Censorship is impossible in a Free Society
CENSORSHIP
Language is a very powerful tool because it shapes the way we think. The words we choose to use impact how we think, feel, and reason about the world around us. Today I would like to address the word censorship because it is a very hot topic on steemit.
The first problem we always face is different and ambiguous definitions for censorship. Unfortunately, it isn’t always practical to define our terms in every debate and therefore drama queens toss the term “censorship” around far too easily. I would go so far as to say that the censorship card is played about as often and illegitimately as the race card. Often those who play the race card are more racist and oppressive than those they slander, the same principle applies to those who play the censorship card.
Censorship requires Aggression
The defining characteristic of a free society is the absence of initiation of violence. This includes the credible threat of violence, fraud, theft, etc. Without the threat of aggression people can freely say whatever they want, whenever they want without fear that their person or property will be harmed. A critical distinction of a free society is that you cannot express yourself in ways that violate the property rights of others.
Graffiti is Aggression and violation of Property Rights
Graffiti is defined as writing or drawings scribbled, scratched, or sprayed illicitly on a wall or other surface in a public place. In a free society the Graffiti artist would be tracked down and expected to pay restitution to the property owner. No rational individual would argue that the artist has been censored by the property owner or that the property owner is the one initiating aggression against the artist.
Property Owner defines Art vs Graffiti
There are places where graffiti-style art is acceptable and is actually encouraged. In this case no aggression has occurred and therefore the action is legitimate.
Spam, Porn, Harassment, and Fraudulent posts are Digital Graffiti
When it comes to websites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, Reddit, and Steemit we have digital property owned by individuals providing a free and voluntary service to society. It is not possible for these organizations to censor user content because they are not using violence, theft, etc.
The only true censorship is when government agents approach these companies and demand content be removed under threat of force or violence. Provided these companies are not under any kind of threat, there can be no censorship.
When someone demands that YouTube share ad revenue they are taking the role of the Graffiti artist that demands property owners not repaint over their artwork.
Some people may consider the Graffiti artwork worth thousands of dollars, but this doesn’t change the moral character of the vandalism. Likewise, some people may feel their humor, sarcasm, teasing, crude language, or vulgar posts to be artwork and demand that other users see it and/or up vote it for payment.
Graffiti Hurts Community Value
We all love the idea that Free Speech adds value to the speaker, but our selfish desires to be heard come at the expense of the listeners. Few people desire to move into a neighborhood where there is unfettered graffiti and complete disrespect for property rights. Likewise, few people want to join an online community where there are no standards of mutual respect.
A Perception Problem
We have a very real problem in society today. The problem is that people feel entitled to things that are not theirs. Whether it is health care, google ranking, reputation, or right for gay couples to be served by particular vendors who oppose gay marriage. These entitlements can only be delivered by initiating force and violence against innocent people.
If a particular vendor (YouTube, Facebook, Google, or your Local Florist) will not serve you, then you must take your business elsewhere. Vendors who lose a significant amount of business will voluntarily reconsider their policies.
But they have a monopoly!
To the extent that a business gains the vast majority of the market share without relying on government regulations to shield them from competition, the monopoly is deserved and was earned by providing a quality product that others were unable to compete with.
There are no laws forcing everyone to use Google, YouTube, Reddit, or Facebook. There are no regulations preventing competitors from starting up and competing. Complaining about their unwillingness to serve you is like a local mall refusing to allow certain tenants. It will certainly make business more challenging for those tenants, but the prospective tenants are not entitled to a prime high-traffic spot in the mall.
Flagging Posts based upon Differing Opinions
Some people have been complaining about users who down-vote posts they disagree with. The basis of the idea is that all posts are entitled to funding from those who support the ideas. This stance is in direct opposition to the vested interests of every stakeholder.
What should happen when one stakeholder wishes to fund a cause abhorrent to another stakeholder of equal size? The two opinions are canceled out and the remaining stakeholders get to decide.
Incentive to be Tolerant and Inclusive
All users, particularly whales, have financial incentive to be tolerant and inclusive. This grows the overall network effect and makes everyone the most money possible. To the extent any community adopts a culture of intolerance that overly restricts the range of acceptable opinion it will push people away. New communities will form to serve the needs of those who are rejected and the free market competition for mindshare will continue.
Conclusion
If Steem remains a libertarian / anarchist enclave then it will fail to attract a broader audience and that in turn will mean that ordinary people will not get involved with cryptocurrency. Likewise, if Steemit fails to curtail abusive, threatening, and toxic individuals it will also drive away the broader audience leaving only those with skin thick enough to take the abuse of trolls.
I want Steem be a healthy, vibrant community with engaging discussions from people with all points of view. Unfortunately (and fortunately?), I am only one of many users who have a say in what kind of content gets voted on. Each and every one of us contributes to the culture and we will all succeed or fail based upon how we act.
Lets stop throwing the term “censorship” around here on Steemit unless it is explicitly referring to the threat of violence. It is out of place and conjures up inappropriate negative reactions similar to playing the race card. Instead, lets focus on the rights of all voters to express their opinion for or against any post. If you disagree with how someone is voting, then focus your argument on how something adds or removes value to the community rather than whether someone is committing the “vile” sin of non-censorship by utilizing their legitimate voting rights.
Steemit is a free and voluntary platform built on the basis of free association; censorship is impossible in such an environment even if the community or steemit.com chooses to minimize the visibility of some content or block it all together.
The blockchain is open, your content is logged and recorded for all time. Anyone who wants to see your content or offer a competing service to steemit.com is free to curate and display what they like.
P.S. On Definitions
We live in a world where common words are generally used in ways that are in direct contradiction of their meaning. The unfortunate reality dramatically lowers the quality of public discourse because it allows people to talk past each other. Activists leverage the emotional response to the word censorship to provoke people into violating the property rights of others. It may well be that censorship is taking on a broader meaning that would also encompass the no coerced behavior of Google, Facebook, etc. The problem with the broader meaning is that the word censorship is no longer useful for accurately defining moral/immoral behavior. Under the broader definition, accusing someone of censorship is as meaningless as accusing them of filtering spam emails. How dare they censor spam artists!
I think we are using old words or expressions said by famous people in order to establish rules in a pretty different social frame to ours.
Should not we update our language to define our present social conditions?
For me, "free" is a rather inaccurate word to gain consensus on the basics of social norms. The word "Free" carries a long semantic background of emotion and romanticism, with little practical value for settling respectful traits among members of a society. This is particularly relevant when you realize that actually is a secondary concept in terms of obtaining "social coherence" which is the ultimate goal of any rightful social construct.
It gets even worse when we still see our self decoupled from the rest of "our humanity" by obsolete concept nomenclatures, like property, or competitiveness, and considering the personal sphere as "the supreme consideration".
In order to evolve as a specie, we must start changing the narrative and semantics we use to describe the new reality.
I do not mean that Freedom is not a very relevant human concept, but maybe "Coherence" is a far more relevant concept than Freedom And cooperation far richer than competence.
Reality is emerging and exponentially faster, and we should be more flexible in order to thrive.
Inconceivable! ;)
Upvote this ^ until it is visible
Done...
Inconceivable!
I don't think that to be attracted to crypto generally, or to the steem platform, you have to be full on barry cooper or lukeawarechange. But I do think that generally, the target audience is libertarian leaning.
Call it "censorship" or whatever you like. When a single user or group of users comes together to hide information they don't like, or just arbitrarily hide information out of spite, its desirable to stop that.
I do agree with you that anyone ought to be able to vote however they like, and that its reasonable to restrict visibility based on that vote (in fact, i think trying to suppress downvotes is just as bad as trying to suppress content). That said, with so much effort expended to "police" content, i think it is possible for the pendulum to swing too far in the wrong direction.
For example, lets say that several stakeholders join forces to create an even medium-sized block, say 20,000SP. Just as an example, lets say they decide to flag any post about abortion that is pro-choice. At that point, "let the other stakeholders decide" is sort of irrelevant because the other stakeholders will very likely never see it.
In fact, a single rogue user was able to hide dozens of new users post. I was actually pretty surprised that in all the talk about how we could take away this guys vote, no one ever thought to go back and unhide all the posts that had been hidden.
Good post Dan. It needed to be written. You know me as the up votes only guy who sees flagging as being appropriate for the same things you listed. I am one of those that is against down voting simply for disagreeing. This is mainly because I view posts and content here more like a market for ideas than a board room. In a market if I choose to pay someone something for content, someone else cannot come and take that money away from both of us. Down voting on steemit can give the impression of doing this and could be thus deemed as an aggressive act. Yet, this is primarly because people do not understand how it works. Our vests, our steem power are actually like voting shares in a company. So in reality it IS like a board room yet it also wears the guise of a market. It is kind of hybrid. I don't know that there has ever been anything quite like it in history.
The reputation system has curtailed the effects of people that abuse the down vote for the most part. There are cases where we've seen a post grayed out because -4 reputation @r4fken decides to downvote a post. Yet if you look that person is on a down vote mission. This left some legit posters with their post grayed out until other people in the community up voted them. This felt like an attack to that person. They perceived it as aggression.
I too want to see steemit and other steem blockchain endeavors thrive and grow. I have zero doubts that you and Ned are trying to do the best you can. I also know this is a beta and simply complaining does not solve problems. You need something constructive you can work with.
So I DO see why you value the down vote for disagreements, yet that takes me first understanding the perspective you are coming from. All indicators I've seen seem to indicate that is NOT the perspective new people have. So they view it as an attack, and as their posts are sent into obscurity and their funding ripped away they feel like they are censored. Yet in reality it is still on the blockchain so they are not. It is a matter of perception and perspective.
We all want a lot of people to get here. They likely are not going to understand your perspective without help. All they will see is someone down voted them and the money they were excited about is now gone.
So what constructive can we do about this? We have some talented videographers already on here. Have you considered perhaps having a short introductory video for new people that they watch that helps show them this new perspective? If they know it ahead of time they might not be blind sided by it, and the may not kneejerk react.
It's kind of a heading the problem off at the pass type of idea.
I don't know if that will help or not. You are correct about the many definitions of words, and hijacking of some of them. Defining definitions is kind of critical whenever you are going into a discussion/debate that is about opposing viewpoints. How many times have you seen a capitalist arguing with a socialist and each of them having completely different definitions of those words so the discussion goes effectively nowhere.
Anyway... keep up the good work.
just wanted to point out that this long, well written reply to post about how censorship isnt really a thing was hidden by one user with an axe to grind. jus sayin
This is exactly what you are doing. A few minutes with google will convince any impartial reader that the word censorship is correctly applied in many contexts, including self-censorship, which do not relate to the use of force of violence.
For example http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censorship:
"a. the institution, system, or practice of censoring"
"b. the actions or practices of censors"
"censor: a person who examines books, movies, letters, etc., and removes things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc."
Government or otherwise violence-enforced censorship is a form of censorship only, it does not define the term. Please stop attempting to redefine it.
Removing content (believed to be offensive, immoral, harmful, etc.) from view is censoring it. This may be a good or bad, depending on the context and the value system of the person making such a determination.
Flagging isn't censorship. I can still read the posts and comments of the most heavily flagged and lowest rep posters here.
Denying payment to a post isn't censorship either, unless you want to argue that all of Reddit is censored because no post or comment get paid there.
I disagree with you, and flagging is also an abuse of power.
Not an argument. Care to elaborate?
Well, in this post by dantheman who is talking about censorship, I posted a meme which got flagged by non other than dantheman himself. The meme was "if god ever wanted to be a fish he'd be a whale" (I'm not reposting it because I'll probably get flagged again). I hesitated before posting it, but thought WTF, let's see if he'll flag it. Just 1 flag brought down my reputation from 40 to 9. Which goes to prove my point, that the reputation system is unbalanced and unfair to little fish. And that my meme was right and shouldn't have been flagged.
Yes, I found the comment. I was able to see it and read it. The flagging didn't prevent me from viewing it. I'm not saying it is good to get your posts flagged, but it isn't quite the same thing as censorship. Just call it flagging.
I think the best way to handle the flagging issue is that if a post gets more downvotes than upvotes it should get flagged, but if it gets more upvotes than downvotes it shouldn't get flagged. The way it is now a post can get 10 upvotes but 1 downvote it would flag it.
It was indeed unfair to flag you without warning. Unless you were warned?
I do think whales should be much much more hesitant with the use of their flag and save it for more important things like catfish and plagiarising sockpuppets.
Flagging CAN be an abuse of power. But just as its everyones right to upvote what they want, anyone can downvote what they want. And if someone doesn't like a meme you post, its within their right to downvote. But just like in the real world, actions have consequences, so if enough people think a flag is abusive, their reputation will come under scrutiny.
I'm guessing there is history between you and @dantheman, hence your foreknowledge of a downvote from posting something like you did. Knowing something will be received negatively and doing it anyway without any real value added (and from the way you describe it, that post would be a non-value-added).
Censorship does not require violence.
The concept of "self-censorship" is a testament to this.
Simply being afraid of some sort of consequence for sharing ideas is a way to shut down free and open discussion. Censorship does not require out-right physical violence.
Mental and emotional attacks are also powerful ways to control people, and the problem here isn't violence. It's censorship.
Censorship isn't bad because it can be caused by violence. Violence is not the "evil" here.
Censorship is inherently bad, no matter if it's caused by physical violence, or another mental or emotional threat.
What you are talking about is peer pressure and shunning. These are social norms that @dana-edwards discusses here:
https://steemit.com/politics/@dana-edwards/do-social-norms-trump-the-law-or-my-response-to-the-free-the-nipple-controversy
Well, with 'self-censorship', the only guilty party of the censorship is the individual remaining silent.
Censorship is just more effective when backed by violence, or threats of violence.
Otherwise, its just a social pressure situation, which I think Steemit has demonstrated, politically 'incorrect' things can be said openly all day and even be highly rewarded.
Fantastic post! Every time I read a post from you I learn. Please keep posting as regularly as you have been.
I created a proposal for bounties that I think will be useful to you and steem. Please find the time to read and give me some short feedback if u find it not valuable and why.
Appreciate your work!
I'm still in awe at the idea that YOU can;t censor ME. It's just really cool to know that and freeing. You can't BAN me. IT gives me [ and others, i'm sure] a certain confidence.
I think the mute button is enough protection from a lot of abuse but I'm sure many disagree.
On a broader sense, Steemit must attract a wider audience/ Bring them in for the money, make them stay for the community ;)