Months ago Orwellian censorship started sweeping through Facebook and Twitter under the guise of "Hate Speech Policy" so I was quickly intrigued by Steemit which promised to be an "uncensorable blockchain" solution.
Unfortunately, despite @dantheman's and @ned's pledge to the 1st amendment, I saw how censorship became quite common on Steemit through flagging, and often for arbitrary and petty reasons.
I see now there's finally a flagging etiquette which though says it is ok to flag-censor someone for "Hate Speech"(exactly the policy being used by Facebook and Twitter to censor people) or "Internet Trolling" (open to several interpretations as you can see in this thread https://steemit.com/steem/@ats-david/steem-price-analysis-december-7-2016 )
Under 1st Amendment rights, unless someone is engaging in criminal behaviour ( fraud, plagiarizing, harassing, threatening and inciting violence which are all recognized exceptions to the 1st amendment), there should be no censorship.
btw I can fully understand users wanting to remove rewards from a "Racist"(whatever it may mean nowadays) to prevent him from trending , but I can never understand or accept censorship. Censoring someone is an act of aggression on his fundamental rights. "Bad People" are better punished through reputation damage or by simply ignoring them (mute button works).
Flaggers should be careful what weight they apply to a flag , or maybe a smart pop-up could inform the flagger that the applied weight would result in a post becoming hidden and they should be mindful of 1st amendment rights etc . Personally I'd bring back the downvote button (for anyone to use as they see fit, but without censoring powers ) and have the Flag button (with added censoring powers) separate just for clear abuses.
in the meanwhile a Steemit chat group "defenders of the 1st Amendment" could be setup to neutralize any censoring flagging through counter-voting.
anyway imagine this very possible future scenario if the censorship issue is not addressed :
David Duke signs up and gets flag-censored for "Hate Speech"
Milo Yiannopoulos signs up and gets flag-censored for "Internet Trolling".
result? Steemit would fall off a cliff just like Facebook and Twitter (users are leaving en masse for places like Gab)
I 'd like to invest big in Steem, especially with the new hard-fork, but only if it will be a truly free speech platform. it's absolutely key for its future success in my opinion.
Flagging is useful but sometimes its abused.
Flagging protects steemit from rampant idiocracy.
Even if a post is flagged it's not actually censored. Its there, available to see. It may become shaded and people won't see/click but its still there, forever just as it was posted.
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maybe it's not clear, but i'm referring to flagging by people with a lot of SteemPower which results in posts becoming hidden. even 1 single flag by a whale or dolphin is enough.
a post becomes hidden but it's not censored? a contradiction in terms.
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Even if its hidden it is still there. people can see that it was flagged and make a decision to view it or not. But its still there. It is not removed or altered.
So the flagging doesn;t remove the content from the platform like if facebook or twitter censored a post, then it would be gone forever from that platform (maybe cached somewhere).
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sure it is better than facebook and twitter already.
like most I rarely check hidden posts....but the few times I did I was disappointed to see posts were being hidden (censor-flagged) for very questionable reasons.
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I agree, some flaggs are not warranted.
I have received a few flags. I just ask them why they flagged me and offer an argument for why they shouldn't flag. And sometimes they remove it. ^^
Freedom isn't free.
Did you know in some states people can carry machine guns and scream hate BUT they can't collect the rain that falls on their head.
Amazing world.
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Love the post. Now following. Think we are like-minded. That being said, having some sort of anti-censorship chat group seems to go against steemit's core aspects- lack of a centralized content control.
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Flagging is NOT censorship...
...and besides...you said: Personally I'd bring back the downvote button (for anyone to use as they see fit, but without censoring powers ) and have the Flag button (with added censoring powers) separate just for clear abuses.
so what's the problem? we have the mute button
anyone can say anything they want to on Steemit and no one can stop them. How exactly is that censorship?
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if a whale or dolphin with high reputation flags you your post becomes hidden on Steemit .
I've seen it happening several times.
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If you've seen it then it's not hidden is it?
It's just grey out...you can see what was written any time you want...just clik on show post and all is revealed.
NOT censorship...you can write anything you want to...and I can ignore you.
note: anyone flags ME...and I mute them..
note: you can't buy reputation.
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