Hello Steemit,
Like everyone else, I'm very excited about communities in Steemit, but I have some reservations as well.
One thing I fear is the Theymos problem.
What is the Theymos problem ?
There is an individual known online as Theymos (is his real name known? I have no idea). This same person owns and controls both bitcointalk.org and reddit.com/r/bitcoin. Between these two forums, 90% of the most important communication about the Bitcoin currency occurs (sure there are plenty of other places to talk, but these two are the big ones.)
What? Does the fact that communication about a decentralized currency is heavily centralized in the hands of one man bother you? It should: it's a big problem.
This problem became manifest when the block size controversy erupted. Without diving too heavily into this controversy, I'll just say that there are two sides: one advocates increasing blocks to something larger then 1 MB, the other side is for implementing something called Seg Wit.
This is been a bitter conflict that has torn apart the Bitcoin community and I'm pretty sure that had this been resolved by now, the price of bitcoin could easily be 5000$ or more.
But it's not. Why? Because one fucking guy: Theymos!
So what was Theymos's solution to the block size controversy? Well clearly the answer was to censor the side he doesn't like: bigger blocks. If you attempt to post something in favor of bigger blocks to reddit or bitcoin talk your post will be censored. And I'm not talking about the weak, pseudo censorship that steemit does, where the post is greyed out and you have to click on "show" to see it again, but the real censorship, where your post is gone..deleted...erased from the system poof!
Browse to https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/ go to "Community guidelines" and read this pearl of wisdom:
Promotion of client software which attempts to alter the Bitcoin protocol without overwhelming consensus is not permitted
without overwhelming consensus
So, pray tell, Mr. Theymos, how can one obtain any consensus, overwhelming or otherwise, without being able to talk about it first, hmm?
And of course Seg Wit doesn't have overwhelming consensus either, but it's fine to talk about that. Makes perfect sense? No?
Because of this idiocy, a group of users found it necessary to create /r/btc and there are two conflicting camps, with no end or resolution in sight and Bitcoin appears to be fucked for now. I'm pretty bitter about this, as you can tell.
It was this ridiculous situation that drove me to Steemit in the first place, though I've come to love it for its own merits. I see this new communities concept being floated, and I worry about the Theymos problem.
I'm sure the devs are two or three steps ahead of me and have this covered, but I'd ask them, and all of you to keep in mind this problem, because I'd hate to see it replicated here in the Steemit I love.
Anyone who stands in the way of free speech is no friend of mine. Good post. Steemit can be a tool to give a voice to those who don't have one.
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TRUE
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His real name is known and is easily found. Reddit even changed the rules recently so it's use is allowed now there. Real names of public figures is no longer considered doxing.
He owns more than just bitcointalk.org and /r/bitcoin. Also owns bitcoin.org and the bitcoin wiki (can't remember the domain). Several other subs on reddit too.
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I'm not interested in his real name, but I think it's bad he is in control of so much.
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I agree with you. Not that I know Theymour, but the danger in anything, therefore also with public Blockchain technology drive services is the trust we give into all the parties providing interfaces to the Blockchain, and anything else. Due to anonymity, it is even harder to find out who is behind something. Even here on Steemit we can have so many different accounts run by the same group of individuals who want to use all of this for their benefits, it could be Google running 1.000, or even 10.000 independent accounts. Or many witnesses nodes.
I just wrote a comment to another post listing the harm I see with public Blockchains and our own behaviour, including my own behaviour.
article
https://steemit.com/life/@exyle/blockchain-is-so-innovative-because-it-can-t-be-bought-by-bigger-companies
copy of comment:
I for sure do not want to sound negative, but Blockchains as such can still have (some) negative impact on the users.
To bring arguments to the possibility to actual take over the block chain:
Other harm out there:
Blockchain is open to 'anybody', but not anybody is analysing the blockchain, only a few are doing this:
To be honest: Steemit got me into blogging. On none of the other social media I was posting; maybe sometimes reposting, but rarely. I never uploaded photo's except maybe 1 or 2 profile photo's for sites like Linkedin. So, yes I also do somehow give trust to Steemit UI, to eSteem and other applications. I give all my trust also to the witnesses. I furthermore somehow give trust the openness of the blockchain and all the stuff I;m writing about and commenting on, will never be used against me in some way or form. BUT, I for sure do not think I'm anonymous, and if someone wants, I can be somehow identified and all the information I entered onto the Blockchain can at least be used to profile me much better than any party could do before. That profile can be used for harmless stuff, but also harmful stuff.
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I would like to see communities NOT mimic reddit in its moderator style communities. I'd be more interested in being able to subscribe to certain tags, and have feeds and layouts that showed the tags I am interested in.
There can be a need for some kind of moderation, but if we do have that then human nature has shown some level of human bias censorship tied to virtually any topic. This is a centralization, and it is an issue.
We need to avoid that. We do need communities, but we also need to be able to limit the ability of individuals to then censor that community. This is assuming it is based upon tags.
If they were to present the ability for people to CREATE communities that were not related to tags and they allowed people to moderate that then this might not be BAD if the things they moderate are still freely viewable elsewhere and without technological barriers to view them. If a community was more like a group blog then that might work as long as people can create competing groups on similar topics. If a topic is centralized in the hands of a few though it will inevitable experience some level of censorship.
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I'm just going to wait to see what they come up with. There will be plenty of time to pick it apart I'm sure.
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Yep, that's all we really can do. Speculating on what MIGHT happen generally can be a great time sink.
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Theymos problem applies only to blockchains that don't have a proper governance mechanism. If there was a decision making process implemented in the Bitcoin blockchain, users wouldn't be dependent on external communication channels.
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That's a good point, but we want people to talk about all sorts of subjects here at Steemit, including topics that might be vulnerable to a Theymos problem.
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While I agree with you completely on the problems with Theymos and his influence on Bitcoin, he is far from the only fire burning. The censorship on reddit is a big issue especially with the problems facing the community; Theymos is certainly involved. There are many more actors associated with Blockstream and AXA Group.
The good news is Bitcoin was designed to be resistant to people like him. Although it may seem like he has so much influence, you would be surprised to see how much power he really has. I love Bitcoin.
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Yea I over simplifed the situation some, they are many bad actors other than Theymos. I love bitcoin too. It's the granddaddy of all this wonderful new tech we are experiencing.
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Wow, I did not know about that. It's a good concern to raise. I was slightly worried that we would all be locked into little communities with no interaction between. I hope there is a good pragmatic implementation of this feature when it comes
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I think this is a little wrong putting things on Theymos who really helped grow Bitcoin communities that really did not exist before into what they are now, with so many users I think it is up to the users to provide alternative communication methods rather than point a finger a Theymos. I don't believe /r/Bitcoin or Bitcointalk are what they once were, lots of awesome crypto action takes place outside those two places all the time, including right here on Steemit.
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Am I being unfair? Yea probably, but you know what? Even if I were completely wrong and Theymos is a saint, my point still holds, no one person should have so much control over such important communication channels.
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I do not agree if he was the one who was there before these communication channels were even important. As far as being unfair, I just think things are more on the users and not on this one guy who we all already know how he runs his ships and I know we are both here on Steemit and have jumped ship, I think the best thing is to encourage people do that. As far as Theymos is a saint, I doubt that, but personal judgments I don't think should come into play.
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Regardless of the person/individual, I fully agree with you no one individual shall have a lot of power. Even when all is open, Blockchains and all, communication and all, most of us are not analysing and either believe what they read, or follow other people/individuals opinions as they please and provide their (full) trust to them. The danger is then that some individuals, or groups of individuals who appear no to be a group to the outside world get to steer the altcoin community at large the way they please.
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He bans people for no reason only when they have different opinion! The dude has hurt Bitcoin so bad whether he meant to or not the damage is done.
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Users hurt Bitcoin, he provided a platform for a lot of early Bitcoin work to get done, I think it is up to the users to create better and more venues for interaction. The problem isn't a centralized user, it is all users using centralized sources at all. I believe Bitcoin wouldn't be where it is without the use of the stepping stones he modded on, but I also believe that these two little websites he mods are not the end all of Bitcoin, they had their place in history, people should not be so attached to them. I am sure Theymos has done lots of bad, but he has also done good, he is just a human.
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Well at the end of the day Bitcoin turns out to be highly centralized do to two main characters. Theymos and China. Satoshi I sure if he could do over would built in governance model in Bitcoin. Well one thing is certain Theymos is probably the most hated person in Bitcoin and next in line is the Core developers. I have ZERO respect for Theymos or Core incompetence. Many investors have little Bitcoin holdings left due to their non-sense. We all got sick of it and transferred into alt coins like ETH for starters.
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We are on the same page on some points here. I think there is going to be an altcoin out there that will take over the main place Bitcoin has just because it was first. I think Bitcoin is great, but on top of the online presence of it being on centralized platforms, many coins solved issues that Bitcoin seems to still have.
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I have no doubt Ethereum will take Bitcoin's place by the time Casper is released. I been saying this for the last year even when ETH was at a $600 million market cap last December. I still hold some Bitcoin but very little than before due to this ridiculous disagreement. I held Bitcoin almost 3 years expecting to see what ETH is today. So I am not sure why I still hold any of it?
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Well of course we'll run into problems when we add in segregation and leaders, but what do I know! I'm just a guy!
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Who asked you? You..guy you.
;)
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It was an accident!
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All the more reason to buy steem and viva?
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Indeed
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@neoxian this is actually a good point. Way to get this out ahead this time!
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This man Theymos should hang. You are right he single handily tore apart the Bitcoin community by the utter and complete censorship of these two communities.
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Though I can appreciate your sentiment, I would not advocate violence against Theymos, rather I'd want to see his power and influence peacefully circumvented using decentralized solutions such as what Steemit provides.
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Not literally hang but politically. Yeah we needed Steemit before Bitcoin but then the blockchain was not invited yet. I much prefer Steemit over Reddit or any centralized forum.
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A metaphorical hanging indeed.
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I agree such centralized control over communication is something everyone should be concerned about.
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I know this is an old post, but I was just thinking of groups like this...
The ability to make group pages, and have the group pages you belong to appear in the active post page with a check box...or as a drop down.
We have well over 100 preppers/homesteaders, so when one of us writes a related post, we could check/choose the group before posting. It would then post to your page and would Also add the post to the group page where everyone could find it.
Group pages would not have a wallet, post payouts would continue individually just as they do now...
Group pages would not have a mod, or any one person in charge. The requirements could be bot driven, where if you apply to the group, a snoopybot would check your blog for X amount of posts with related tags.
Then it would approve and the check box would appear in your active posts. No mods, no censorship...just a way to actively group like interests on one page.
Even if they were set up as communities, mod work could be a good job for a bot, just with a basic set of rules.
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