My post about fighting censorship got flagged. How ironic

The post that got flagged was/is about flash proxies. I run flash proxies myself. Also I run Tor relays and i2p routers. I do this because free speech is important. And now my article about that got flagged. How ironic is that :-).

The morning after posting I noticed that my post https://steemit.com/internet/@disofdis/fighting-for-free-speech-on-the-internet-run-a-tor-flash-proxy-with-your-browser-or-tor-part-of-this-series-is-on-timsaid got flagged. It is a technical addition(about flash proxies) to the post I had featured a day before.

This is ofcourse is never nice, especially because I had no bad intentions. And although I never read any formal rules for using Steemit. I do understand copy/paste is not something we want here. But that is not the case here.

I did get a reaction on the post that got flagged from steemcleaners. So I went to the chat room #steemitabuse-appeals and had a good and nice talk with patrice who seems to run steemcleaners.

She(or he) pointed out the issues with my post. It looks like I rewrote something. And I explained that I write about systems like flash proxy and explain the way it works. Because it is fact based and I get my facts from official documents (university of Stanford) and I did mention their official paper in my post. There is ofcourse a huge influence in my posts from sources that I read. I did not even want to hide it. Because there is no intent to make people believe I invented it. I want people to know it exist. After this chat it was clear that there was no reason for flagging my post.

You can find variations of this writing on many other sites (like deepdotweb.com). It is logical when you talk about technical stuff, you repeat other people.

But now the problem. Steemcleaners did not flag my post. The one who did is out of my reach it seems (I do know who did it, but that is beside the point) and it is just 1 account who flagged it. But it made a negative impact. That is my point! Everyone with enough power can make your post worthless. And potential unseen. Who will read a greyed out post.

So now I am in a situation where I wrote about censorship evading tech, With the hope people will use it to support people who are suffering from censorship. And it is put into a corner almost noone will go.

Steemit gives more traction to spreading the word then my own website does (or the Standord website even). More people running flashproxies makes the world a better place. And when it earns me some money to write about it, I can even run more normal Tor relays. So kudo's for Steemit. That is why I am here.

Our Tor relays and bridges.

I am disappointed that I can not write about tech I read about. Tech I want to share and discuss on Steemit. Also by adding my point of view with it. Or even tech I use myself and want people to know it exist, and if possible use it. I can not even edit my post now (if i wanted) to comply to the flagger ideas. Because this has to be done within 24 hours. I have never seen these issues before on other blogging platforms. Well not on platforms in the "free" world at least.

We are all trying to improve the platform and I am willing to learn and grow with it. I do make mistakes but this was not one of them. If Steemit must become a platform for 100% original story tellers you better communicate that. I can leave then. And you could flag almost everything on Steemit right now, if that would be the case.

Being but to the sideline by one account is against everything I believe in and work for. It has nothing to do with social control. And it does piss me off. Plagiarisms is a issue, but in my book, misuse of power is much worse.

I did rewrite my own post and this time nothing happened. To my surprise because it must look like my first post.

I still hope Steemit will become a place for free speech and I want to do my part. But it seems that if one person can flag your article and make it greyed out and potential worthless. It like being free to protest but getting not too much attention to do so. Just shout in your backyard. But we wont help you getting heard to easily. All decided by one powerfull flagger.