RE: Color Challenge - Yellow Wednesday - Blanket
I'm against trying to flag spam, etc. You can try to stop spam and everything. People will always try at times to develop systems, bots, that can do what people do, to filter, to flag. Some say it might not be censorship but what would you call it? It might be a rating system when you downvote, when you flag, as that lowers the score, the reputation, the rating of a person, an account, a comment, a post.
How is censorship and ratings different? Some may argue that downvoting a comment at least appears different than actually removing a comment and therefore not censorship. But what does censoring mean? Flagging a comment can change the appearance of that comment, the reputation, the credibility. But in a free market system, if Steemit is that or can be that, then each person has the ability maybe to decide to rate comments, to upvote, to downvote. And beyond that, we also make bots to do all of that for us to downvote, to upvote, to comment, to share, and everything.
Good luck with making systems, bots, etc, and they may or may not work at times. Should people be allowed to spam? Good question. Should people be allowed to flag? Great questions. In a free market system, it is a dog eat dog world out there. It reminds me of 21, a basketball game where each person is on their own team, a team of one. Like one versus one versus one versus one versus one for each person playing half-court basketball. Steemit might be like that but some players in basketball and some whales on Steemit might be ten feet tall. I might not be a whale on Steemit. I might not be a big person. I might be a very small Asian Glenn from The Walking Dead. I might be a fast person on the basketball court and I might need to be to get by the big giant whales on the court and on Steemit.
Giant Whales VS. Small People?
Should giant whales be allowed to upvote and downvote so much on Steemit? Like so much weight, voting power? Some say no. But I think it is ok because maybe someday I will be a whale on Steemit. So, I can't be against what I want. And can people and bots run around to comment and vote and flag and share too much or too fast and everything like me? Another good question. I say no. But in a free market system, each one of us can decide if we like the giants and the fast people. If somebody does not like JOEY OATMEAL for example, then they can make bots that attack only me.
What if I Stole Your GF haha?
If a man hates me because I stole his GF, then he can make a bot that downvotes everything I post on Steemit for example. I am fine with that.
I am fine with that. And I can also write about it as well and make videos about it as a response back to the attack maybe. That is the free market. And the people decide. We the people decide. The bots can let people know things maybe the opinions of somebody who hates me for example. But the people can still choose to agree to disagree either with me or with the bot. Life is great and scary. Thanks. Oatmeal.
A.I. is the future whether we want to believe it or not. Whether or not we are the ones developing the systems, the systems will be developed, and quantum computing is right around the corner. I am not the only one who feels this way: Elon Musk himself speaks extensively on how Artificial Intelligence and bots are changing how we must think about all technological interactions in society.
You are an exception to the spam rule as I have said before, but there are few exceptions. This is a platform founded on a cryptocurrency. That means there is a LOT at stake. Spam bots which spam phishing links or promote third party products are dangerous to the steemit platform for obvious reasons. And Bots designed to appear like legitimate users that exploit the ability to post every 20 seconds and succeed in gathering a following and gaining influence through upvotes put the entire platform at risk because they artificially steal credits from the resource pool.
Creating more bots isn't the answer, closing loopholes and exploitable variables in the system, is.
No legitimate user deserves to be attacked on the platform. Eventually we will probably want a "constitution" of sorts, set as the foundation of our entire platform which lays out common sense ground rules and rewards users for flagging content that violates it. Steemit certainly is not perfect, but it can be if we all work on it.
I wouldn't get too caught up on the free market idea. The free market is an illusion. Any system which allows one person to gain more influence than another person will eventually be exploited by those with malicious intentions and used to push their personal ideologies on the masses. Luckily, with the steemit platform we have methods of fighting back against that (unlike in the real world.)
I want free market. Yeah, we may not have free markets in most countries, most of the time, to some extents. I like competition. I like letting people vote on how they want things to work. It can become tricky with the bots. I do not really care what people do exactly. I want people to exercise their choices. That is what life is all about. I love capitalism which means some will have more influence over others. That is always the case. That inspires the best, not the worse, in people.
Capitalism and communism have never really existed in their true form. What I meant about the free market is that a Free Market can't exist unless people hold evil men accountable for their deeds, because in a free market evil men take over then have disproportionate power and then by definition it is no longer a free market because these men are controlling everything.
Who is evil and who is not evil? Who decides the line between evil and not evil? Do the general public decide together like you say? What if the general public is evil? If the majority of people were evil, would they put themselves in jail and admit to their own evil or are they likely to call their opposition evil? How would we go about determining who is evil or not evil?