"Flagging" is a lie told to you by the steemit.com UI.
In Steem, the blockchain where almost everything you see on steemit.com happens, it is a negatively weighted vote. You could also call it a a downvote.
The original design and scope for negatively weighted votes, which many people who have a stake in the platform understand, is that they would be used to adjust the rewards on posts for any reason including an opinion.
I'm sorry you've been misled, as the conceptual misuse of "flag" remaining on steemit.com mostly thanks to @sneak has caused much confusion. I've argued many times to correct it to "downvote," as have others: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/1270 But it's been blocked, only causing to further create confusion and discord among Steemians.
Who gives a f*** what the difference is!? This is about the impact of such actions .. power-abusing idiots, who can not generate original content themselves, but instead enjoy slapping down those who can .. they have made this place low-end and depressing .. people whoring after upvotes from people they do not like, and then getting kicked in the teeth by bloated punks who have nothing of any 'real value' to contribute .. except upvoting their little gang of parasitic bitches ... and for this reason 'this place' will be 'replaced' in the 'marketplace'. Ask yourself why there is no substantial "mass adoption" ... because people see low-brow rich punks throwing people into the gutter, for kicks .. no one with any self-respect wants to put time and energy into this!! ! **** TRAGIC ((EASILY AVOIDABLE)) FAIL **** !
This post received a 2.9% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @kurtbeil! For more information, click here!
This comment has received a 1.44 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @kurtbeil.
Do not use Randowhale! he is one of the power abusers! more in this post
I had no idea the debate between the terms "flag" and "downvote" was so contentious, but the intention of my introduction would not change if I substituted the two. Everything about this is related to the weight those two terms represent, and how that weight shapes the future of steemit. This admittedly ambitious and, imo, forward-thinking campaign is about allowing unpopular opinions to survive on their own merit, encouraging stake holders to use their weight to uplift the content they wish to see, and facilitating incentives for engagement and discourse to take the place of a downvote.
When a spammer gets downvoted, it is to punish him for that behavior. When a user gets the idea to copy/paste articles as their own, downvoting sends a clear and concise message that kind of action on steemit will not be tolerated. When a user voices an unpopular opinion, and a negatively weighted vote wipes out the earnings on that post, it sends a strong message to the author (and all the small fish who happen to see or upvote the post) the consequences of voicing it.
As many flee to here from the corporate controlled social media sites with the promise of a censorship-free blogging platform, they learn that censorship-free* carries an asterisks, and the fine print leaves a bad taste in their mouth. Sometimes these become the people that a thousand downvotes can't influence, the "self-righteous spammers", and their evangelism is detrimental to the effort and time that gets put in advertising the platform. To the uninitiated trying to wrap their head around how this revolutionary platform even works, this negative word of mouth can be enough for them to pass by all future mentions. By providing users another option to de-escalate situations, hopefully eliminating some of the negative feedback.
I hope you don't read this as a pessimistic outlook of doom and gloom, because I'm quite optimistic about the future of steemit. I'm investing my time and effort all in order to get a conversation going because I believe in it. The problems I'm hoping to address happen sporadically at best as of now. But, with the incentives downvotes carry, and the ever more formidible userbase gaining steemit the spotlight, big monied interests will not be far behind to use the tools at their disposal to control the information as they see fit.
I can definitely see a difference between a flag and a downvote. With the current flag system I will only flag something that is obviously abuse(plagiarism, ID theft, etc..) I won't flag something that I disagree with because no matter how wrong I find that opinion, I feel like people should be able to express it and I don't want it hidden.
Now if there were a downvote feature that didn't hide a post but did allow me to show my disagreement with a post and use my stake to impact the rewards I would use it. I would use it for things I disagreed with (Holocaust deniers, racism, sexism, etc..) because while people are free to share their opinion I don't agree that they have a right to be paid for them. If enough people are voting their stake to downvote a post it should still be visible, but its up to the community to make the judgement on rewards.
LOL at your example of "holocaust deniers;" have you looked into just how many times in history the "6,000,000" number has been trotted out? Now, why would that be? [Edit: there was even a TV show with that number in the title in my youth! -- "The Six Million Dollar Man".]
And "racism"? Why is it a bad thing for one to prefer the company of those who look like one, think like one, behave like one, and worship like one? I mean look at Israel, it's 75% "Jewish", and they have walls and immigration agents and procedures. What's good for the goose, etc...
I also think there's nothing wrong with "sexism" -- similarly, "discrimination" shouldn't be something illegal, because if a shop-keeper is discriminating against a certain class of people inappropriately, then the community should discuss this and decide to discriminate against the shop-keeper.
"Discriminating tastes" is a thing! Lately people have been forced to modify it to "discernment" because of the PC crap brigade.
(Note, not downvoting you.)
I've got nothing wrong with open discussion, as I said in the post, so long as the only option is a flag I won't be flagging anything that isn't abuse. My thoughts on discrimination are sort of along those same lines. I feel like discrimination should be illegal when it comes to things you are born with (race, sex, age, etc..) However if it is something you have a choice in? Go ahead and do things your way, if people don't like it they will go elsewhere. For example, smoking in bars? Go for it, if enough people don't like it they wont go there. Religion? Thats your choice, if I don't want to deal with you because of some disagreement than so be it.
Are you saying you don't believe that the holocaust happened or just don't agree with the exact numbers that are generally accepted?
I'm always curious as to where people draw the line when it comes to what things they believe. Does the guy who believes the holocaust never happened laugh at the flat earth people? Do the flat earth people laugh at the hollow earth people? Does the hollow earth guy immediately dismiss the ancient alien guy as a loon? Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, I just enjoy seeing where people will believe one thing but immediately dismiss others.
Where I disagree with you is I do not think discrimination should ever be illegal. If someone wants to not associate with people who have earlobe holes for whatever superstitious reason -- they should be allowed to eject earring-wearers from their establishment!
The community can then react to this inappropriate discrimination with their own discrimination, and not give that establishment business.
But I fear I'm repeating myself, and it seems you prefer a government-based solution. [Edit: discrimination within government should be illegal.]
Note also that "innate" characteristics still nicely fit into my paradigm.
They do indeed fit in your belief system, I just happen to disagree. I do agree with discriminating against ear lobe hole man (earholes as we call those pierced wierdos...) because it was a choice on his part :)
For me personally I choose to draw the line for discrimination at things you cant change. Anything that you are choosing to do I've got no problem including you/excluding you on that basis.
I think we're actually more closely aligned, then, with this thought: I agree that the community should shame those who discriminate against innate characteristics (like, my from-birth broken eye).
I disagree that "thugs with guns" should get involved (i.e., government). But I completely agree with a community adhering to its norms and rejecting outsiders who clash with those. Just, not rejecting by force -- rejecting by discussing their behavior and, if unwarranted, choosing to spend money at another establishment. Or starting a competing one, if none exist.
"Holocaust" = less than 200 000 not 6 million, but everyone is laughing at flat earth believers and that myth was started by the same people who started the 6 million myth
I wonder who produced this TV series...
Thanks for explaining that.
Just for clarity: If the name were changed from "flag" to "downvote", wouldn't this project still be necessary to protect people who were being downvoted solely based on someone (especially people with high steem power) not liking what they had to say?
Whether its called a flag or a downvote makes no difference at all..
Downvotes, flags, whatever you like to call them - they cannot take anything away from you, and they cannot silence any post that you make, and they cannot impede your future ability to make posts.
There is no need for "protection" from them.
Good point. Whether or not it's conceptualized as a flag or more accurately as a downvote, this account and project isn't necessary but it could serve a useful function for sure, and it is playing the same opinion-based curation game as the downvoter.
I appreciate you responding. What would another way to counteract opinion downvoting be? I'm asking because I am a bit afraid about my future of this site, if Steemit does end up growing a lot, which I think it will.
I have a lot of issues close to my heart that I post about, and know they are hot topics on the other social media sites I'm on because they are not mainstream points of view (Freeing Palestine for one...). While on those sites, all I deal with is trolling in the comments of my posts, here I would have to worry about losing my reputation and earnings as well.
The people and organizations I speak out against are powerful, and would easily be able to buy a tonne of SP here and use it to silence my voice and others like mine. Whereas I don't have much money, and have had to earn all the SP I have.
So how else can I/We stop paid shills/agents from silencing our voices here on Steemit?
These are exactly my concerns as well. @freezepeach addresses a symptom of a deeper problem, and it may prove to be sufficient for a time, but ultimately I think this is something that needs to be dealt with in the code itself. How that happens is anyone's guess, so while that's being debated, I'll be here to do what I can.
Thanks for my negatively weighted vote this morning @pfunk. Deservedly so after all my cheetah feedback. I always want steemcleaners to be the meanest, leanest plagiarising finding machine on Steemit.
I also wish to highlight SEO content machines like http://seocontentmachine.com/ plus article purchasing sites like http://www.ninja-creative.com/ We need to be aware of all the sources of original content MINUS the human! :)
If the downvote was used as it was intended, then calling it a flag would be wrong.
However, the downvote is sometimes used by whales to obliterate a minnows rep, by constantly down voting comments by the minnow, often on the minnows own post and comments which usually don't even have 1 cent! The only purpose of the flags is to destroy a minnow for revenge and adjusting rewards doesn't even feature in the whale's reasoning.
For example, the way @berniesanders flagged @Skeptic into oblivion. Yes Skeptic made a post that annoyed Bernie and Bernie had a right to flag that post to remove the rewards but did he have to then flag skeptic's comments until his rep was down to -6? The first hit was a downvote but the rest were flags.
Maybe there should be separate down votes which affect rep and payout and only certain people, such as yourself, should have the power to destroy rep.
Edit: Ironically, Bernie's rep was flagged into oblivion while I was commenting to him about his treatment of skeptic and I think that that was wrong too, even though he did get a taste of his own medicine.
Nothing is "destroyed" or "obliterate[d]". Reputation is a non-consensus calculation, which means it is purely a UI function and does not affect payouts, ability to post, or ability to vote.
The reputation system isn't perfect, and it's hard as hell to come up with a good one anywhere, let alone this place where there's a bit of a might-is-right thing that comes from the sybil protection of stake = influence.
Curious about your use of sybil as what your intent is? "Sybil is the most common spelling of a name which the ancient Greeks used as the generic word for a prophetess--a woman who claimed to be able to interpret the wishes of the gods through their oracles."
Stake = influence which is something of an aspect of might is right and is something that I don't see as a beneficial aspect of Steemit. It's much the problem that's present and dysfunctional currently in the world.
Why have a reputation qualifier in the first place? I had thought it referred to influence with newbies having the lowest. Ideally all would be treated equally; position is very much the ruin of life as high and low only have a only relative viewpoint that is highly impermanent and not worth emphasizing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
Many have tried to solve it, but usually just end up creating more dysfunction. Steem, being a decentralized permissionless blockchain needs a solution for sybil attacks, and that solution is to bring stake (with value) into the equation. If you can think of something better, by all means propose it. It's only slightly less difficult than a perpetual motion machine.
If you're unsure about the reasons for stake in STEEM Power being the measure of influence here, please read the Steem whitepaper. It's outdated in many aspects unfortunately, but it still explains the need for STEEM Power to be the measure of influence in Steem.
A downvote merely indicates disagreeement; flagging should be reserved for things that would better off not have been published at all. We want to discourage flagging except in cases of clear abuse.