Rethinking the Flagging and Downvoting Mechanism of Planet Steem, to a More Democratic Process

Those among us who have been online a little longer already, and have over the years ventured across multiple social networks, of course, know the issue. Know the problem because it's as inherent to the Internet as playground bullies are to schoolyards.

Flagging, downvoting and its respective brigades.

Flagging wars.

The Steem ecosystem is no exception to this and many tears have been shed over the principle, its application and subsequent results.

Last weekend was no exception to this as a whale took exception to the rewards earned by a prolific Steem publisher. While I could go and enumerate multiple reasons justifying said downvoting, I won't because not only would they be entirely snobbish elitist and most definitely will they rub the vox populi wrong, but that specific case isn't the point of this entry.

I also won't do so because despite approving of specific case, at heart, I loathe the downvoting implementation on the Steem blockchain.

For one simple reason: Steem's downvoting mechanic is undemocratic.

The Problem

As somebody who truly believes in democracy, I absolutely despise the design of downvoting/flagging on planet Steem. Much more than I dislike upvote bots.

That not because flagging is a practice which at times has been used to oppress people, despite my values placed in freedom of speech, liberty and tolerance.

The real reason why I abhore it, and wish to see the mechanism in its current form to be abolished, is because the current implementation allows one person to both report and be the judge. As such there is no separation of powers established or maintained. A core concept of any healthy democracy

This not helped at all by Steemit's evil copywriting department. While the slogan Come for the rewards, stay for the community, is that good it should correctly be classified as perfect bait Evil, the wording used in Steemit's FAQ for the topic downvoting is much more evil from a democratic point of view:

Users are allowed to downvote for any reason that they want. There are many users in the community who recommend only using the downvote on posts that are abusive. It is up to you if you want to follow this etiquette.

The downvoting person may have just been voting to reallocate the rewards in a way that they felt was more beneficial to the other active posts in the platform.

In other words: do as you wish and feel free to downvote whenever your heart desires. In itself, this is very democratic a principle and it could even be considered as a form of free speech.

So far, so good.

Yet, on the Steem blockchain a downvote can also be damaging. Financially damaging. This is a very important element because at that moment, depending on the Steem Power (SP) held by the downvoter [sic], the downvote becomes not only a report (flag) but is also penalising. Which totally changes the position of the downvoter.

The person downvoting now isn't merely the person calling the cops to report a crime. But out of the blue the observer (reporter) also became the judge and is able to penalise.

While there is a possibility that sufficient upvotes will counter the negative impact of said downvote, we have to think slightly longer about this power and the scepter it is allowed to swing.

Should one person alone be able to define over whether something constitutes of a crime and at the same also be able to unilaterally decide over the penalty?

Is one neutral, objective enough to make those decisions? Make those decisions, just because one holds more Steem Power?

To me this sounds wrong, just like it does to many others.

Redesigning the Downvoting Mechanism

There is a place, and need, for downvotes, on the Steem blockchain. Currently downvotes, and reallocating the rewards, are the only weapon Steemians have against spam, plagiarism, and copyright infringments.

Or against people milking it and abusing maxing out their reach, and possible upvoting trails, they have come to benefit because of their usual solid content.

If an author continuously earns $30 per post, or more even, the temptation to publish more every day can sometimes become too tempting to resist. Creating as good a vicious circle as you will see this week.

But who's to judge?

Sadly enough, as previously has happened on Digg, on Reddit, and on other similar platforms, downvoting mechanics also invite voting brigades and other forms of abusive voting. Steem is no exception to this, merely further evidence that the Internet recursive is.

On planet Steem this possibly comes with a financial penalty. A possible impact on the livelihood of people. Just because one holds more SP than the other. Additionally, downvotes may also result in a lower reputation.

All these outcomes can be very arbitrary.

They are most definitely authoritarian allowing few to terrorise the masses by mere virtue of their high SP. No user wants to live in fear though. Fear, and the subsequent FUD possibly caused by the actions of few whales.

That doesn't take away though that there is a need for downvoting/flagging/reporting.

An Alternative Option to Downvoting: Reporting

As I have often said in Steemit.chat, I like to think Medium knows why it has no downvoting mechanism. Only a positive reward mechanism (previously likes, now claps) and a reporting mechanism.

With a founder with a huge background in online publishing, as well as having grown through most stages of online media, publishing, and social networks so far, Medium doesn't just stand on the shoulder of giants but is an actual giant.

There is no doubt that although Ev Williams was never profitable no direct monetary benefits are involved on Medium, its founder, Ev Williams, knows from his previous stints as Blogger, Odeo, and Twitter (Co-)Founder that negativity can cause user churn. Especially negativity caused by FUD.

As such it seems obvious that Medium, and previously also Twitter, only have a positive system and a reporting mechanic.

Steem should follow the same approach and do away with downvotes. In fact, currently there is no downvoting as such but only flagging. Yet, flagging functions as downvoting and if the flagger holds enough SP they will negatively impact the rewards of a post.

Ample cases in which this has led to cries about bullying, dictatorships [Really?], and drama in general are known. Multiple Steemians have left, some have returned under an alt and slowly rebuilt their reputation. Others have caved in and not bothered to rebuild their reputation but instead ventured on to grass greener pastures.

Redesigning the Flagging/Reporting Mechanics

All this is not to take away downvoting, or even complaints about rewards received on a post. Whales who disapprove ned to be heard, blatant plagiarism and copyright infringements deserve to be penalised, and need to be.

But who’s to judge?

First of all the downvoting, from here on reporting, mechanic needs to become more democratic. A downvote should hide a post from somebody’s own feed after flagging that post but initially the post shouldn’t be affected yet.

Only after x downvotes should a flag be triggered and a post displayed in a more muted way in everyone’s feed, complete with a notification. This should NOT hide the excerpt yet though.

An important addition to the reporting mechanic will be that the Steemian triggering the first downvote/flag/report needs to add why. This will be shown upon hover and can be reinforced by following reporters, who are given the option to agree with the downvote or to add additional reasons.

Upon downvoting, a full 100% vote shall be held in escrow, pending verification of the post.

All reported (downvoted) posts shall be queued for the evaluation team but posts which receive multiple downvotes, or are downvoted with ample SP shall trigger alerts and be prioritised in the queue. A whale should be capable to trigger a prioritised evaluation just by their own reporting/flagging.

Once a post is prioritised, a democratic body will evaluate the report/complaint. At least 3 of its members will vote upon the merit of the initial report and its reasoning. It needs not be explained that this should be done as objectively as possible and at times may cause moral conflicts to the Reports Evaluation Body [for lack of a better name right now].

Each post which has received sufficient reporting weight shall, additionally, sport a brief notice above the upvote button, and also in feeds, that the post is subject to several complaints and pending evaluation.

The team shall evaluate the complaint, but not necessarily the quality of the post. Even decent, or good, posts can require action because they are abusing the system.

Depending on the reputation of the content creator more than 3 votes shall be required.

Each vote of the evaluation team shall be recorded. When its members disagree with the complaint, they shall briefly explain why they dismiss the complaint.

When the evaluating team democratically approves of the complaint, the 100% vote held in escrow shall be fully returned to the reporter. The post’s rewards shall be penalised relatively to the combined SP of all reports/flags.

The evaluation team shall also have the opportunity to further downvote the post, whether by means of a new account with (by witnesses) delegated SP or by invoking the @steemcleaners or even by an integrated procedure in a future fork of the Steem blockchain. The body shall have the opportunity to nullify all rewards on a post, upon which all upvotes shall be cancelled, and returned. The post shall subsequently also be hidden from feeds on Steemit.

If the complaint is considered to have no merit, the same 100% vote shall be lost VP.

The combination of the cost of a report and accountability, as well as democratic evaluation of the complaint, shall eventually create a sense of responsible reporting and will reduce the possibility of flagging wars.

While all this may sound like red tape for the sake of red tape, ethics and most definitely accountability require that such actions, with potential financial impact, are recorded and also reasoned transparently.

What About Steemcleaners?

Steemcleaners have an important role within the Steem ecosystem and do excellent work, but who is to say they never make a wrong call. Who watches the watchdog?

In the spirit of accountability the same shall apply to @steemcleaners although we should consider their workflow and workload and allow them to continue operating without creating too much additional red tape for them.

Yet, a public record shall be maintained, complete with the reason for each downvote.

As such, for content created by authors below reputation x reasoning by only one steemcleaner member shall be required. With an option to complain against their report/downvote/penalty. For content created by authors with reputation above x a @steemcleaners flag shall automatically create a prioritised alert for the evaluation body.

Special Cases

Alternatively, maybe some day @steemcleaners may decide to not flag a post because the post was absolute Steem metaness, full of positivity. These are all possibilities and as the Steem Blockchain, and Steemit, mature we are capable to learn from failings, to #flearn and design better systems.

An example of such post would be the blatant copyright infringement that is this post. Yet nobody downvoted it nor did @cheetah flag it. The author laughed all the way to the bank crypto-exchange.

A democratic reporting process would correctly allow to nuke the rewards for that post, and if designed properly the evaluating body would even have the option to not hide the post from feeds. Because it was still newsworthy. A blatant rip but newsworthy nevertheless.

I highlight this post because of the Steem metaness and such topics, joy of progress within the Steem ecosystem, may cause hesitation and result in no action taken. Yet, it doesn’t take away that it is a blatant infringement, sourced in its entirety elsewhere, and that one additional paragraph at the end does not merit more than a few bucks, at best. Published by an author with reputation 75. Queue @timcliff's pull request to remove protected reputation.

A transparent mechanism, with well-thought out design, will guarantee that no hesitation shall be needed and posts can be penalised no matter who wrote them but because they shouldn't be rewarded.

Who Is In The Democratic Reports Evaluation Body?

Similar to the top witnesses, the evaluation team shall also be elected democratically. A body consisting of xx members, complete with xx reserves shall be created and members shall be elected for 3(6?) months.

I suggest a shorter frame of office because these members shall be burdened with additional workload as part of their position, but not everybody may have always time. Reserve members shall be elected in order to provide coverage when required.

Eventually both the evaluation body and @steemcleaners should become one organisation, mechanism.

A transparently operating organisation, with tools designed to allow both sensible downvoting, reporting, as well as the continued operation of the excellent work done by the Steemcleaners.

TL;DR: Taking out the drama and wars that come with downvoting, implementing a transparent reporting and evaluation mechanism before posts can be penalised.

One More Thing

I realise that this will restrict some more prolific downvoters I actually approve of and think they are fighting a good fight.

This also includes the much disliked @berniesanders, but let it be known that I am supportive of his fight. While his rethoric may not be everyone's cup of tea, those who have become a [collateral] victim should remember that more often than not they ended up in the line of fire because they failed to consider their target and to pick their fights.

As they say so eloquently in Internet speak: Duct tape can't fix stupid but it sure can muffle it.

This rethought downvoting/flagging/reporting mechanic suggestion, will not and should not silence those fighting their wars. All it does is possibly limit any financial and reputation impact of downvotes, by means of a democratic process. As always, regulations (and process) provides protection.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 all via Unsplash.