Last monday, I was taken hostage in a Flag-War. I tought this was myth. But no. It wasn't...

A flag-what ?!

If you don't know what's a Flag-war, this short video made by @fyrstikken will explain you everything you need to know before started to read this article.

As I was shocked, and I needed answers.

Why would someone downvote all my educationnal posts who are even not rewarded more than 5-8 SBD per post ?

Thanks God, the flagging person let me a note. A kind one in fact. With explanation and apologize inside.

But you know… when you work hard to make a better world every day and you don't get any recognition, it's difficult, but you know why you do it. So you just continue to do it.

**But when someone is down-voting all the work you have done just because she doesn't like someone who upvoted you. How do you feel ? **

For the short story, just remember that I've been downvoted because I was finaly lucky to get the attention of @transisto who upvoted severals of tutorials (in french). And directly after it, I received an army of downvote on my head.

So, who downvoted me ?

This is not a public lynching, I do not want to retaliate on that person. So I removed the usernames and tried to stick to the facts.

The person flagged me with her four Steem accounts in a row is someone who was lucky/smart to be part of Steem (and stay and invest) at the very beginning. So, she became a Whale…

This person did not target me directly… She was using me to retaliate.

When I looked at the differents profiles (at least all the profil who downvoted me) I was horrified. She was using the system of Steem to upvote her own comments. She got rewarded per comment much more than I am making for a video who takes me one day to do (learn the concept/write the script/make the film/edit the film/write the post/create the thumbnails/post it in Steem & Youtube… soon DTube, I promise).

Did I miss something? Self-upvoting wasn't something that can kill Steem ?!

She downvoted me with 4 of her accounts. And they mainly all do that…

• 

Should we blame her for acting like that ? She found a loophole in Steem. She is using it. It's not fair for us. It's not fair for all the content creator here on Steem. That's true. It's not fair.

The White Paper was expecting to distribute the +-90% of rewards to the top 30% accounts but we see, because of this kind of people (the one who create bot, who selfvote or who sell votes and who share plagiarised content), that instead +-99% of rewards goes into +-1% of accounts.

But as she said,

And as I read this kind of comment I discover that she has a partial understanding of the Steem blockchain. It took me time to read some of her comments. And I just realized that she doesn't understand exaclty how the rewards pool works, how Steem works in general and that she has another conception of Steem that we have/that Steem was designed for.

The Steem plateform exist to have only valuable content rewarded. It's the purpose of the plateform. That's it. It has been created for that. And the others people who can be rewarded are the curators who find this good content and/or comment it.

With her own words, she is an investor. She put a lot of money in Steem (I do not know how she manage to do it, but in the crypto-world, nothing surprise me anymore) and now she wants to be paid back. It's an investement. So she want it to win more money. That's what's investor do.

I have alredy seen a few people doing that. It's a quick way to win money. Then leave.

She could pick up young Steemians (like me ! I am looking for Sponsors Btw !) and support their work. Instead, she supported someone who is mainly copy-pasting things from the internet, @mindhunter, for months. What's the deal between them ? And, is that fair ?

No. It's not. And you know what ? The world is not fair. Steem reminds me every day…

But (Because there is a but in my story !) we are not in the world. We are creating the world we want here, on Steem. So, why would we let this happen ?

… & Why ?

There are some good reasons to downvote a post by flagging it.

When the post shows violence, racism, pedoporn (as it was few days ago), but also when someone is doing something who hurts the platform and the others users (self-voting when not one is watching, late in the curation process for example).

When someone is copy-pasting from the Internet, I don't think we should downvote them directly. We need to explain first why it affect the platform and all its users. If it happen again, then flag. And do everything you can do to discourage the user to continue their abuse.

Also, the Steemit FAQ state that anyone can downvote a post if it receive too much money than it should. It's a concensus mecanism. The users are setting the rewards using up/down votes. The money is yours after the 7 days curation, only.

But they are so many bads reasons to do it too…

Unfortunately, some people are flagging each others just because they don't like each others. Or they don't like the subject of the post. Or they don't like how it's written. Or they don't like someone who upvoted the post of someone else…

That was my case. I was a victim of this kind of 'childish' flag war. 'Childish' because down-voting someone to hurt someone else might have unintended repercussions on this intermediary.

My case

I went to talk with the person who sent the downvote army on me. Because I truly believe in communication. I am sure that good communication can resolve a lot of problems.

That person was kind and reply directly to all my questions… but she just told me that she had no other option. She wanted @transisto to remove his flags on the two bloggers she supports…

But when I started to dig a bit about theses two blogger, I discover that…

@mindhunter was already well known to be a kind of bad blogger and @walterz doesn't look pretty clean… and this was confirmed few days later by @sherlockholmes.

Collateral damages

Behind every computer in the world, there are humans. And almost all humans have feeling. By this childish behavior, they are hurting someone who is trying to do it's best… for the plateform.

Lots of people I talked with on Monday while trying to get support told me to just continue my life and not be hurt by that. How can I not be hurt ? Really ? They told me it happens sometimes and I don't have to take it personally.

I tried to do my best for Steem. It was not easy every day, but I was happily doing it because I was believing in Steem. And for once that a whale decided to vote me (=to recognize the work and effort I put to give quality content) all the rewards were taken away…

Not only the reward I got from the whale. All the rewards I got from my small and adorable french community (all of them together 5 SDB, the best 5 SBD I could ever have received ! The reward of the friendship and the recognition of my work).

In my mind, as a early adopter, as a whale, your job is to help to protect the network. Not to destroy it. What's the signal it gives to me and all the other minnows ?

**Why would I continue to do my every day post if : **

• I know that I can get hurt so easily by someone powerfull just because he doesn't like someone who voted to support me

• I know that someone can downvote me juste because he doesn't like me

Why would I continue to promote this plateform if :

• I know it's full of people staying here only for their own financial interests ?
• I know it can hurt my friends as it hurts me
• The people I tell start to scam the platform (because of the fast money making)
• If the platform is full of shitty content that everyone can already find on Internet
• If the platform is full of copy-paste content

The others victims

As I had resteemed two great articles talking about the developpement of the french community (you remember, the so small community) she downvoted those too.

@francosteemvotes has been downvoted on the first post they ask help to the Whales, Dolphins and Minnows to join all our forces to create an account who will everyday find and upvote the quality french posts. This is a chance for all the community to feel supported. That mini-whale his giving fews cents per chosen article. But that's enough for us to feel recognized.

@oroger who has developped the www.comprendre-steem.fr website and who is helping me everyday with the video editing and script writting. His post who has been downvoted and the curation period ended.

The post was a summary about all the new items available on the the website.

Attacking education and support to the community. That's mean. That's the base to completely destroy the platform and its user base. Think about it… When a country want to destroy another country they start to kill intellectuals and destroy universities.

In this case, she wasn't doing it on purpose. She just flagged me because she had been flagged (or someone flagged the people she was supporting). Childish behavior… especialy when you know that you are not right.

At the end of the day, all the downvotes were removed. @oroger's was compensated for the post that expired with some upvotes on his comments. Sure you can make amends but at that point, who cares about the money ? … The signal that was sent scary.

My opinion and feelings about being taken hostage of a flag-war

Stealing from the reward pool is one thing. But damaging three pillars of a small community who is starting to grow… it's irresponsible, even more for a whale.

And if we go beyond my particular and isolate case, I still totaly disagree about self-voting and vote selling.

I am on @transisto side in this fight, hopefully he is not alone. And everyone who wants whats good for Steem should be too. I disagree about stolen content to make money.

I respect the work of those people because I think they are doing this for the community. I am sure it is not easy everyday to hunt the various forms of abuse. I would not like to do this unpleasant job. But someone has to do it if we want Steem to thrive.

In an ideal world everyone of us should take care of Steem and decid to use their influence for a better repartition of the reward pool. Why would a macro photography earn 100 SBD (with two upvotes) and article of 10 000 words about selfdeveloppment (and 198 upvotes) earn 6 SBD. No. We have to share the reward pool amongst the people who provide quality and unique content (musicien, artist, philosopher, blogger, tech.. everyone has a place here). That is the idea behind the Steem blockchain.

We are so lucky that developpers are working on a project like Steem. Please don't kill it. Don't reproduce what's happening in the world right now.

I love the transparency of the Blockchain. I feel so much secure here than in the real world where everything is hidden. One of the beauty of Steem is this transparency…

Let's try to be the hope. The Blockchain is going to revolutionize the world. No more censoring or propaganda for the big-brother society that we are experiencing for years. We can have a free speech here. But with this freedom comes responsability. Let's take this responsability and be the change we want to see in the world.

Reflexion about Flag & downvotes

We really need to have a serious reflexion about the flag. I am not against the flag. I am not for the flag either. We just need to learn how to use it properly. Personally, I like the idea that a downvote would require a explainatory comment to be valid.

Because, in fact, it wasn't the first time I've been flagged. As you can see in this article, I got flagged on my personal account because I gave a comment that wasn't probably good enough for the author.

I was also shocked to be downvoted. I just gave an honest opinion on her article, I tought I could speak my mind freely since she asked for comments. I thought it could help...

Hopefully, she had not enought SP to reduce my rep and hurt me… But I started to be a bit scared. What if I want to give my opinion and I get flagged for that ? I don't know anything about the flag problem, but I am sure some people are hurt every day just for no reason. And believe me… it will not help to make the people stay here.

And can you imagine all the problem the flag can do ? What if few people have the power to shut someone else with their flag… Imagine a government like a dictature who will buy enough SP to mute people who want to speak freely about what's happenning in their country.

The flag should be use only and only to signal an abuse or adapt the rewards as explained earlier. Not for personal reasons.

What can you do to make Steem a better platform ?

If you haven't seen @sherlockholmes's blog yet, go and read the posts. They are quiet interesting (especialy if you like detective work :-D). But behind this account, there is a man (or a girl ? or many people ?) who are spending time to make Steem a better place. It's a huge work… But something kept my attention, this little P.P.S :

If we want Steem to grow, we need people to clean the mess.

And if you see someone doing the mess - everyone wants to make easy money, but ethical standard should still apply - please, report it to @steemcleaners (or similar initiatives). These people are taking care of the platform for you. But with a little help from all of us it would be easier. So let's help them !

Remember that the people who steal content are also stealing your potential rewards. This type of behavior abuses the community. Please do not let that happen. Go to play with your own money in market if you want. But let this place for content creator who finaly can find a way to be rewarded for their work.

And remember, With great power comes great responsibility. Every day you are spending on Steem, it's an act of anarchy. You are leaving the Facebook and all the other controled social network to participate in the creation of a totaly new future… Be proud of that. And take the responsability.

So, if you are a whale, stop to vote the content that will only make you richer. Do not sell your votes blindly. Start to push up the minnow. Start to lend some Steem power for great initiatives, to people who will protect your small paradise (ocean?) and make it grow.

Oh, and by the way, if you are a minnow and you like the place, you can also delegate some SP (even a so small amount!) to one of the accounts (like @steemcleaners) who is protecting this exceptional platform.

If each of us give a small amount (like a fee, a taxe or whatewer) I am sure that all together we can keep the place, our place, safe.