Anonymity protects the Underground, and censorship on social media.
Censorship is nothing new on social media.
Examples
Message board admins are known for enforcing arbitrary rules on face value. Most boards out there are single-cause anyway ranging from Stormfront to DIY tech boards to fanfiction. The administrator enforces their political opinion and attitudes on individual members as though the entire room were his personal property. Earning a kickban on Stormfront couldn't be easier, if you are BLM.
Getting banned on an IRC server for an opposing opinion on a hot topic ~ such as gay marriage, libertarianism, a political candidate or gun control, couldn't have been easier since the dawn of the World Wide Web. I used to piss off hicks on EFNet #politics, and earn a ban in a record five seconds after posting a link.
My latest experience is recent. Day before yesterday, I critisized the use of war as a foreign policy instrument, using U.S. foreign policy as an example on an ammophile page. I attempted to troll, of course, but maintaining some kind of intellectual conversation in case anyone were up for it. As a result, several members on the page got butthurt and group-reported my Facebook profile for containing my alias Starwalker as a fake ID. Facebook required my ID in a status report, and after two attempts and a little bit of noise Facebook reinstated my account.
I don't honestly think that it's Facebook's business to take part in a political debate between a small group of people. There were probably less than a dozen participants, and little discourse was made. Perhaps the fact that I was promoting political pacifism among a group of military enthusiasts had something to do with it. War can be a hot topic, after all it has a profound influence on the lives of those who have to experience it for one reason or the other.
It isn't the first time when I've been deleted by Facebook. The first time, I critisized the both sides of the "refugee argument" in Finland for being hypocrites and using the refugees for furthering their political goals. No discourse was made, and I permanently lost my account on Facebook. I don't think that it's Facebook's business to suppress a random political opinion. It was the first time I spoke of the entire topic. Perhaps the opinion was well-articulated or something.
Facebook community standards stale the conversation, and enforce arbitrary political correctness under a false-liberal bias. I'd define it false, since Facebook even though appearing as a classical liberal company in the news media, enforces their bias through their employees. These employees write the algorithm and sanction the users. They're mostly white, male and live around Silicon Valley. If I were a shit admin, I'd probably knock the door at Facebook more than often just to get a job where I don't only complement my boring, expensive existence in a lily-white spotless Teflon - I'd also get kicks from watching others struggle with their lives elsewhere. All that without having to actually experience any of that myself! I could be as biased as I wanted, and the company could cover it for me so long as overall things seem all dandy, and everyone likes country music - right?
Facebook has a long history of censorship:
-BLM movement
Facebook employees have had a documented racist bias. Therefore, they've cherrypicked topics they prefer to harass. Among these trend black lives matter and other rights movements featuring brown or black people. Most likely censorship on Facebook towards "ethnic" civil rights groups stems purely out of the attitude of the employees.
-Gun rights groups
Even though the (American, of course) military is generally favoured by Facebook in trending stories and general appreciation, civilian gun rights groups are often suppressed. This seems to be a result of a Silicon Valley liberal bias. Most people in Silicon Valley do not need guns as the community is closely guarded by the police and secret service. As a safe community, the area is mostly isolated from poor neighbourhoods and rangelands nearby. It's easy to have a bias against pro-gun groups from Silicon Valley. Truth be told, the same defense corporations that market their products to the military, also serve the civilian sector, be it aerospace or guns. Censoring civilian gun aficionados therefore makes only a cosmetic difference if as claimed the goal is an open global community.
Let's take an example: The largest producer of small arms in the World was headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. Alliant Techsystems was split into two corporations, Vista Outdoors (VSTO@NYSE) and Orbital ATK. Vista Outdoor sells remarkably good quality outdoors and camping products, and as such represents a goor repurposing of a former world's largest bullet factory. The company still manufactures civilian firearms - but mainly for recreation. The arms aren't useful for a military purpose. This is what any peace activist would want, as repurposing military contractors leads to global disarmament. But Orbital ATK is another animal altogether - it makes strategic missile systems and serves the military space program. This company still stands almost purely a military contractor. The company owns technologies that would prove extremely useful in civic development and in civilian technologies, but government contracts breathe air into the market of military products.
Stories talking about military disarmament almost never trend on Facebook. Stories about civilian disarmament almost always do.
During both Bush administrations, military disarmament was the staple of table conversations. During Obama administration, such talk has all but diminished from public space.
This seems clearly biased. Perhaps the media can influence trends.
Both are legitimate topics, and possibly important to speak about. From my personal bias, transformation of industries around the World from military to civilian infrastructure is important, as it reduces the pressure to produce and ultimately use arms regardless of which country makes them. Even more importantly, it is the weapons manufacturers who often sit on key technologies. If these technologies were liberalised in civilian use, human development could be accelerated on levels that could guarantee a decent standard of living for all.
I'm siding here with Buckminster Fuller. http://www.designsciencelab.com/resources/HumanitysPath_BF.pdf
-Peace activists (I fall possibly in this category, even though I prefer to speak of myself as a political pacifist).
Here, Facebook censors Naomi Wolf for talking about "Gaza".
http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/08/facebook-censors-author-naomi-wolf-on-gaza/
-Political and religious organisations
Facebook has a widespread political bias.
http://www.facebookcensorship.com/
-Meme pages
Facebook routinely deletes popular meme pages without warning, mostly for political reasons.
http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/facebook-war-on-meme-pages/
-Civil rights advocacy groups
Facebook claims to be a welcoming environment to diverse views, yet it has been repeatedly caught censoring civil rights groups, if they represent Muslims or non-white anglosaxons.
Meanwhile, Facebook has censored Middle-Eastern Atheist in favour of the fringe Jihadis, who accused the Atheist of "criticism of Islam".
-Supporting totalitarian regimes
Facebook often complies with governments that are totalitarian in order to protect their own business interest. In this case, Facebook has censored a British civil rights group for critisizing Turkey for their human rights record. Facebook possibly chose to comply with Turkey, because Turkish Facebook users return a good income on advertising. The case included censoring a graffiti that was posted in defiance to ISIS the terrorist group. The reason for censorship in Turkey is obvious - the post was made by a pro-Kurdish group. Turkey has a long history of suppressing the Kurdish independence movements.
-Independent news media
According to former employees, Facebook routinely suppresses independent news media. This seems to be a result of a political bias.
-Government bias
U.S. government created the Silicon Valley to develop new technologies that would serve both civilian and military sectors, and keep the country as a leading industrial power. Government contracts are extremely lucrative, and therefore the federal government exerts considerable power over companies situated in the community. Consequently, when the government wants something done, the companies almost never pose any questions towards the program. They bid.
Facebook algorithm is documented to be biased towards contemporary American themes that trend in the corporate media and Silicon Valley. This bias serves to manipulate trends and topics of talk on the site.
“Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending,” […] “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz.” ~ Former Facebook employee interviewed by Gizmodo - a website favoured by Facebook itself. http://archive.is/SFuRy
Huffington post features a long list of juicy Facebook censorship cases - including famous paintings.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/facebook-censorship/
If I were a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, I admit that I would probably be tempted to do the same. After all, I'd be surrounded with a community of people with similar opinons, who keep my company running.
Yet, ISIS beheading videos, racist and other extremist content, alarmist politically biased webzines and other such trash almost always seem to trend on Facebook with little effort to censor the content.
I wonder if the employees secretly enjoy having their users traumatised, or worse desensitised with violence and extreme political views. It almost sounds like KKK, but that would be too far out to imagine, right?
I think it's more because the administrators on Facebook come from an isolated, sheltered community and operate a well-funded centralised online community from a vantage point that blinds them from context.
Decentralisation is possibly the only way we the people may reclaim the Internet for ourselves. Even though services such as Facebook are brilliant and provide much value in our daily lives, the very nature of these services as centralised feeds often causes more harm than good: Diverse views might exist - as segregated bubbles that almost never interact. Discourse becomes stale, and advances slowly if at all if the topic is arbitrarily deemed controversial for any apparent reason. The administrators don't and cannot be aware of context on every topic, and their rules are by design arbitrary.
In my honest opinion, decentralisation of social media is not only absolutely necessary, it's essential in preservation of free political and social discourse in society. Suppression of one opinion in favour of another has no meaning, and in the long term serves nobody if the goal is to maintain an open society as claimed. Administration should be decentralised and if possible - minimised. I have enough faith in people to believe that when faced with new realities, most people won't go to denial if the truth simply exists without bias.
Steemit runs on a Blockchain. Blockchain is the ultimate tool of decentralisation, as it removes the burden of administration from the founders. I think that a Blockchain can promote meaningful discourse for two reasons: Firstly, it creates an environment where anyone is absolutely free to say anything. Secondly, it makes the bearer responsible for the information, as nothing can be removed. Publishing becomes better articulated.
Encryption is without mention a basic service. I think I don't have to explain why encryption is needed.
Anonymity protects the Underground, the misfits, the sinners and the investigative journalists. Perhaps Steemit won't be another Wikileaks since we all have public handles, but anonymity on the Internet is one of the defining factors of the network. Anonymity prevents prior censorship of opinions and views.
Imagine if recognition of evolution were banned one day?
Where would we be without the Internet? The 80's?
That's why I'm here, on Steemit.
I totally agree with you on the need for censorship free social media and media in general, and you've really done your research on Facebook which I love. But I'm not at all sure that Steemit will do that. I just wrote an article about this actually and would love to hear your opinion on it: https://steemit.com/steemit/@dcsignals/steemit-will-not-resist-censorship-it-will-bring-super-censorship-and-downvote-wars
I think that a lot depends on the community. Downvoting doesn't really depend on the founders, but screening posts does. If platforms such as Steemit become as open and as prevalent as phpBB, I think that the most popular platforms will just appear on their own.
Pretty much nail on the head. What people need to be aware of on Steemit is the blockchain is open ledger. What you post, sticks, forever.
So with that in mind, be open, be kind, be extreme, go crazy in fact, but be aware that what you post is there in the public domain for as long as steemit is around. Any link to you RL alias could be used against you.