I've been considering several issues that I think are inter-related. There are bots, automated processes for voting on posts and comments. Then there is flagging, a way to downvote a post that contains plagiarism, hate speech and other potential offensive material. And finally, what it all comes down to (at least for me): information and how it wants to be free.
Flagging
I've been following the debates on flagging. I've been going back and forth on flagging myself and I even wrote an article on the subject here, generally in favor of flagging.
Then I saw a post on the other side of the same issue by @sift666. Therein, I wrote a comment expressing the following sentiments:
I agree that censorship could be a problem. I can see how a whale who is a libertarian might bury a post by a democratic socialist just because of ideological opposition rather than form and presentation, not that that has ever happened here, and I don't know if it did. I do know that it could happen.
A downvote for political reasons is still censorship and it can happen here.
I can see the appeal of banning all flagging. But, I can think of another way to handle it. Give it some oversight by everyone, including the minnows. Allow all users to vote for users to be designated as flaggers.
We do the same thing here in the States for District Attorneys. The power to prosecute for crimes and put someone in jail is held in check and is monitored by the people and secured by the voters. We could do the same thing.
With designated flaggers that have been approved by votes of all users, that would put something of a leash on the flaggers. Another point is to make the flagging public and easily identified at the post. A designated flagger makes his downvote public and he justifies it. That way anyone who is downvoted has redress of grievance. He knows that he has a chance to appeal.
But even as I write this I can see how complicated things are going to get. I don't know what the answer is yet, but that article makes me think about it.
So that's my two cents on flagging.
Bots
After reading a few articles on bots, I found two use cases for bots. The first is the bandwidth issue that was brought to my attention here, by @rycharde. The second was using bots to find good stuff on Steemit. I wrote a comment in response to his post expressing the following sentiments (reading it later, I have edited the original comment below for clarity):
I encountered the "bandwidth limit exceeded" message, too. As I read more of these articles and did some research on the subject, I'm filing in the blanks. This is the first article I've seen to explain the cause. The problem is so widespread that some people have powered up just to be sure they have enough Steem to work with.
I have a feeling that this issue can be traced down to the bots. I have tried bots myself, but now I have reservations about using them.
This platform is based on the idea of an attention economy. If attention is the most valuable thing you can give someone, a bot doing your voting is probably in conflict with the spirit and reason for being of the Steemit.com website: monetizing the attention economy.
Now in the comments for this article (@rycharde's article), someone mentioned that they were using bots to find good content worthy of their interest, and I have no problem with that. But if the bots are hindering our capacity to interact, a condition that I think is very likely to be confirmed, then we need to rethink our motivation for using the bots.
I'd be OK if bots were banned just to ensure our ability to interact on this platform. I'm not so sure that such a ban can be enforced, however. I do hope that this game will help to relieve the congestion and that the developers can find a solution to it that won't require a ban on the bots, as I see that some people appreciate their utility.
Information wants to be free
Then there is this post by @carpenterbee. It's an article about plagiarism, censorship and junk posts. In his article he makes an interesting statement, and I responded as shown below:
This caught my eye: "Every post on steemit has some type of value."
Exactly. I say that information wants to be free. Information wants to propagate. There is no such thing as bad information. Information can neither be created or destroyed. It can be organized and interpreted and that's it. As to good and bad, well, that is in the eye of the beholder.
I have been oscillating on the point of flagging myself for some time now. Your article convinced me that we do not need a flagging system. The upvote system is enough.
Even if I disagree with the ideas in a post, I still upvote it if it makes me think and has evidence of good writing (grammar, flow of ideas, punctuation is a plus).
I have upvoted, resteemed and followed you. Glad to meet you.
See, I think that even without a flagging system, the crowd will sort it out. I have some concerns that whales who can exert a tremendous amount of influence on the value of a post, need to be held accountable. Allowing a vote for "designated flaggers" may help to address that concern. And the bots? Since the API for Steemit is open, I'm not sure that a hard and fast policy can be enforced. All that we can do is trust that the people who are writing and using the bots will use good judgement so that smooth operation of Steemit will continue. Steemit to me, epitomizes the idea that information just wants to be free.
Now that I'm getting into the flow of things again (I'm finally getting my mornings back for blogging), I can consistently post on what I see happening here and elsewhere.
I get ideas to write about almost every day. I have seen that on Steemit, consistent action over time yields prodigious results. I'm a writer and I love to write. I write to live. At the moment, I can't think of a better place than to post whatever comes to mind here, on Steemit.