Thanks for your reply. Consider this hypothetical scenario:
Similar to the scenario above, with a bit of a twist - Steemit has now grown to 100 Million users and downvoting is allowed.
- 95% of Steemit users passionately think the proper way to organize society is to have a government in place.
- 5% of Steemit users passionately think an anarcho-capitalist society is best.
People who believe an anarcho-capitalists society is best will be downvoted into oblivion, even if they have an excellent argument. All because people with the opposite view have a cognitive bias toward the information they view as correct. When a post is downvoted a lot, fewer people see it, which I think is a form of censorship.
This is why every community needs its own currency and needs to defend its own standards based upon how it votes.
If we want steem and steemit to change the world toward a more voluntarist society, then we need to actively downvote and remove the profit opportunity from those who support statism.
This could result in group-think. This could hinder growth. So we have our selfish desire to change the world and maintain our identity as a community fighting with another selfish desire to sell out to the masses to "get rich".
The fallacy is to believe all opinions are equally valuable and that we should dilute our identity by awarding stake to those who oppose our principles. This is not censorship. This is a community with identity and values.
If we allow those who promote statism to grow via our upvotes, then we are in effect allowing censorship to grow by supporting those people. Censorship is something that only governments can do by interfering between the speaker and those who want to listen.
Steem could be corrupted just like propaganda has corrupted the masses. If that happens the voluntarists will have to start over with a new currency because the voters of Steem will implement a government that rejects property rights.
This would assume that supporters of statism can't acquire a lot of Steem Power using state power? Or that somehow states can't use propaganda and psy-ops to change the minds of some anarchists? It's a very complicated situation but I don't see who wins from political downvote wars. I think we all lose because Steemit becomes a less fun place, a much more serious place, and I can't see 100 million people being in an environment where it's constant warfare.
@r4fken statements are easy to take out of context, especially by those doing it on purpose to promote an agenda.
I will probably write another blog post where I clarify my concept of censorship.
But those ideas are forever in the blockchain and are immutable. Yes the majority decide what type of content is most visible, but steemit allows all users to have a voice whether or not it is a popular one. I would see it as censorship if @dantheman could simply click and delete content that may be questioning steemit, but I have seen quite the opposite. Some very controversial topics have seen the light of day and for the most part were discussed in a way that allowed both sides to fully share their opinions.
There is not censorship, but being able to make content very difficult to see will be important when someone inevitably decides to post child pornography, live torture or other things that an immutable decentralized blockchain would need to be able to handle due to some legal implications.