Just Downvote It, Mute It and Walk Away - Is That a Reasonable Solution?
This is a response to williambanks, who I respect and really enjoy reading.
Disclaimer : I must reference the recent dispute between myself and another individual here on Steemit to make a point. I'm sorry if that disturbs some of you, but I think there is an issue with this platform that needs to be addressed before things get out of hand.
Just downvote it, mute it and walk away.
The problem is, when I flagged people who wrongly (IMHO) flagged my post and comments pointing out what I consider to be abuse of another human being, I was hit with a propaganda campaign in chat and on Steemit saying I was "starting a flagging war", "harassing", "abusing" and "stalking".
I discovered it's nearly impossible to defend yourself by simply responding to critics without being labeled a "troll" or defend your reputation from flag abusers (IMHO) by flagging them back to get them to stop. There is no other method to get them to stop. They can flag all day long because they don't care about their reputations and rarely post anything outside of comments. They are not contributing anything to Steemit (IMHO) other than flags for people they don't like and anytime someone tries to do something to combat it, well it's all of a sudden a "flag war".
Flag War!
The issue is, they started firing shots first and I'm expected to just sit back and take flag after flag on my content and comments simply because they don't like it. This hurts my reputation level here while I'm expected to do nothing in return apparently. If I post something criticizing someone's abusive actions, I'm labeled a "troll" or my post is called "harassment" or "bullying" and again, I'm flagged for those reasons.
I swore I wouldn't say this (yet) but I feel I have to at this point. To me, Steemit is in ways becoming somewhat like the dystopian Sesame Credit system in China. A group of individuals get to dictate what's good or bad, label it how they want, flag it and push down the reputation of others they don't want to have a voice on the platform, especially if that voice is critical of their own actions/words.
Sesame Credit
China’s ‘social credit system’ aims to create a docile, compliant citizenry who are fiscally and morally responsible by employing a game-like format to create self-imposed, group social control. In other words, China gamified peer pressure to control its citizenry; and, though the scheme hasn’t been fully implemented yet, it’s already working — insidiously well.
Unfortunately, I'm starting to see a lot of similarities. If a person or group has a large following and feel that another individual or small group is saying something they don't agree with, they can band together and basically shut that person down with a relentless propaganda campaign consisting of cries of "harassment" and "abuse" and follow that up with relentless flags on their account.
Propaganda War
The smaller group or individual cannot compete with this propaganda campaign while the larger group is online most of the day spamming their "harassment" "flag this!" comments in every chat channel on Steemit Chat and Slack, even enticing a Founder to upvote them thereby making it appear that the Founder supports them. Luckily I was able to convince Ned to remove his support shortly afterwards, but I only saw what was happening by chance.
I'm fortunate that my reputation is higher than the individual and his group of supporters, otherwise my accounts reputation would likely be taking a massive hit. But I'm sure it is hurting my reputation anyway, since their repetitious flags are preventing my reputation from growing.
To me, this is a serious issue on Steemit that needs to be taken care of quickly. People are realizing they can enlist easily manipulated people to support their cause and launch a campaign against anyone speaking out against them or simply offering a counter-narrative to their side of the story.
Heidi Speaks
Luckily much of what I have been saying has been vindicated by Heidi speaking up and this is why I am so happy to see her post today. Perhaps many of those that have been blindly flagging me or accusing me of harassing this individual can now see that he was creating fictitious stories to whip people into a frenzy and support him by playing the victim. Hell he even made nearly $3,000 off of it and yet people are in here complaining that Heidi is profiting from simply defending her own reputation against this guys onslaught that he's been on for the past week in chat and on Steemit.
Just look at the chat logs. He's been posting his propaganda in channel after channel almost every day in an effort to garner support for his side of the story, which holds no weight whatsoever outside of stock photos and his version of events, that have shown to be less than accurate and highly exaggerated to benefit his version of events.
Steemit ... We Have a Problem
This is a problem. As I stated in chat, this is simply one individual with less than $100,000 on Steemit able to mount this kind of propaganda campaign and profit from it while hurting and stifling the reputation of some of highest reputation users on Steemit. Imagine what can happen when someone with a large sum of money (like a government perhaps) and huge follower base comes along. No one will dare speak out against them, lest they be subjected to far worse reputation hits and monetary losses from the flags.
And that is the reason I continue to bring this matter up. This guy is a small fry with behavioral issues that would land most people in a lawsuit or a fist fight offline. Imagine what can happen if a large stakeholder with lots of support pulled this kind of stuff. There will be no counter-narrative.
TL;DR
Despite my recent post thanking Dan & Ned for creating an immutable blockchain based social media platform, there are many issues I still have with Steemit.com. Some people don't feel safe here and it's too easy for a large stakeholder or group of individuals to harm the reputation of those rightfully criticizing their words/actions.
I own a license to use all images in this post.
Also if this kind of stuff can happen to you with your rep imagine the intimidation effect on a newbie who has a much lower rep.
Seems everything descends to schoolyard tactics in the end. This isn't good for retaining new members. People have already had it with these sort of schoolboy antics on other platforms.
We need to deal with these kind of things head on as a community in order to ensure the long term survival of Steemit.
Openness is an absolute necessity.
We appreciate that you're giving this issue attention, @tuck-fheman because it deserves to be addressed. We've encountered abuse with the flagging system too, but a flag war feels like an enormous waste of energy.
We are looking at community values - what kind of group do we want to create here? We aren't interested in being in community with people who do not respect one another. We don't want to be in a place where users maliciously attack and lie about one another. We don't want to be in a group where users are unwilling to address and correct disrespectful actions, either.
There must be some kind of community standards and accountability in order to have success. There have to be levels of honor and respect established. There has to be come kind of consensus as to what that will be, and to what will happen to someone who disrespects and dishonors the profound nature of this unique community.
As only one of the many Steemians on the wrong side of this ‘Flagging war’, I think there’s a flaw in the way flagging works.
I keep saying this, “I’m still learning” – BUT Steemit is a society and because it’s new, it has a few wrinkles that could use a bit of an ironing (steem iron if you like).
I like what @williambanks suggested, that you lose significant amounts of SP for flagging, but if that SP and the lost rep point were held in escrow until someone could take a look at the flag and either dismiss or uphold it, returning both if the decision to flag is valid, would that work?
As for bullies – and that’s exactly what this guy seems to be (not going to name him, I think he revels in being named). Bullies can have their power taken away by ignoring them but that’s something that has to be done by everyone, not just one person standing alone. The serial flagger (I dubbed she/he/it ‘shit’ in my blog about it) is pissed about something; but as a spoiled, petulant child will, he’s not tried to sort out the source of the problem and deal with it in an adult manner, he’s gone on a teddy-throwing rampage. When that appears not to have worked, he’s dragged in innocent Steemians that have no clue as to why their blog was flagged (me for example).
It doesn’t seem to matter that it’s costing him his own bitcoin to power up, again, the act of a petulant, entitled brat, and he’s determined that if he’s not allowed to win this ‘game’, then he’ll either take his ball and go home, or destroy the game altogether.
That is not the type of bully you can just ignore. That type of bully is not happy until everyone is as miserable as he is.
Perhaps the way to stop this particular one is to make flagging impossible at a certain level of reputation?
Either way, I don’t bow to bullies.
More SteemPower to your elbow @tuck-fheman! I hope this gets sorted before it spoils what seems to be a good thing and people start leaving.
Wow this is extremely well put and even used many of my own words to demonstrate a counter point to my own position.
Excellent comment! I am extremely impressed with this. I'm going to dig in and look at what is going on, see if maybe I'm wrong somewhere and not considering something.
Thank you!
You're welcome. I have my own view on bullies, I've had a number of experiences with them because I'm a) Ginger and b) gobby ;)
Yeah, when that happened, I was like WTF? Steemit has started to get some weird conventions springing up. A lot of the current systems are incentivising weird behavior, and not a good kind of weird either. I hope that once enough attention to this matter is garnered the things will change for the better.
Steem on, you make cool comics, and are a valuable contributor, at least in my opinion.
I think we all have to sit down and talk about this problem. Flagging has been used too often irresponsibly.
I have recently come under attack. Everything I've done is now flagged. Horrible comments now. I have quit posting. I feel like Steemit is more like the wild wild west. Enter at your own risk. There are GANGS operating inside here. As a group they can destroy you. I have always enjoyed controversial subjects and great debate, but never expected this wrath.
Good post and thanks for bringing up the issue.
On a side note:
I can easily see how some individuals might be offended by your comics, especially if they take themselves too seriously. Although they (your comics) usually are very accurate, I'm not surprised by a negative response.
I love em though. Keep going and I hope you find a solution to the down vote problem.
I don't have issues with a negative response (other than flagging), but calling the comic "harassment", "bullying" "abuse" and "stalking" is not only a gross exaggeration and misuse of those terms which dilutes their meaning (there are people here actually being harassed), but it's an attempt to discredit and silence someone for bringing someone else's actions to the forefront and with that I have issues.
Thanks!
Remember when you sent me this Tuck?
1 month ago Receive 0.001 SBD from tuck-fheman Why play the downvote game alone? I want to play too! Let's see who wins! Or just stop being an ass troll.
Then Tuck downvoted all my content I posted... All I did was down vote a reply where tuck openly and obnoxiously admitted to gaming the system with his upvotes .
Looks like you fell off your high horse tuck. You reap what you sow and your earlier action on Steemit are now coming back on you...you deserve it. :)
I think I've made it pretty clear and openly done so that if someone flags this account simply because they don't like something I've said, I will flag them back. I view the flag system for what it states it is for, abuse and harassment. You coming to my blog and viewing a comment you didn't agree with is in no way abusing or harassing you.
I've already explained the situation to you numerous times and why I upvoted my own comments. If you simply don't want to read what I had to say, that's your business, but the response will not change. I disagree with your flags just like you disagree with my comments, so you got flagged back for every flag you gave this account. You flagged first, as all of the people I flag did, outside of plagiarizers.
I'm not sure what part you're not understanding or why you consider it wrong for me to flag something I don't like that you did, while you seem to think it's OK for you to flag whatever you don't like. Your logic is flawed in my opinion. If you want to pretend it's a downvote when you do it, then pretend it's a downvote when I do it. It's as simple as that. I will play by the same rules as you. You set the rules and now you want to skew them in your favor. It doesn't work that way.
Pretend it's whatever you want to pretend it is and don't get pissed off when someone plays by the same set of rules. I flagged you back because I don't like what you did, which is why you flagged me. Those are your rules. I didn't make them, you did. Stop complaining about the way you make rules up or make better rules. ;)