Are Flags really Censorship? - Continuing the discussion at hand
There are some Steemians, including some who have been participating of this blockchain for a long time who seemed to be a bit confused about this subject.
This is my attempt to add some clarity to the ideas. Hopefully we can move away from using some of the flammable language and address some of the real behavioral issues on the platform, not so much the code and the way it operates on the blockchain.
What are you thoughts on this matter?
2 Videos in less than 24h! You are on fire!
Another great video regarding the whole flag drama Jerry started, sadly he will probably not show up here or even answer, maybe he will who knows.
I just had a very weird mental image of a credit card company raping you using your crack to slide cards... i better stop now.
Well, i guess if enough of us are speaking from a place of common sense... eventually, more and more people will wake up to the fact that Jerry is completely wrong about his assertions.
All of this is an interesting training ground for whenever 4Chan decides we're important enough to notice.
I'm not sitting here going "man we are so prepared" though.
Sheesh. Think of that. 4chan will be on us like Meno on Jerrys nonsense. 😉😆
Blockchain populated with Bernies.
Jerry is an egocentric, self centered, annoying, self-serving user who does everything to look good in the eyes of others, meanwhile he's doing nothing to serve anyone but himself.
I actually thought he was a genuine, straight up person when I first saw him on Steemit... It took me about a month or so to realize how full of shit he is.
Remove the flags and remove the "censorship" he says? - Yeah, I wonder where Steemit would be at if all the flags vanished. - Steemit is already a place filled with garbage as it is.
He's crying because people have finally read between the lines of all his BS. I would vote for him as a Steem witness the day I want Steemit to crash.
unfortunately everything you said is probably 100% accurate...
I don't seem to see a flag option here on DTube only a down vote. Has it been removed?
its called downvote on Dtube, its really just a label at that point... but i do think there is some psychological associations with the word "flag" that could be avoided.
It is censorship , not decided by a company but decided by the community.
The days STEEM gets more distributed ( many years in future ) it would be less of an apparent issue than what it is today!!
Demonetization is a form of censorship , perhaps not the most severe form of censorship but it certainly falls under the umbrella of censorship.
In my humble opinion.
Should we have this type of censorship? YES of course !!
Distributed censorship is the way to go.
I think the correct word is a financial deterrent... let me ask you this.
Let's say you sang at my party (let's assume you are a musician) and I decided to not pay you for your services. Imagine, we agreed on 100 bucks, and then 7 days later (when its time to pay) I tell you, I won't pay you, I decided against it.
Did I censor you?
A more analogous example would be ,
If I am a musician and I get hired for gigs but you come along and use your influence in society/market to disallow me payment for my work already done and also not get hired in future ( implicit threat of flagging bringing down the reputation).
2 real life examples of this
Not to say , that would be the fate of STEEM but its one of the possible outcome if STEEM isn't distributed more evenly.
Also consider , majority of the people when faced with financial deterrence will self censor . That , in my view , though is not the classic censoring but yet another variant of shadow censoring.
To conclude , to call it NOT Censorship is incorrect. The questions we need to ask ourselves
a) do we need this type of Censorship ?( Yes , IMO) and
b) where do we the draw the boundaries for what gets censored/flagged ?
I see, the confusion lies in the semantics... So in a sense, we agree a lot more than I suspected.
Now, here is an important piece of the puzzle, something we as stake holders (you included) have to be cognitively consistent.
If we understand that a big hurdle is the skewed distribution of SP, the fact that a small number of accounts hold the majority of the steem power. Then, why are more people not powering up? Why is someone with 500 Steem power among the 1% of the platform.
Check out that number... 500 Steem Power and you are part of the 1%
Extrapolate that into a meat world situation.
500 Steem Power and you are a Kardashian (i'm being ridiculous intentionally).
How hard is it to power up 500 Steem Power? Specially for Western Societies...
For current users:
We only have 50k active users on STEEM right now with a lot of them ( it seems) from 3rd world countries who are more than content making 1-2 $ a day on this platform. That has a momentum of it's own but that is certainly not the investor class.
For future: ( mostly my speculation)
As we get more content creators on-board ( OC types and Youtube celebs) they bring their audience with them and they stand to gain a lot of STEEM and rival the stakes of 1st gen STEEM investors. That gives me hope that SP will be more distributed in coming few years.
Our home grown Steemit stars mostly (not all) tend to be Investor class , which leads to not original content ( or original but creepy..whose name shall not be mentioned) in the trending section.
Also wait for the instagram T&A ( tits and ass) show , certain kind of influencers who don't mind obliging the request of fans...they are gonna be BIGGGG
lol
Flags don't matter. Suspension of accounts would be a whole other level of censorship. Is that even possible in Steem?
its not, accounts cannot be deleted or suspended on steem. That's why we have phishing scammers, happily participating of the blockchain. No one can delete their accounts or reclaim the funds.
hey meno,
I am kind of new here, So gain exposure I decided to use some bot services. Before using them , I went through your article that you wrote some 8 months ago. I have to be agreed to your concerns that you have made their and it is almost pretty hard for a newbie to meet his/her ambition by blogging though not impossible. I read your comments to and wanting to actually know how can I lift me up on this platform?
I have a same expectations from the platform as you have.
Should I use bot services ? Should I keep on working on the posts or Should I stop being too reliable on steemit?
Your Reader
hash-tag
I think bots are promotional services, if you want to promote a certain article to gain followers, to gain exposure... something you put a lot (and i do mean a lot) of work, and want to promote it, then... it could be an effective tactic.
Now, to me, what's important is to not rely on bots as a replacement for quality. That's not sustainable. Mainly because you will possibly have negative returns most of the time.
I have same thinking as yours I want Community. As I was researching about bots , I went through your article . It raises a serious question. So thanks for the help, man
Well I don't want to see as an user nsfw content that is not tagged as so, don't want to stumble upon plagiarism, hate speech, animal cruelty or any thing that common sense would "ban". Freedom is a great thing that is broken is ABUSED and I think flags are necessary for the platform in order to survive. I truely believe so. And some contents yes they're only hidden, but there will be cases where if they cannot be deleted (according to new laws) could result in law infringement by the platform... like imagine a despised boyfriend posting private pictures of someone or a minor or whatever... there are cases and cases, and there should be always tools for a quick response. We can's expect everyone to be reasonable, or even good people, this is a society and there is pretty much everything represented... not being able really to delete the only tools to prevent misbehaviour at the moment are precisely the flags... and yet again the problem is that they're used sometimes "lightly" for "personal" reasons and wars when they should be tools for such cases. Then about our personal views, everybody should just respect... but if a post is harmful to "OTHERS" well, I agree there may be at least this minimal kind of control!
that's just the thing tho Pris... there is no way to delete anything from a blockchain, its the very nature of it. It has to be immutable.
The tools for policing are not equivalent nor will they ever be to censoring, to deleting, because if they did. Then the currency of Steem would be worth 0.
If we were talking about FIAT, imagine if the people who used, lets say the EURO had the ability to change the amount of bills in circulation. To say, ohh no, this person has too much, or I don't want this person to have valid EUROS, let's invalidate this persons EUROS. That would not work at all...
I'm a living example of what you claim doesn't exist, and I don't post controversial stuff. If your posts get flagged they don't show up where they can be found and then you have those that flag with bots, lots a bots. Flagging is a way to kill someone's account for what ever personal reason! ..and like FB or YT, there is no recourse and no community support.
I'm sick of the B.S. Tell it like it is or don't say anything at all.
Kind regards.
I've told you before, what happened with you is terrible. But i think it's more accurate to say you've been bullied, and your case as tragic as it may be, is also anecdotal... meaning, its not the majority of the time.
I have to ask you brother.. Have you considered starting a new?
I don't really have time to game the system. I'm a 1 man show so either I create, or spend time gaming the system; I can't do both. I publish under my real name so starting a new account is not an option nor should it be necessary.
No one had the guts to stand up for unwitting newbies.... The Whales rule this platform, so all this talk about D this and D that is complete nonsense. They allow robotic flagging, requiring no views and no effort...... it's automatic, set it and forget it.
Greetings!
They covered the breasts but clearly moved the "change" lower so it's below her crotch, which is partly exposed. Wtf?
no idea what you are talking about...