How Are We Supposed to Handle SteemIt's Prohibition Against Linking to Other Sites?
SteemIt recently added a line to its Terms of Service:
14.1.7. [Steemians cannot] Use our services to promote third-party platforms or to promote each other without our written permission.
Web sites, by nature, are developed on platforms. Links to web sites, by nature, are promotions for platforms. The ToS tells us that we cannot link to web sites without getting written permission from SteemIt Inc. The ToS does not tell us how we can get permission, simply that we must get permission.
I wanted the "Review the World" community to be a place where people could talk about link development. I actually decided to create this community in response to a @steemitblog post which asked us to promote SteemIt on other platforms.
Yes, SteemIt wants us to promote SteemIt on other platforms, but SteemIt forbids us from having links to other platforms.
I contend that, if we want to promote the SteemIt platform on other platforms, each Steemian has to think holistically about their entire web presence. That means an open discussion about how we link to the different pieces of our online lives.
Anyway, this change to the ToS has really thrown me into a bad situation. The very concept behind this community is forbidden by the ToS.
A fundamental feature of the World Wide Web is that the World Wide Web platform invites users to create links to other sites on the web.
Anyway, the changes to the ToS has me stuck in a quagmire.
I thought I might ask the SteemIt community at large: How are you handling SteemIt's prohibition against linking to other web sites?
You may have misinterpreted the ToS. My understanding is it is read more like...
Hope that helps.
I figured that the new ToS was probably about the renegade hard fork that took place in March.
The problem is that I take Terms of Service seriously.
I was rereading the ToS was to make sure that the Community I just created was in compliance with the SteemIt ToS.
My community is not in line with the line as written.
Steem Inc. could change the ToS to say: Steemians cannot use the service to promote hard forks or engage in activity to harm the STEEM blockchain.
They might change the ToS to say they will remove accounts engaged in harassment or spam.
Line 14.1.7 is poorly written and harms the SteemIt community.
Yeah my comment was a bit of tongue in cheek. The immutability of both chains has left the station and DPoS governance seems broken beyond repair. My hope is that @openorchard will come up with real solutions. They are the old dev team of STINC and two of them actually coded the original STEEM with @dan. They have been posting updates on HIVE since the fork.