RE: Why Steemit Is The Platform Of The People And The Answer To Censorship
There have been vociferous debates regarding censorship already on Steemit. The recent kerfluffle between @berniesanders and @haejin is an example.
Flagging is censorship. There are accounts on Steemit that openly state they are 'paid flaggers'. I have run afoul of one already. It is trivial for the financially encumbered to relieve themselves of the weighty burden of monetary excess by devoting it to VP used to silence opposition to whatever political or business purpose they decide.
While post and comment text will remain on the blockchain, video and imagery will not, when flagging causes an account, post, or comment to become hidden, revealed only by choosing to click the necessary buttons on a comment by comment, post by post, basis. D.tube does, I believe preserve video on the blockchain, and this is a good thing.
However, except by scouring the blockchain for such content as has been suppressed, along with all the scams, spam, and trolling that has been suppressed along with it, folks will not be able to read it.
Lastly, stake-weighting witness votes centralizes control of the blockchain. It is trivially easy for deep pockets to buy enough Steem to fork the blockchain any way they want. Since many users will not put up with that, and the code is FOSS, we can expect instant forks to prevent users being captive to such hostile takeovers. However, such migration will abandon any Steem those users have on the captured blockchain, and all the posts, comments, and data on that blockchain.
I reckon it'd be better to preclude that by democratizing witness votes.
Very interesting argument. The flagging with empower trolls with censorship. I feel because of money involved, people shy away from confronting on this website. Currently, whales have quite some power to manipulate the discussion and topics. Their money with bots can already do damage to a normal user and it's content.
The website is in it's nascent stages and a working blockchain Dapp. There are some tough challenges they have to think hard for long term prospects. Flagging and weighted voting favors whales. Democratization would indeed fit between promoting good content and manipulation of opinion/content.
An excellent point. Self censorship is censorship, after all.
The stake-weighting problem I raised had specifically to do with control of the witnesses, who post the code that defines the blockchain. While I also believe, as you point out, that stake-weighting ordinary votes is problematic, that's a different problem.
The market for Stinc and Steemit, as the code is written, is essentially the 38 whales that control the vast majority of Steem. Yesterday I read a post that actually states that @ned is the particular focus of most increase on Steemit. I do not know enough to argue that either way, and without specific knowledge that such is true, I'll not speculate that it is so.
I do know the whales have the Steem, and I see the system decidedly benefits them. That argument I can make.
I do not shy away from the issue. In fact, today i wrote an article about a related issue. The surveillance @cheetah it's really pissing me off how it singles things out and throws it all on one big pile.
You can read it here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@bifilarcoil/why-cheetah-sucks-and-why-i-m-going-to-call-this-discrimination
I'm looking forward to articles about flagging as sensorship.
As Steemit is still in beta I feel that now is the time to raise our voices.
It sucks that we who actually like the platform have to be the ones to critisize it. But NOW IS THE TIME. Don't wait until we are flagged out of the picture. Burn the flag. :-) Lets see what the anarchists have to say about this.
Far as i know I'm not an anarchist, but I have the feeling that this might be a very good issue for the real anarchists to fire some neurons at.
How to spot a troll...
I find @cheetah being somewhat trolling. The intentions are good, but a good intention is never a real solution, it's merely an intention. And as a result it turns out to be nothing more then automated surveillance. And we all know how good that works in the world.