Steemit Shadowbans Fulltimebot Net

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

Just before I lost internet access last Friday, I had been exploring this issue with @a-non-e-moose, as I also noted it happening on my posts and comments.

I find it very alarming, and were I not here for a few stolen moments only, would probably rant extensively on this issue, because it's contrary to the censorship resistance modus for Steem as a basis for social media. Without the ability to examine further exactly how this is being implemented - and it is also happening on Steempeak - I am left with the suggestion that the spat with Bernie and FTG ongoing produced a weapon of mass distraction - the spam comment ad infinitum.

My guess is that censoring all their comments was undertaken to prevent that intolerable assault on the blockchain, and that this results in their votes being concealed as well. If that's not correct, then I see no good reason for hiding the source of the votes.

Either way, I reckon that censorship should end soonest. I expect affected parties would agree to end the use of SCI (Spam Comment Infinitum) in exchange for restoration of posting functionality. If such isn't being at least attempted - or offered prior to the censoring - then this is a valuable lesson in just how censorship resistant Steem frontends are.

Not very, if they're the ones doing the censoring, and not seeking to end doing so as soon and expeditiously as possible. That paint an ominous shade on the clouds of social control looming on the horizon we can see from here. I'm here because of the censorship resistance feature. Full Stop.

If that isn't as robust as possible, then Imma actively seek more decentralized options. I'm not willing to let voices I want to hear, both Bernie and FTG, be silenced while I am allowed to prattle on about inconsequentials. The fact is, anything I can say that they can't is inconsequential, because the voices that need to be heard are silent.

Silence is the enemy of the truth.

Thanks!

$0.47

8 votes

freebornangel (73) · 6 years ago

Lol, integrity?
Rofl.

That is one of the last things i would expect from the behaviors exhibited and recorded in the blockchain.
At some point the lies are exposed, let's hope the communuty is strong enough to survive that when it happens.

$0.15

3 votes

preparedwombat (70) · 6 years ago

I started seeing this a few weeks ago. FTG bot votes would show up when looking on steemworld.org, Partiko, etc but not on Steemit. Shadowbanning the spam war between FTG and bernie might make some sense, but shadowbanning upvotes is just plain creepy.

3 votes

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

Steemit needs to stop trying to police everyone on the platform and allow bloggers to moderate their own comments. Steempeak has already taken a step in this direction.

And I obviously agree, shadowbanning comments makes a helluva lot more sense than upvotes/downvotes.

preparedwombat (70) · 6 years ago

Cue up the ironic music track for your upvote.

luegenbaron (64) · 6 years ago

We need some kind of Steem DAO to have some organisation/ structure and especially something to say against Stinc.

Posted using Partiko Android

$0.00

skepticology (57) · 6 years ago

I hope they can leverage this into an optional filter for censoring bid bot votes on the steemit front-end but I won't hold my breath.

$0.07

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

I'd rather just be able to ignore the posts. Having posts with purchased votes concentrated in Trending is working pretty good for me atm. I just don't look at Trending, and the low integrity posters that buy votes are pretty much excluded from my quest for quality.

skepticology (57) · 6 years ago

I figured that out after using the blockchain for a while but I still have trouble finding quality content without wading through much of the trash on "new." I would prefer an interface where I can view what curators are voting for without purchased votes.

$0.00

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

I make a dedicated effort to not upvote posts that have purchased bot votes, regardless of any other quality pertaining to the post. Like you, I'd prefer to not even see them. I have no interest in spending my meager bandwidth on advertising, which is what posts paying for bot votes are.

beggars (64) · 6 years ago (edited)

I get the sentiment here, but this is a good thing. Something had to be done, and I think you're giving the complexity of this change and Steemit Inc too much credit. All they did was add a conditional check in Hivemind which references the open list here. The spam was a serious problem, something had to be done.

Steemit Inc isn't trying to silence people or make this a democracy-free platform, it's a specific solution to a specific problem.

!dramatoken

$0.05

dramatoken (62) · 6 years ago

Here's your DRAMA. Don't spend it all in one place!

^{To view or trade DRAMA go to steem-engine.com.}

$0.00

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

Ok sure, but why does Steemit feel the need to own the blogspace of the users?

Let the users moderate their own space. Obviously.

$0.00

baah (61) · 6 years ago

Because they own the servers obviously.

Posted using Partiko Android

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

Hard to take you seriously when you could literally use that argument to justify any argument regarding the platform.

$0.00

baah (61) · 6 years ago (edited)

It's more of a statement of facts than an argument.

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

Now you're going to double down on semantics?
The message stands alone.

If you want to play the semantics game then don't pair the words 'because', 'obviously' and 'fact' together.

why does Steemit feel the need to own the blogspace

Because they own the servers obviously.

You're implying that Steemit should do whatever they want with their servers because they own them. Your "statement of fact" is describing why Steemit Incorporated leadership believes they should own/moderate the content of the users.

All of this is irrelevant. It's downright foolish for Steemit to attempt to moderate the platform when there are thousands of people here willing to do the job for free. For a company that claims to value "proof-of-brain" Steemit Incorporated does a very poor job of actually implementing it.

$0.20

6 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

" It's downright foolish for Steemit to attempt to moderate the platform when there are thousands of people here willing to do the job for free."

That's actually the least of the foolishness from my perspective. It's not that their taking on such a thankless task themselves and wasting a free resource that could do it, but that they're taking that power unto themselves, and withholding it from the actual account holders with affected blogs.

They're implementing censorship instead of decentralizing that authority to those whose access to information should be at their sole option.

That is not only foolish, it's the beginning of a slippery slope that leads to an onramp to the mass censorship we see ongoing across the breadth of the internet today - and what I came here specifically to avoid.

That is the height of foolishness IMHO. Fortunately, it's just the UX's that are doing this, and Steem itself remains relatively uncensored - so far.

$0.15

4 votes

lordbutterfly (70) · 6 years ago

Sad that every front end didnt ban his bot possy. He wasnt going to stop and its hurting the user experience. He bought his stake, hes free to fill up the blockchain with whatever he wants. Front ends are a different thing. They need to take their users into account. If they dont want to show 6000 spam comments on a post that leads to your browser crashing, they dont need to.

$0.04

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

Sure, but I'm going to continue to maintain the idea that it shouldn't be Steemit's responsibility to moderate comments. Just let the original posters do it. Sorted.

lordbutterfly (70) · 6 years ago

Sure. Thats a better choice. Id love to see that. Self moderated posts would get rid of most drama we have now. But right now this is the best we have.

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

I feel very strongly that censoring the information centrally instead of doing whatever was necessary to let the account holders do that themselves was a terrible step in the wrong direction.

The only way this doesn't get worse - and even potentially impact both of us in time - is if it is a temporary measure that precedes delivering that functionality to the account holders of affected blogs themselves.

The only speech that merits protection is speech someone hates. That includes pics of Bernies poop. I hate it. I would ban it from my blog comments section had I the power.

They banned it from mine, and never asked me if I wanted to see it. That's not why I came to Steem social media, but what I came here to avoid.

Saying 'this is the best we have' is true enough, but I am sure you will note that it can be applied to every actual poorly implemented thing men do, and it is most often used to preclude calls for improvement. If that isn't what you intend by saying it, I hope you'll call for the individuals to have the power to censor their own blogs, and ending the UI's censorship of the information we are allowed to see.

$0.31

6 votes

lordbutterfly (70) · 6 years ago

2 days ago i went to the Steempeak discord and argued addition of the exact option you mentioned. Its quite a long discussion. You can see the discussion in their discord chat.
You can also leave feedback there if you agree or disagree with me and they will maybe consider adding it. Discord server link:https://discord.gg/QPAhA7

$0.00

viraldrome (67) · 6 years ago

@valued-customer you have no SP, so what you are saying is you want other users to use their vote power to get of spam. Animal control is doing like 50 thousand spam posts and upvoting them to 10 cents each, the idea other users should police that is flat out fucking retarded. Deleting spam isn't censorship.

$0.00

4 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

You're wrong on all counts. I do have some SP, users have no need to expend SP on blocking posters on their blogs, or if the act of blocking each of the bots does take RC's it's relatively little. Perhaps brand new users might be unable to muster the necessary RC's - but FTG isn't just spamming random blogs, he's attacking specific targets, and all of them have nominal RC's necessary to block each of his bots from posting on their blogs.

The idea that centralized control of whose upvotes are visible on these UI's is preferable to bloggers having the ability and responsibility to police their own blogs is retarded. You are the only one to make such a bizarre claim, and I think you may be a bit off.

Deleting posts is censorship. Just because you call it spam doesn't mean I do. In this particular case we are in agreement that this is spam. There are probably people that find thousands of pics of Bernie's poop desirable. I neither want to prevent them from having their hoard of beloved pics, nor enable you or anyone else to do so.

I reckon you, I, and the UI's should all stick to our knitting - which isn't determining what other people call spam, or what they get to see or not. You may disagree, but that only makes you disagreeable.

$0.00

cmplxty (62) · 6 years ago

Sucks when the large players start to endlessly quibble and fight for no reason. Certainly seems like he was shadow banned, what a shame.

Posted using Partiko iOS

$0.04

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

The reason given is "spam", which is obviously BS because you can't really spam the upvote drop-down menu. Seriously though, it's not hard to fight spam. On a blockchain, red-flagging accounts is pointless as creating other accounts is trivial. You have to come up with spam rules that apply to every account.

I must admit I am a bit out of the loop though. Haven't really been paying attention to any of the spam people are talking about... except of course the thousands of pictures of shit that circulated the blockchain at one point.

In the grand scheme of things and according to Andreas Antonopoulos there is no such thing as spam on the blockchain. You pay the fee to post and you get to post, end of story. Real solutions are about coming to consensus and changing the rules for everyone on the platform, if need be.

$0.52

13 votes

valued-customer (67) · 6 years ago

"...thousands of pictures of shit..."

Yeah, if I had the authority that would be a banning from my blog. That's what should be done IMHO, rather than centralized censoring.

$0.13

5 votes

luegenbaron (64) · 6 years ago

!dramatoken

Posted using Partiko Android

mattclarke (68) · 6 years ago

Best way to tackle this, is to give us RC delegation; then spam has an opportunity cost.

edicted (72) · 6 years ago

That's the thing I forgot to put in there... I was thinking about it then my mind wondered off.

$0.07

patrickulrich (66) · 6 years ago

Completely agree on this. I'd prefer an RC market over SMTs and then worry about that stuff.

Posted using Partiko Android

$0.00

drutter (69) · 6 years ago

Sorry I hadn't seen this post earlier, it's a good one.
And it would have preemptively answered some questions I asked in my latest post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@drutter/i-keep-getting-free-money-from-invisible-secret-upvotes

I remain pretty withdrawn from most drama and/or politics around here. I try to focus mainly on content-creation and grinding my way toward a new camera (someday). I find myself getting burned (generally by people with differing opinions and more Steem) when I involve myself in anything else.

I've been noticing the fulltimebotXX upvotes on some of my comments. I found them to be a good use of curation (my lower quality comments never got upvoted, but my better comments sometimes did). It wasn't random, and there didn't seem to be any ulterior motive.
When I noticed the invisible/secret upvotes through the Steemit frontend more recently, I didn't realize it was related to the fulltimebot upvotes. Now, I'm gathering that's what happened.

I don't know 'fulltimegeek' at all, so I can't carry water for him, but I've found his curation bots to be helpful and appropriate.

I'm extremely against censorship. I'm here on Steemit BECAUSE I fled the censorship of YouTube and FaceBook. So for this place to become more and more controlled, more and more artificial..... it's not sitting well at all.

I realize Steem isn't Steemit and vice versa. And yes, the blockchain is still working properly, and our tokens are still safe, etc etc. But come on, shadowbanning and outright silencing? And the way it's becoming more common... a solution to just about every problem?

Maybe I should just focus on my content creation. But.... what kind of place am I contributing to? Do I even want to put my full effort in, here, knowing it can and will be manipulated and censored as convenient? How much of my heart and soul should I put into a place I'll probably have to leave soon, to escape the censorship which seems to follow?

$0.00

dramatoken (62) · 6 years ago

Here's your DRAMA. Don't spend it all in one place!

^{To view or trade DRAMA go to steem-engine.com.}

$0.00