I think its a slippery slope when we start deciding who is worthy of being on steemit, who is worthy of earning money. If Jerry went away tomorrow this problem would still exist a new person or new group of people would just become the ones to profit from it. This is a systematic problem not a jerry problem. I also find it troubling that we all bitch and moan about youtube and ohter platforms yet we try to do the same things they do
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that might be the best comment so far, personally ive been on steemit for months and i never heard about the guy until this week ... bubble universe , you cant have free speech if its not absolutely free, but monetary damage is another topic i suppose, i dont know enough about it to voice my opinion on the matter, i pay little attention to witnesses since most of them i read so far are quite content fascists.
I actually decided to unvote most of those, b/c i usually did b/c someone asked, i dont like politics and central authority (which is what this system is really) but i'll go over their blogs one by one at my own snailpace and label them on a scale from intellectual anarchist over neutral to content nazi ... and bast my votes on that from now
interesting read anyway
Nobody decided he isn't worthy of being on SteemIt. They decided to not sell him a product. Voting Power. The people who own the bots are selling voting power and many of them have decided not to sell it to Jerry.
That is totally different than running him off the site or banning him from saying what he wants to say.
Okay but what have you to say about this. People whine about Youtube right, Youtube doesn't not allow anyone to use their service, they simply block monetization. That's a pretty even argument about not allowing people to use bots. On youtube people are still free to post content, they just dont want to do it if they can't earn money the same way jerry can still post he just can't use voting bots.
Apples and oranges. A vote bot is a business, not a service. they sell you votes. The bot owners have the right to decide if they want to sell you a service. A person does not have a right to buy from the business. The Bid Bots are not preventing jerry from posting or doing what he wants. he is still allowed to post as much crap as he wants, just like I am allowed to post as much crap as I want.
You can not force a bid bot owner to sell to everyone, regardless of content. There are bots that refuse to sell to NSFW content. Are they wrong for that refusal? It's is their business to be run as they see fit. I myself do not like them, so I don't use them. later down the road I may use them, but I am not much into buying reputation or votes.
The same way Youtube and Adsnese are both businesses and have the right to not offer their service to others. I realize your not saying this but the overall feeling of Steemit seems to be fuck youtube steemit rocks and in reality both have a way of censoring people and both are well within their rights to do so
censoring jerry would be systematically flagging every post and every comment he makes to take it below the level required to be visible.
Removing his ability to be seen on steemit is censorship. This, this isn't wanting your product (bid bot) to be associated with someone like Jerry.
I think this is an interesting argument. I think Steemit or any platform has to have some rules, some best practices, etc, but ultimately the important question is who gets to decide what those are and who gets to decide who is violating them.
If Bidbot owners band together and decide not to allow Jerry to use their service they are harming his visibility on the platform and harming his ability to earn money. Now its totally within their right to do that but I think that's a dangerous path to go down. What if bid bot owners decide to band together and do that to anyone they dont like or disagree with? When some people are allowed to use them and others aren't it creates an unlevel playing field.
While I use them on occasion I think bid bots ultimately are kind of bad for steemit. its basically pay to play. imagine if the nba allowed people to pay to play in the league. do you think people would still come out to games to watch tim the accountant play basketball instead of lebron james?
youtube censorship is a blackbox..
steemit censorship is public .. at least you could draw attention to being unfairly censored here. on youtube, you are just fucked.
here you can be saved. i was. after being unfairly downvoted simply for stating alternative facts and asking questions. I found myself losing reputation right and left. but I reached out in posts to steemcleaners and others and posted about being screwed. and a whale came and helped me.
i still kinda fuss about needing to be saved, but then maybe this is just as it is, if your cause is righteous, then someone can and probably will help you. if it is not... you might sink.
I would disagree and say Youtube isn't a blackbox, otherwise we wouldn't see all these "youtube demonetized my channel videos" and on the rare occasion Youtube actually just wipes and deletes a channel they don't stop that person from making another account telling about what youtube did to them.
On steemit while everything is publicly recorded on the blockchain ie I can see who downvoted me, not everyone peruses SteemDB to see what's going on, personally I've been on here a year and havn't really bothered to dig into that stuff extensively. Also I'm always discovering new Steemians everyday and the search function isn't great so its completely possible people on here are being fucked with by bots or high SP users and I would never hear about it.
we are not allowed in on the decision making process. we can't reverse the decisions made. here we can, if enough people, enough powerful people decide to promote something, there is no asking permission.
please youtube, please, let me do what i want.
bah!!
i am aware of youtube dropping subscribers, failing to report new videos to subscribers, and other dirty tactics to curb traffic to select individuals.
this is something that would be harder to hide here. people could at least take notice, ask questions, and investigate the real time squelching of information that may or may not be going on...
but with youtube.. we just don't know, it is just gone.
@rulesforrebels you have a point. WHen a post like this is made to influence the business owners by giving them a bad business wrap that will make them feel compelled to blacklist him then it becomes a sensorship.
I am too new on steemit so dont want to get myself entangled on the politics here but alot of these posts are personal based and not community.
Yeah while it's true bot owners own their bots and can choose who and who not to do business with but at the same time when bots have a lot of power on steemit to determine who's posts earn money and who's posts get attention by blocking someone from using bots your in a sense stopping them from being able to earn money and stopping them from being able to be seen. While they may not own or be in control of steemit they are doing the exact same thing to those creators that youtube does to creators when they demonetize them or when they hide their videos.
I guess it begs the question ultimately who gets to decide who's content is worthy, who's views are acceptible, etc. I really don't like it when I see people banding together in groups to go against someone else who they disagree with or dislike
People have a very strange sense of censorship. What does the ability to buy a vote or have a vote sold to you have to do with censorship? There are thousands of post on steemit that have never paid for a vote. Are they all censored post because they did not pay for a vote?
@bashadow, if these bid bot owners decides not to take his business then that is within their rights and can return his funds but some wait until he pays to then withdraw their votes.
Also, by this post listing business that have offered services and asking other members to stay away is using power to manipulate the outcome.
Someone like me with no power cant even say a thing fearing the wrath of the powerful
A lot of the people with voting bots vote for themselve on their own posts with 100% power so a kettel cant call the pot black
There are a few witness votes i have withdrawn from people before for the violation i see them committing.
Less than one month on steemit I was flagged by @berniesanders. Because I asked a question. He hit me with his and his 52 bots. I evidently asked the wrong person, but the right person gave me my answer. He was not excessive in his downvote, but it was his prerogative to down vote me. I got the problem resolved through @steemcleaners. I had read the FAQ for steemit. I have also been downvoted by another large whale, once again no real damage, and because I disagreed with them. Once again @steemcleaners fixed the issue.
There is no need to "Fear" the whales. If you get downvoted and you feel it was unjust go to the fixers, steemcleaners, do not retaliate down vote, do not start a flag war, you will lose.
People can complain all they want about bid bots, and people that use them, then they can also complain about censorship and people downvoting. If an individual feels a post pending reward payot is to much, they have the right and some would say the duty, (in case of shit post) to down vote that post and return some of the pending rewards back to the reward pool.
If an individual wants to voice their opinion on a business they do not agree with they have all the right in the world to non-violently Protest that business and to ask other to boycott it if they so chose. It is called free speech. Would you rather have people censor that speech? Look at the amount of SP the individual has, look at the combined SP of the Bot Owners. One man standing against an army of a thousand is not using power over them to manipulate the outcome. He is protesting.
As far as self votes go, or any votes go for that matter, it is their vote, it is their right to use it as they see fit. Nothing says they have to use it to vote on others. Nothing says a person needs to buy votes or to sell votes. It is the vote owners vote, to so with as they please.
I can not help you with your fears, we all have them. If you are a reasonable person, and are not trying to screw with someone, then you have no fear of a downvote. Most downvotes are for a real reason. Plagiarism, copy and paste, scams, and spam. If you avoid them you will be fine.
jup