Write what I like - Or else!

in #opinion7 years ago


From pixabay.com


Steem is decentralized. Steemit can’t be censored because it’s on the blockchain. Great concept, in theory. But I’ve seen it again and again, the abuse.

The flagging feature is the only tool to get rid of people who spam and plagiarize and those two groups are generally the only ones I flag (especially if it’s another dumbass who thought copy&pasting my posts would be a great idea).

But many, many people flag because they disagree with someone. Is that ok? Let’s ask the ones who implemented the flag feature, as every time you tap the symbol a helpful little guide pops up about what to flag:

• Disagreement on rewards
• Fraud or Plagiarism
• Hate Speech or Internet Trolling
• Intentional miss-categorized content or Spam

The only disagreement I see here is „disagreement on rewards“ which is, in my eyes, a bit tricky. Still, I’ve seen it more than once that someone flagged a comment without any reward just because they didn’t like what the commenter said. And I’m not talking about the dumb „nice post, upvot me pls“ comments. Those are spam and can be flagged to death.

Hate speech and internet trolling is tricky too, because something isn’t automatically one of the two just because you disagree. It requires a certain level of finesse I suppose.

But what I see over and over again is people with a high reputation and/or SP threatening to totally destroy somebody else, just because they don’t agree with their views.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to flag those I disagree with and there are a lot of them, especially on steemit. But I’m not the one who can decide what’s right or wrong, even if I think I know better than them. It’s just not my place.

But many think it’s their place. And as a result, they totally destroy accounts of users who didn’t do anything wrong (this does not include users who started a flag war. If you flag something that isn’t spam/plagiarism and get flagged back as a result… tough luck but you brought this upon yourself).

What I’m trying to say is that there are many extremely aggressive groups of people on steemit who search certain tags for people whose posts they disagree with just to flag those users down to zero, both in rep and payout.

This creates an atmosphere of fear, people become afraid of posting what they think. And when that happens, steemit will sooner or later stop getting new users, because nobody wants to be active on a platform where they can be destroyed for stating their view (agreeing or opposing) on a wide range of conspiracy theories.

I haven’t found a single of these theories I agree with. In fact, I’d be happier if they wouldn’t constantly be discussed on steemit. But especially the ones who believe those theories are true are incredibly aggressive. And while I generally try to follow the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

The fact that people abuse their power to silence those who disagree makes me want to abandon this rule and flag them. I won’t. I said earlier I only flag spam and plagiarism/stolen content. But it makes me furious.

Because if you want free speech, you better grant it to everyone else too.

If not, you’re just another asshole and not better than those you claim to fight.

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I completely agree with you on this. Members should not abuse their power to flag people down simply because they don't agree with what they say. If I come across a view I don't like or agree with, I just click next to another post. We are not here to agree or disagree with each, but to grow as a community that is free to express itself as long as we are not preaching hate, prejudice or abuse. I sometimes get the 'Follow me, I follow you' spams, but ignore t them because they're already on their way down to 0 rep with or without my flagging. People should really use this feature responsibility and for valid reasons.

Great post! I think that SMTs are potentially the solution to this. SteemIt.com is just the initial proof of concept site built around the Steem platform, but the idea has always been for other more niche communities to be built on top of it, separate from SteemIt.

SMTs will not only allow this, but also allow more control over the distribution of the Tokens, and therefore control over moderation, to the community creators.

The problem will never go away, but hopefully in the future we will be able to pick and choose which Steem-based communities we want to be a part of based on whatever criteria you want, one of which can be how open the community is to different points of view.

This is one of the biggest things I look forward to with SMTs, and I hope to create one or more such communities myself if no one else does it first!

I hope you're right and it will make it better

We are suppose to keep an open mind in this community , We can freely debate as to who is right or wrong . But the hypocrisy is visible when we take praises but flag criticism .Thats really mature, if you think about it the whole crypto currency thing came about when we started questioning the norm! i don't understand how a member steemit doesn't grasp this.

I wasn't fully aware about these "flag wars" but you put it very well; everyone should have a freedom to express their opinions as long as it isn't hate speech, trolling ect. no matter how ridiculous they might seem.

Flagging should be left for what it's for: to eliminate spam and plagiarism, not to be used as childishly expressing hate or disagreement on people for their opinions by ruining their rewards.

It's not even the rewards in many cases, some get flagged to a rep of 0 or even negative values. It's possible to recover from a $0.00 payout, but try coming back from a -1 reputation without the help of friends!

Ah, I didn't even realize the reputation being hurt! That makes it even worse for them who get targeted by unreasonable hate.

There's a similar issue on Reddit - downvotes were designed to be used for people who didn't contribute to the discussion or were being toxic. Instead it's used as a button for people who disagree. I think some people legitimately have a hard time understanding the difference between a respectful disagreement and something that's toxic or not a useful contribution.

This is indeed one of the biggest challenges here.
Quote "This creates an atmosphere of fear, people become afraid of posting what they think."
Well, when there is no change in the flag-system we need to find a different solution. This could be realized not by fighting the bad but by empowering the good. It must be done in a transparent and honest way to keep this platform healthy, bcs otherwise steemit would end up like a brain-dead patient kept alive by machines...

I agree 100%! But who determines who's "good" and deserves that power? And how long until those "good" people start being influenced by their own opinions and remove/flag content they just don't agree with?

We'd have the same problem we have right now, just with less possibilities to fight against it.

I think it's way too easy for those with a lot (and I mean a lot) of SP to dictate what everyone else does. Maybe there needs to be a limit to how much SP influences a flag. Like beyond a certain amount the flagging power stops rising.

You are absolutely right - the big fish eats the smaller. This is a fact in the real life as well as in steemit. So, flagging should be only used for plagiarism, violence or something else that undermine the (unwritten) rules of a modern society. but there must be a possibility to stop the abuse of flagging. This is not the case at the moment! There must be clear rules when a flag is used too extensively. Somebody who flags down a person of a high rep lvl to "dust" must let an internal alarm system BURN! It should be impossible to destroy the reputation of a member within seconds.
Pls correct me if I am wrong, but for flagging could be an extra timeout installed maybe?

Maybe there should be a limit to how much a certain person can damage another one's reputation. By doing that, flagging someone down would really be a community effort.

Then again, there are communities of spammers (!) with significant reputations who could counter a flagging of one of their own...

It's really tricky.

When I received my first flag, it was like - what the hell, what have I done but then I came to a realization - there are forces of evil without any fun.

Ps. Thanks for your perspective! You described it very well. Especially the quote, it fits right in.

How about a downvote bot that only downvotes excessive downvoters?

Of course, I'm kidding, but I have always disagreed with people flagging content simply to adjust the reward. I think that is pretty petty behavior, and I agree that Steemit is worse off for it.

I have seen certain profiles who are in war with others and get flagged only because of that. May be the war would have started sometimes back, and has reached to a level where each party is not willing to leave the ego because of the position they are in.

In general, its not good to cross paths with those angry people as you mentioned. No common solution , just a good common sense is all that needed.

It's almost sad. I've felt that kind of hate too so I know why it happens. But a flag war can't and shouldn't be the solution.

Maybe we need a steemit-mediation team that tries to solve fights like that.

They say, if you just put their name in your post, you get flagged by their enemies. It has gone to such a level. I don't want to even spell their name here because of that 💔

Search for a profile with reputation -19, if you can.

-19? That's extreme! And I didn't name any people on purpose as it's a problem with the whole system and there will always be new people to abuse it.

I think that steemit need an another option: Vote is similar as like button in other social media platforms but in steemit there is no unlike button the flag option is like a report button.When people dont like something they click on unlike but they cant do it on steemit.

Separation payout and reputation from each other might be the way to go. You could flag rep and downvote payment. This might reduce the amount of abuse a bit. Maybe.