I am asking a legitimate question. I heard a rumor a while back, that if you want 'free speech' then try Steem.
So I have tried Steem, and what I am seeing is quite alarming. Same anti-free speech feel. Feels like the -shadowbanning- of the main platforms.
Today I checked out a Lee Camp video and saw yet another grayed out comment in the comments. Apparently all it takes is one troll, bot, call center employee paid to act like someone else online, etc., to 'hide' someone's legitimate comment.
Example:
So someone can spam an idiotic emotional reaction, and 'turn off' someone else's comment? While some other emotional angry folks can pump up that idiotic bot troll comment, paying the sub 100 IQ content, and penalizing and hiding the comment that could start a great constructive debate?
Well, I think I have seen all I need to see, to know not to steer friends and content creators to this platform. I surely am turned off, and not motivated to put my efforts into it. This is some disgusting display of Shadowy-Slimy censorship.
OldOneEye not liking what it sees.....
/rant off
Keep in mind that it costs VP to downvote (and hide comments). If that comment was upvoted by ~$0.05 then it would be visible again. The downvoters of that comment only did so with a rather small downvote. A 100% upvote by anyone with 3000-4000 SP would overide the downvote, and make the comment have a positive payout. You can rent that much SP from DLease for around $5 a week. With that you could undo ~50 of the comments hidden by this downvoter per week. Of course they might fight back and downvote more, but IDK.
This system was mainly designed to counter spam, plagiarism, etc., not to hide legit comments, BTW. Adding in a settings option to Steemit to show hidden comments be default would probably be a good idea: I might add that feature in a bit. (by writing a PR)
Good info thanks!
Lmao see how they told you VP "costs" money and is designed to counter spam. What a load of bullshit. The "troll" you speak of in your above post who harasses and bullies everyone and their uncle on Steemit never paid one red cent for any of his Steem. He just "premined or ninja mined all of it". Shit loads of it.. and now uses that VP (voting power) to beat everyone over the head.. and then little ball washers like the person who "oh so kindly explained things to you" <-- who is probably a sock puppet of the bully might I add.. fail to tell you that the VP the bully/troll is using on everyone was FREE! He just printed it from thin air, and shit loads of it. He also has thousands upon thousands of accounts. He runs this entire platform. And sure you and me would have to pay a "cost" to buy VP (voting power).. but this head troll (who is actually Steemit Inc.) never paid one fucking cent.
Be careful who "kindly" "helps" you in your comments.. you have no idea how many sock puppets these people have, and every time someone tells the truth just like you did in your above post.. these "friendly helpers/witnesses/and anyone with their hand in the cookie jar" <-- twist the truth and crawl out of the wood work like little cockroaches and defend the insanity...
This place is all smoke and mirrors.. and they are a bunch of leftist control freaks.
Beware.
Oh here is the proof he was one of the first accounts ever... and that he "mined" all of his Steem which he uses on people like a weapon. Many people have been bought off by him, and or are just him under alias accounts, or his friends.. here is the screen shot from the blockchain..
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
It doesn't cost money to downvote, it costs VP. I didn't say that VP costs money. And until HF21, it will cost VP that could otherwise be used to upvote yourself.
What are downvotes intended to prevent if not spam and plagiarism?
a personal websitereally dedicated.No, I'm a seperate human than @berniesanders. I don't always agree with them and IMO the downvotes mentioned in the root posts weren't completely justified. I have (shameless promo), and a lot of good posts (I think so at least), if I am a sock puppet then @berniesanders must be
Well he did need to pay for mining machines, and compete with Steemit and other miners. And whether the VP was paid for is irrelevant: there is still the cost of not self-voting.
That's good advice.
That just means he mined his account, as opposed to paying the account creation fee. Having a mined account doesn't mean you did any mining after the account creation, although @berniesanders did.
(expect a response to the other comment soon)
"VP" comes from purchasing Steem asshole. You know it and I know it. Either that or from getting delegations.
Kindly fuck off with your bullshit. I have had enough of you scum.
Here is proof for you @oldoneeye
This is from the Steem FAQ.
It says and I quote "Though not considered an investment, you can purchase STEEM tokens which can go up or down in value. You can power up these tokens into Steem Power, which grants more influence in the Steem platform."
So I want to stress the part that says "You can PURCHASE Steem tokens" <--- the operative word is "purchase" Steem tokens.. next I want to point out "You can power up these tokens into Steem Power, which grants more influence in the Steem platform." and I want to stress the part within which states "You can POWER UP these tokens" <--- This is where you get VP or "voting power" from.
So us as in average joes have to purchase VP, but whales who "mined" steem like Bernie Sanders just printed their Steem from thin air and never had to spend one red cent.. which created an uneven playing field, by which created pretty much two social classes on Steem out of the gate. The haves and the have nots. And the HAVES didn't even BUY what they have. And then to boot they (bernie and his sock puppets) abuse that VP by harassing everyone on Steem. Then his supporters who live in fear of his downvotes pretend all is well, and defend the shit, and give out disinformation to people because like I said before "their hand is in the cookie jar".
https://steem.com/faq/
I hope this helps explain my view point @oldoneeye
ps I like your name.. really cool name choice man!
#theirhandisinthecookiejar
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
6 social media platforms and 72 Discord channels will all know about STEEM, well, those who don't already know, will.
Free speech.
So my post is hidden now. Yes, Smitop your comment now seems to be basically what Kawaiicrush said.
What I am going to do now, is put all my resources into exposing STEEM to the entire world that I am able to reach. I will steer people away from this shit, as hard as I can. There isn't much that is more disgusting than this practice. Facebook has more credibility for fucks sake. This is a joke.
As far as I can tell, all the flags you list above are @berniesanders and his bots. He has many more.
I believe your intended action is exactly what he desires from you. It seems to be his purpose to destroy Steem. Since he is closely allied to Stinc, that seems to be their purpose as well, despite their rhetoric.
Action is probative, words are rhetorical.
Again, thanks!
I actually believe that is the intention as well.
Steem need to remove the auto-hide. Being censored by other users who are triggered by truth, will equal the destruction of any platform.
As you said in your other comment though, they are all going to suffer from this somewhat. I like the idea of the 08 you mentioned (nodes). But 'Ripple', is very centralized isn't it?
Ripple is indeed not a decentralized currency. However blockchan simply inserts posts into that blockchain, essentially making a censorship resistant social platform out of the very financial ledger of banksters.
Not sure it's an effective long term solution, but it feels like poetry LOL
I am returning with new info. That person that gave you the "good info" is a steem blockchain "witness" which means they work for Stinc, which means they have their hand in the cookie jar, which means that they have a reason to twist the narrative to make everything look peachy keen, and convince you into some bullshit narrative.. here is your proof..
Here is your friendly little helper chit chatting with the mental case himself.. bernie sanders aka the king troll of Steemit aka Steem aka Stinc
Here the Troll admits "it is not what has been REQUESTED at this time"
Here is one of many cases of the troll verbally abusing women and children.. and that is when he isnt sending people death threats.. and yes I have proof of all of this too.. here is a sample..
Sorry if I seem upset. But I am upset. This behavior is absolutely disgusting. And the way anyone who points it out gets these "friendly little cockroach" messages every single time to control a fake narrative.
Look man, you were right in your assessment above. In fact you probably have no idea just how deep this rabbit hole goes. I have spent months investigating what is going on here.. if you go through my posts you will find at least 4 months of investigative reporting.. all backed with blockchain screen shots as well as links..
cheers!
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
This is factually incorrect, although they do get paid for being a witness. Many witnesses have cryptic affiliations with Stinc, and Bernie. I do not think @ausbitbank does, as I have seen action taken by the to further free speech, and counter the malign influence of censors here.
Please reconsider your assessment of @ausbitbank after undertaking some due diligence to ascertain the nature of their impact on the platform and it's users. They are not who you have cast them to be in your comment.
I disagree.
Cheers!
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
Thanks for the defense @valued-customer and no I'm not aligned with bernie (we flag each other often) and have no special relationship with stinc either beyond access to their Slack channel for important announcements as a consensus witness. Kawaii and a few others are too far in their anti-steem rage to be worth convincing otherwise... Still, thanks for noticing/trying :)
I am too far in my rage? I am not the one threatening women and children while all of you "witnesses" say and DO nothing about it.
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
When I have ever threatened women and children ? Are you thinking I'm bernie too ?
Wow. Ok thank you for this info.
This is really bad for Steem. Getting a reputation for being a Marxist regurgitation pit complete with a censorship bot army, on a blockchain........Ugh..
You fell for it. Retard.
Fell for what, dipshit? Spew more for the cameras!
Also as you can probably see in the string of comments below this person whom I never even mentioned got back all defensive. I was looking over my message to you and it only hit me just now as to why 'ausbitbank' thinks I was talking about him... none of my message had anything to do with him.. in fact I didn't even notice until now, and looking back over my comment that his name is seen in this image.. ( I will link it now)
The purpose of showing you that blockchain screen shot had nothing to do with ausbitbank.. the purpose of that screen shot was to show you the "friendly helper" 'Smitop' was indeed a Steem blockchain witness... it would not have mattered who he was "approving" in any of the vast array of images I could have chosen to show you to prove my point, I simply looked for any image of him acting as "witness" to prove to you that Smitop is a Steem Blockchain Witness.. and it so happened that in that particular instance Smitop had approved Ausbitbank... at any rate this Ausbitbank thought I was attacking him lol when I didn't even know he was anywhere in my original comment to you as I had never mentioned his name, and could not have told you for all the tea in china which witness Smitop had approved in that particular screen grab.. anyhow what you see below is what ensued. I still stand firm on everything I have said. These people are gaurding their corruption with everything they are worth. They have a lot to loose. Millions are at stake. Anyhow man I just wanted to clear that up for the record. Which is that none of my statement had anything to do with 'ausbitbank'.
Cheers!
(FYI @valued-customer)
The author behind @kawaiicrush spends every waking moment of his pathetic life thinking about @berniesanders. He claims @berniesanders has made over 11 million dollars in Steem and is INSANELY jealous he could never live such an amazing life. He's SO fucking pathetic he will make multiple posts and comments with ABSURD claims just to get the attention of his 8 pathetic followers who also have nothing better to do with their time than dream about @berniesanders and the life they will never live. How fucking pathetic can someone be, @kawaiicrush?
That doesn't prove I'm a witness? That just shows I approved a witness. Here's a similar screenshot from you:
Although I am technically a witness, I have never produced any blocks, and became a witness more by accident while playing around with the various blockchain operations. I'm around rank ~300, and I don't have a node to produce blocks.
Thanks Joe, much appreciated. Please try to send me a friend request on disc. when you get a second..
talk soon man
YUP!
Perhaps you are not famiiar with steemd, a sort of blockexplorer you can use to learn about particular accounts. Upon investigating @abusereports with steemd, you will discover that the account is one of many 'sock puppets' owned by the same person that runs the @berniesanders account, whose witness account is @nextgencrypto. Many of the consensus witnesses vote for that witness, and both the last two accounts were amongst the original 'ninjaminers' who mined all the steem there is into existence prior to any app or platform, even Steemit.
He has hella stake, invented to bidbot with @randowhale (now defunct) and is notorious for exactly the kind of flagging you notice happening to @joe.public, whose truthful and indomitable nature makes him incapable of pandering, even to high staked users with huge influence on Steemit, Inc.
Not long ago, a flag war began between the @berniesanders group of accounts and @fulltimegeek, who bought his stake with fiat, and also had many bots. Still does, actually. However, the end result of that disagreement was the initiation of censorship by Stinc, who has blacklisted all of @fulltimegeek's accounts, and even votes cast by his accounts are mystery votes, as the voter is not revealed in the UI. Since many frontends like Steempeak use Steemit APIs, on those apps @fulltimegeek is also completely censored.
As always, the first censorship is just the beginning of the slide down to complete narrative control, and as the flagging/censorship has burgeoned on Steem, users have been leaving in droves, and folks hearing of it from others who've seen it, like your friends will, have not been coming.
We hear rhetoric from Stinc about mass onboarding, but the HF21 that is coming soon will halve author rewards, double curation rewards - which favors substantial stake (the ninjaminers, who still hold almost all Steem in existence) financially, semi-exponential rewards curve - again, favoring large stakeholders, and lastly the newly proposed downvote pool, which will provide 25% more flags to each account based on their extant VP, which derives from their stake.
You don't have to wonder much about what will happen to anyone that irritates substantial stakeholders, like @berniesanders. The market is prepricing in the coming hardfork, as markets do, and the price of Steem is plunging, market cap declining, and users are hemorrhaging. After the real catastrophe rears it's ugly head upon implementation of HF21, the real decline will begin, as the market reacts to the full consequences to the market for Steem of reducing the number of participants by an order of magnitude.
I have made every effort to reveal these facts as the features were discussed, and only recently did the incessant flags on my every post and comment stop, as I would neither stop saying what I believe, nor care about the trivial financial impact on my account - as I do not use Steem as money, but came here, as you mentioned, to take part in a censorship resistant, decentralized social platform.
It's being killed, and Bernie seems to be the heart of the strike team taking it down, for whatever reason. It doesn't really matter to me why, only that it's happening, and I'm hunting around the edges for a replacement. I may have found something in Blockchan, which secretes posts in the Ripple network, but that's only a couple days old, and very, very alpha at present (not even really in beta yet). We'll see how that goes. Zeronet has also recently been used to recreate of version of 8chan, which has been taken down by Cloudflare, an internet wide security provider the secures websites from ddos attacks, and without that protection websites aren't viable, since they are overwhelmed with incessant DDOSing. 08chan isn't really 8chan, according to the admins of the closed site, but many of the users have gone there, and the zeronet protocol stores all images in IPFS, and users themselves host the nodes, which makes it immune to DDOS, and not vulnerable to legacy internet censorship. It does not have a cryptocurrency feature, which reduces rapacious flaggotry, a good thing IMHO.
There seem to be no cryptocurrencies presently potential to resist the weighting of stake to seize the majority of the value of the tokens, and while many pay lip service to decentralization, as long as the stake is substantially centralized, the users subject to KYC, and government regulation and control, they are little more than new features of the legacy fiat financial structure, in which I am not interested.
Hope that information is useful to you in your search for free speech. it's an ever more scarce and rare delight in this world, and that makes it of great value indeed. If you find it, do please let me know as you are able.
Thanks!
Excellent synopsis thank you. This spells it out exactly how I feared. Your breakdown is very thorough and gives a great picture of the state. Thank you for the info!
Go to steemd and have a look at witnesses' votes for other witnesses. Make sure to check proxies too, and see who has mined their stakes. Doing this reveals alignments between witnesses, and sources of their stakes. I also looked at who is running bidbots. This is revealed by their receipt of payments for their investment in the bots.
It is of course possible that what is done to one can be done to another, However, when you see an aligned block acting against a common enemy, such actions are hardly likely to be taken against their allies. If those alignments change, well, all bets are off. Some revelations indicate Bernie's flags aren't simply the result of his churlish nature, but part of a coordinated program undertaken by such an aligned block of stakeholders, for come cryptic purpose unknown to me.
I have found that considering the results of actions is revelatory of the purpose of actors, and often contradicts rhetoric issuing from such actors. Kinda like MCC saying they were intent and focused on ensuring Epstein goes to trial, but the camera being turned off, the guards taking naps, and the cellie that defended him during the first assault on him being moved, and then Epstein suffering an extreme case of arkancide. I don't consider it likely that Prince Andrew, or Bill Clinton, is going to suffer the same fate.
I don't believe the words when the actions produce contradictory results.
In this specific matter, I suspect that the bulk of consensus witnesses are aligned with Bernie and they mutually support each other in an unknown agenda. Bernie's part seems to be flagging, berating, and chasing away creators that somehow impede their agenda, while it's likely that sockpuppets of his allies surreptitiously provide financial and other support for the expenditures he undertakes on their behalf.
The downvote pool looks to be a means of magnifying the impact of his particular geas,and given Steem history, it is easy to predict how it will be used and who it will be used to discourage. I see no likelihood of contriving sufficient stake to oppose or politically fracture that alliance. While this may be disheartening, I don't take it personally, but as an opportunity to learn things I didn't know about how Steem, particularly, and social platforms generally, are managed by such malign entities as that alliance.
I'm intent on free speech, more powerful societies able to gain prosperity contrary to the intention and actions of parasitic would be overlords, and the extant conditions on Steem are practically a petri dish full of such vermin. I don't expect Steem to survive the year, but am certain the lessons learned here will be very useful on succeeding platforms that have arisen, like zeronet and blockchan, and will continue to arise going forward.
I hope I'm wrong, but if I am not I will learn a lot. If I am I will learn even more, and perhaps be less often wrong going forward as a result. Either way I win, and the potential for the great relationships and people I've met here to continue and grow more valuable is a reward I truly will treasure, unlike the contents of my wallet.
Not least that which I've come to appreciate with you. If you come up with some concept with reasonable mechanisms to affect stake weighting here, that might impact this cabal of steemkillers, I'll be very interested in it. I haven't thought of anything, but know better minds than mine are on it. Nothing I'd like more than to be proved wrong about all or any part of this, regarding Steem.
tl;dr the witnesses are already politicized, and their politics are revealed by their witness votes that you can see on steemd. About all we can do is throw our support towards witnesses like @krnel and @ausbitbank that do not support the Bernie cabal. Let me know if you think of something more, because I'd jump at the chance to do more.
If there is also censorship in Steemit, turn it off and let's go. I DO NOT believe that the community allows this. Let's see what happens.
Uh Hello, go check my feed. You will notice it might be impossible to view from steemit.com! For Real censorship is here, sorry to burst your bubble!
Try my link:
https://steemit.com/sunset/@coininstant/tonights-sky-lii9uhsx
Oh, that there was some means to effect your purpose. Stake weighting determines the weight of votes on the platform. The ~30 or so whales can simply outvote everyone else on the platform, even if everyone else was of one mind and purpose - which is not even remotely potential.
The ninjamine pre-empowered our present ruling class on Steem. That's why it cannot attract investors seeking capital gains, as the only mechanism capable of ROI on Steem is rapine profiteering, which proves historically to destroy investment vehicles.
AMA. I have some small grasp of the principles underlying investment methodologies, and would be willing to provide such information as I possess.
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STOP
To support your work, I also upvoted your post!
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
I'm selling my steem because of a narcissistic bot owner that is down voting me for no reason. Kicked me out of discord when pleaded my case. Made me feel like I wasted 3 years here.
Sorry about that, and I can completely see what you mean. It is obvious and apparent right off the bat. I haven't even gotten the hang of Steem yet fully, but I see the abused 'freedom'. Exists on all platforms but this insta-auto-hide feature is not so good. Detrimental in fact, to everyone except the narcissistic spy bots with agendas and a silencer blockchain bot army to shut up any voice that doesn't fit the 'narrative' that it wants.
Yeah! Same Here! My comment won't even show up below your post???
Yes exactly. They can 'hide' your comment by simply downvoting it. This platform is a joke.
How do you propose to turn this place around?