan upvoted my content, but this guy is so willfully ignorant he doesn't even want to try to understand it. Now he's here, on this comment, targeting me again... "stop crying" The guy is a bully. Highly disturbed and delusionally justifies what he is doing as "right" behavior.
I don't really care who upvotes your content. If I spot bullshit, I call it. It is a word in the english language. I did not flag your content because i disagree with it. I respect your point of view even if it's crap. You did flag mine out of sheer butthurt.
But your post was full of shit. stating it as such shouldn't get you pissed. I didn't insult you. I followed the dictionary definition. Your posts are insane :)
Please. stop crying
@dantheman
The problem in Steemit relies on the notion of the flag as a form of censorship. The tool itself is what distorts the meaning of the word in the way its being used. In the future this can monopolize tag whales.
A strong voter can destroy the reputation of someone else just because they desire so — either becaue they disagree or simply because they want to silence the competition. This is not necessarily something a free society entails since most new celebrities that will join Steemit will already have the upper hand in respect to followers and content.
It is much similar to a strong shareholder of a major social media company dictating what people can and what cannot say. Perhaps a downvote button should be much more useful, while flags should be reviewed if they accumulate a certain amount (e.g 3). Even then, someone should check if the content is flag worthy. If it's not then the perpetator should get the flag reflected negatively to their reputation. That should limit abuse significantly.
Nice words, but that's what you did to me today.
I never flagged anyone nor I will ever do.
I never have either, everybody should have the right to speak their minds. If someone doesn't like what is posted they can simply reply "I don't agree with you".
Respect of ourselves and respect for others should come naturally. This can only come about with tactful advice, help and understanding. Emotional intelligence comes with age too!
6 Corporations control 90% of the media in America. I call that censorship.
https://steemit.com/freedom/@cherryleaf/there-is-no-more-journalism-on-television-news-it-s-all-scripted-by-a-few-this-is-a-must-see-for-everyone
Technically, you're right. Media in America is dangerously moderated and by too few individuals. However, the argument being made here is that it's not censorship if it does not involve the threat of force:
While that is an extension of the term's general use, Dantheman is careful to explain that it's necessary to specify so that we don't "talk past each other." It's always most effective to respond to writings in their own terms. It may be that you're just using the visibility to champion an unrelated cause, but I'd be careful about seeming to muddy this post's use of the term. It has been made clear to keep people from mislabelling, on Steemit, what is not censorship, on Steemit. Sorry to be pedantic, but it matters.
(No offense meant or taken.)
The federal reserve has enabled consolidation of the media through mergers. The internet gives us an alternative outlet. I don't watch 90% of the media and neither does anyone else with half a brain. Complaining about them is pointless, and technically isn't censorship.
Right. It makes no sense to watch most of the media.
Agree 100% that steemit needs broader audience, not just few niches of people.
I agree with almost everything, but the Jefferson quote looks too good to be true:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001224
The only thing i would request is, that at least a person flagging someone leaves a comment why the post has been flagged.
A person with high SP should always leave the reason for flagging, because people need to understand if they made mistake i.e using wrong category hashtags etc.
I wouldn't flag someone over an opposing view, flagging is an extreme act and I would only use it as a last resort.
You never know what is going on in someone's life and what experiences they have had that placed them in a position to post something. Most people are good with good intentions and others are jaded with experiences to back up their world view. It seems unnecessary to penalize these people for playing the cards that they were dealt.
It is easy to say, "If I can overcome my experiences why can't they?" But maybe they are not as strong as you.
@dantheman
I agree with you about Censorship.
There's no reason for it here on what is supposed to be a decentralized platform. And I would hope that other users agree about not flagging for differing opinions. However...
There is a very real problem with plagiarism and with whales that continually upvote it. This is one of the most frustrating things to see as a content creator and one of the hardest things to correct when there are not other whales strong enough to eliminate the upvote...assuming that the plagiarism is even caught before payout.
I'm hoping that this can be corrected soon, because there appears to be growing frustration with many users who do not see many of these whales actively attempting to rein in their bots or their own personal voting habits. There is growing distrust among the very people that are needed to make this platform successful. We are putting in the time and effort to make this place great, but we seem to be getting thwarted by those with the most influence. This has to be addressed if the platform is to survive. And I want to be clear:
I want it to survive and prosper.
Please - whales and other high-influence users - please set things on a better path here. There is real damage being done to the reputation of Steemit and minnows and dolphins can't fix it all. We don't need a place of censorship, but we do need a place of responsibility and accountability. Let's make that happen before it's too late.
The competition is coming.
Identifying plagiarism is HARD work, especially when you are using a mobile phone and the bots are using sophisticated algorithms to prevent auto-detection.
If there is a particular whale that is consistently abusing his power, then lets identify him and show the pattern.
I think this is constantly being pointed out in the steemitabuse-classic chat. It was just discussed today, in fact. But when one person or a few people have so much influence, it takes a lot to check it - sometimes not enough if the right people aren't even aware. But what can be done about repeated instances if the high-influence upvoters just don't care enough to correct the issues? That's a huge problem. And it's not just one whale or "orca," either.
There are some distinct patterns developing.
Agreed, its disappointing to see whales that hand out $200 upvotes to clearly plagiarized articles on a consistent basis. It just encourages more people to copy/spin/steal content when it is being rewarded on a daily basis.
Exactly. I was hoping that Dan would have taken my comment a little more seriously. This isn't some trivial matter. It affects the credibility of the entire platform. It blows my mind that they seem to have no desire to actually address it.
I couldn't have said it better earlier ... or maybe I did. ;)
I agree with the canceling out of votes you mentioned as fair, but why does a post get hidden? That doesn't seem equal to me...
perhaps you do not remember the early days of spam bots flooding the comment section. If you don't hide it, then vandals will comment with porn and abusive content in the threads of the most popular discussions.
I see... thanks for the explanation. And, no I was not around during that time so I did not see that. My experience was more with seeing a minnow post something, get several upvotes, then 1 person downvotes it and it is hidden forever... seemed unfair. I understand your reasoning now though. The lesser of 2 evils...
If you look at my reply to your post, there is a perfect example... 4 upvotes and then 1 downvote and the comment is now hidden...
This is not like a democracy where one person has a vote. You have a vested interest. For each share you hold in the platform you have a vote. Unfortunately the troll who flagged you has investment here so his vote is worth more than ours. He is taking revenge on the entire platform since he lost his reputation due to blackmail and other things.
This is something I hope and believe dan and ned are working on.
We need a better way to deal with people who lose their shit because they have nothing to lose after losing everything.
But one from a slightly bigger fish and look you're back :)
Yes, but when you have 5 people who think something is good, and 1 person thinks it is bad and therefore the content gets hidden.... that doesn't seem equitable does it?!
Great article, I like the picture!
"I want Steem be a healthy, vibrant community with engaging discussions from people with all points of view. " Yes this is great and sometimes I can´t understand why people are flagging some posts. Look at this introduction of @julia26 for example, it was her first correct article and I know her personally, so I can´t understand why people are flagging it, becuase they think she is not a real person: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@julia26/vorstellung-zu-meiner-person The funny thing is, that the flaggers are anonym, so they don´t have a reason to distrust people with a real introduction and a picture. ^^
Xeroc, whom I trust, downvoted it and gave his reasons. The post is not in english, uses excessive font size and bold lettering. It is clear to me why it doesn't add value to most readers.
Not adding value means not getting upvoted. Flagging it seems extremely harsh.
Do we want steemit to be welcoming only to native english speakers?
would easily be fixed with a simple language filter
They are not anonymous. In the url for the blog post change the steemit.com part of the address to steemd.com. That page will show you the name of every person that up voted and down voted. I give a visual example and some other tips like this in a guide I wrote the other day.
if you are not being persecuted by law or threatened with violence you are not being censored. If you get banned from a single forum on the internet but are free to state you opinion on a multitude of others you are not being censored. If someone calls you an idiot and tells you to shut up you are not being censored.
These justifications seem weak.
Why is freedom of speech only downheld, rather than upheld? What if governments actively protected the right to freedom of speech by shutting down forums or people who tell you to shut up?
Why is the act of silencing people not a crime? It is the other way around in this society, as you said.
Your argument is the same as the blacks wanting affirmative action that enforces discrimination by law.
Is discrimination inherently bad?
The idea of selecting people for a certain trait, be it race, gender, age, etc, is something that many people do, and is a normal part of crafting laws that are specific to certain demographics.
The desire to actively protect people's freedom of speech, rather than passively allow censorship or "don't talk about that here or use that word" type stuff is not unreasonable.
In a world where law, government, and order are the way things are, we need to build around those ideas, no matter your personal feelings regarding governments.
Crafting laws that force people to tolerate other people's speech, rather than passive-aggressively forcing them to obey, could be a concept worth looking into.
Those sorts of laws are never crafted. It is always the reverse, and that troubles me.
Blacks? im not really a PC guy, but who still says that?
I've never understood the rationale some people have that by asking others to express their ideas, thoughts, and opinions without the use of profanity I am censoring their right to free speech.
You're telling them to not use certain words.
They don't like being told what they can or cannot say.
I see, I worded that badly compared to what I was thinking. I should have said that "without the use of profanity I am promoting censorship."
I don't see people writing a blog post as being abusive if they are not targeting a person and calling them an idiot or defaming them. You can be abusive without using any profanity. In fact I can do a far better job of calling a person a name and belittling them without profanity than I can with it. It simply takes a little effort. My post doing such though would still be hostile and abusive.
There has been the occasional post that I've come across that I would term as using excessive foul language, those usually fall under attacks on other users or groups. I agree it's not abusive for users to write anything they want in their own posts or blog as long as there's no attack on a person or group.
I was thinking more about those taking offense to being asked to refrain from excessive foul language in comments. This is what I consider part of being a "toxic" individual as they don't respect other users or the user's blogs. I don't see this as a particularly large issue on steemit.com currently. There have been a few individuals that have 'tested' the waters so to speak.
A user visits a blog and uses foul language to express their opinion on the topic of the post in comments, or they post offensive memes relevant to the posts topic. I think asking other users to respect each other's blogs is not unreasonable nor is it censorship.
This is just a random thought I had from reading your comment. Someone I used to know, said that he got a lot of joy out of formulating responses that called another person who was verbally abusive an idiot without them even realizing it.
I agree with your argument and conclusions except that I think you're using a narrow definition of censorship. If we accept your definition, then it follows logically. But I don't think most people understand the "threat of violence" part of the definition that you use, and therefore by the more widely understood definition, they are using the word correctly.
Edit: When I wrote this, the argument at the end of his post wasn't added. I don't think the word used to mean what @dantheman believes it did. Many here view things in light of the use of or threat of violence, but the wider public and historic philosophical thought was not always so focused on this.
In a people democracy every vote has the same weight which is different to the setup of steemit. What I do see now happening on Steemit that people are about to form tribes that go against each other. Their current weapons are downvoting, writing posts and using the promote feature. What will be next?
I feel better reading this post by accident as my very first post here yesterday was 'downvoted' by @r4fken . It is a really bad first impression and I don't know who or where to complain so I think I can leave a comment here (yeah, also my first comment ever! hello everyone!). So anyone see this please do me some justice for my post - a positive amount is enough for me indeed!! Thank You! Love.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@ethansteem/why-are-you-following-me-can-t-believe-this-is-my-very-first-post
Talking about censorship, what do you think of my latest photoshoot?
Google, and by extension, YouTube, are not private businesses, they are projects created by the CIA for the gathering of information, and were seeded with money by the government almost from their inception. The NSA used/uses Google's cookies, which are inbeded in almost every website, to track everyone's online activity and create a profile based off that activity. Therefore, anyone who desires a free, voluntary society should utilize other services and protest against these covert government spying operations.
Sometimes censorship is not necessary: if you fear not to earn money (or to loose your job) you will write and say what others expect and avoid criticism or pessimism.
This also happens in the Mainstream media, quite frequently I think.
Bravo steemit.com. Thank for the posting.
Hello @dantheman
What a great post!!
:) F
Thanks for the reply. I noticed that many of your replies to posts look like they could be automated by bots. I would encourage you to be more expressive least you get flagged by others.
There are a lot of people who just reply "Nice post", and other things, without providing any feedback. I suspect they may just be looking to add to their post count & reputation count, by commenting anything, even just a picture without addressing the content of the posts. This is a bit annoying. I think I may start to flag them as you suggest. It adds no value whatsoever to the post or Steemit... I hope they don't get part of the curation rewards for commenting such things... lol.
Peace.
Nice post, duh, I mean what a great reply, I.E. I totally agree with you.
I always just check their page for their previous comments first. Their overall comments give a much better idea of whether or not it's a bot
This is the world where people think it is okay to say TL;DR. That still blows my mind. There was a time not long ago that no one would say "That's too long, I didn't read it" and then start to talk about it anyway. They'd be embarrassed and ashamed. Now days people are sometimes proud of saying TL;DR. In the world of twitter I believe as the flood gates open there will be a lot of short responses like this. I agree with you though. I personally very much dislike the TL;DR term and I do like seeing people express themselves.
I think our attention spans are getting weaker! We all need to take like monthly week-long breaks from all social and televised media. Read a book maybe or take a holiday but definitely people are changing due to the amount of stuff we see but can't take in nowadays.
Excellent post once again. Thank you, and I hope you don't mind but I might have to reference this post in one of my own.
That is strongly encouraged!
I've always battled with the idea of graffiti in my head. I love how it's used as a protest against society, and i have respect for the art, but it's still a violation of property rights.
nice post thanks
A very good article and I hate to digress but.. When I saw the portrait of Thomas Jefferson my first thought was wow, now there is one Scottish looking fellow - quick google and what do you know, he just about is!
from http://www.electricscotland.com/history/scotsman/us_presidents.htm
Important note is on how to use exactly words in exactly meaning. Good post.
Bravo!
To summarize: Moderation is not necessarily censorship.
I'll go one further:
People use "Freedom of Speech" wrong, in general, even, sometimes especially, people who claim to be anarchist/libertarian.
Freedom of Speech, in its simplicity, only means that the government is not allowed to restrict your speech. As in the government is not allowed to ban your opinions by law. Fine you for certain opinions, etc.
I believe in freedom of speech.
That said, you are not allowed to come to my living room, in my house which I own, and call me a jackass.
I have every right to remove you from my living room, because I decide what sort of speech goes on in my living room, because it's my property.
Likewise, services like Twitter, Facebook, etc. have the right to remove posts from their platform, based on the fact that they own the platform, and if they see that it is in their best interest to remove something, it makes sense that they will.
Now, I have witnessed censorship that I, personally, did not approve of in certain blogging platforms, so I simply took my relatively popular blogs somewhere else. That's what you do, like was said in the post itself: you take your business somewhere else.
That's the beauty of freedom. But it has nothing to do with "freedom of speech". A problem with freedom of speech would be something like hate speech laws.
By the way, I also agree with the fact that let's not scare "normal people" away. There are plenty of ancap circle jerk networks on the internet. Steemit can be better than that.
As a free people we should be able to exert our rights as long as they do not infringe on another persons. Interesting post.
"If Steem remains a libertarian / anarchist enclave then it will fail to attract a broader audience and that in turn will mean that ordinary people will not get involved with cryptocurrency. Likewise, if Steemit fails to curtail abusive, threatening, and toxic individuals it will also drive away the broader audience leaving only those with skin thick enough to take the abuse of trolls."
Its a double edged sword