NEW PEOPLE: How to deal with jerks that love to censor ideas they dislike...

in #downvote7 years ago


Technically there is no true censorship on the steem blockchain. There are some things that can be like censorship and most of them we have some ideas how to approach. I decided after seeing a new person I think writes well @ura-soul have one of his posts "censored" from his perspective that it was time to write about this and give new people that haven't been around to struggle through some of these issues some information. Perspective helps.

First if you are flagged (aka down voted). Don't panic.

The down vote is intended to fight plagiarism, spam, abuse, and they added for reward pool issues (wish they hadn't as that opened the flood gates).

This is currently necessary to fight spam, plagiarism, and abuse. Without these tools there is no clear way to stop such things.

There are a lot of suggestions people will often make but they are usually easy to get around by using multiple accounts, or they introduce an entirely new set of problems.

I consider the misuse of the down vote to be one of the biggest problems that remains with steem/it. In fact, for my first 6 or so months on steemit I was a vocal supporter of removing the down vote. I didn't see it as being needed. I wrote quite a number of posts on it. I also even discussed it with Dan Larimer one of the co-founders here.

The problem is that if the down vote is removed that opens the door to other problems and we haven't found a programmatic way to address those.

So really when you see a down vote that is questionable it can be like a punch in the gut. It can be far more soul draining than the greatest of up votes. Who says humans don't react to negative reinforcement? If your goal was to enrage someone down vote them because you don't like their topic, opinion, or you think people that DO like it are rewarding them too much. You'll get your rage. People don't like others dictating what they can and cannot like, or can and cannot be rewarded.

So yes I think from what I said just now you can see I totally GET why people are upset.

They will say "Censorship" to which you will encounter people saying "It was not censored".

It becomes a matter of perspective, opinion, and semantics there. Technically the information is still there on the blockchain and people that want to see it can. That is what will be used to justify that it was not censored.

However, it may have cancelled out the reward other people wanted to give you for that topic because maybe they really liked it. It could be viewed as restricting the right of people to support the people that share their interests. Is that censorship? If the post was high quality, took a lot of time, and thus needed some funding then by removing that funding such posts might have to stop, and when things like blocking funding occur in the non-steemit world that is usually considered a form of censorship.

People will say it was hidden and couldn't be seen. It actually will still be visible it will just need to be clicked on extra to be visible. If someone with sufficient reputation up votes it that will cancel out that visibility issue as well.

So as I said don't panic. You have some options. Let someone you know that has a higher reputation know about the incident. They and potentially others can up vote to help out. Since Hardfork 19 people in the community banding together have a better chance to counter these actions.

The next thing you should do is remove your support from the people that do this. Don't follow them, don't up vote them, etc. If they want to be a jerk and be an island then so be it, but we shouldn't be giving them more power if we can avoid it. Some people may even decide to mute them, but I personally leave mute off the table unless they are abusive and trolling... I like to leave the door open for people to change.

Telling people they shouldn't do this doesn't usually work. As the floodgates open and more and more people join steemit we will occasionally have people who spend a chunk of money and buy in and they will have quite a bit of power at the outset. They may not be familiar with our community and will bring ideas like those on reddit here. We have to help them see the way that hurts the community, we can't expect them to get it when they first get here.

So when you are down voted what can you do?

First: Be civil. Don't drop to their level, don't call them names, don't suggest flagging all of their stuff, etc. I've never actually seen that work out well for anyone. Keep civil even in the face of their ignorance. Don't allow your attitude to become their justification for why it was okay that they flagged you.

Second: You can try talking to them. If you can keep it civil perhaps you can convince them to reverse their action. If you don't think you can keep cool then avoid this step.

Third: Find out who they are. If you are following them and they didn't agree in step two to change their ways stop following them. Don't vote on their posts. If they want to force their opinion upon all of us then do not give them more power to do that.

Fourth: Reach out to community members you know. We'll help you counter such votes to the best of our ability even if we may not agree with your opinions in your post. If you were being an ass to someone in your post then you'll likely not get sympathy, but if it was down voted just due to subject matter you'll get support.

Fifth: Be available to support other people in similar situations. If there is someone doing this activity to other people stop following them, voting for them, etc. This is true no matter how big they are. I've seen some truly big people do this before and people keep following them hoping for those high paying votes that person might dish out. This is compromising their integrity for the sake of greed. Don't do that.

So how do you find out about them? There are a lot of tools. I tend to use steemdb.com.

If you are looking at a post it will have a url beginning with https://steemit.com/ simply change steemit.com to steemdb.com and keep the rest. You can find out in detail all about that post including all the voters.

There are going to be problems with steem and steemit. We cannot magically expect them to be fixed. This is something that has never existed before. This means it has new challenges as well as opportunities. We as the community can solve a lot of them as changing it in code often will not be the answer. I wrote a post about this that explains in more detail why this is so.

Here are some of my past posts on the topic of flagging for those that want to know more:

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Good post man. The downvote should be removed just as you say here, its to bad people have to abuse things but if downvoting becomes rampant than why use Steemit? We need to get back to good ole non censorship.....JUST LIKE OUR CONSTITUTION says.

Yes broncnutz, if only everyone thinks and behaves properly. Is that possible?

Your right....and probably not

The downvote should be removed just as you say here

I am not saying that. I was saying that for 6 months, and realized that if we did away with it that'd open the floodgates for other types of abuse. We can't get rid of it yet, as we don't have a way to stop the other things without it. So as I said the community needs to do what they can to remove support from people that abuse it.

I don't like the downvote system either but it does open up other problema if it is removed. Thing is the bigger steemit gets the bigger the problem with people getting downvoted will be. Look at youtube for example, even on a superb video of performance or informational video that has some popularity there will be quite a few dislikes. There will always be people that will feel better about other peoples unhappiness. Steemit for now is a bit different and a lot more friendly as a social media but more people coming along everyday will make it inevitable to not have any of the internet "trolls".

Visible monetary rewards does have a unique effect on trolls that isn't anywhere else. You see people don't up vote trolls here. In fact they down vote them, mute them, etc. So the only troll that actually would likely survive long here would be one that wanted absolutely no money. :)

True that. I was referring more to the people that might use the downvote/flag system as a dislike button which it isn't meant to be or at least not in the way people use it on most social medias.

On the "regular" forums, trolls are paid by outside political parties and special interest groups. The same could happen here. Once the user base is large enough, it can be corrupted... like anything else.

Yes, there is some of that. However, many are just jerks. :)

Good point i-am-zol. The time will come when this will happen. If you have any ideas as to solving this inevitable issue bring it up. I can't think of one yet, but we should all try to find ways to keep this site away from fallacies.

I love your post .. there is always something we all dislike we cant disagree but for platform like this one i feel that downvote should be removed ... we all in steemtopia see the dream in this and we should be able to support one another

While down voting is necessary to stop plagiarism and hate speech, I think users should lose their down voting power if they overuse it. It should never be a tool used to censor views you don't agree with.

The problem is there is no centralized authority so who would have this "power" to strip voting rights, how would it be dictated, and how could you insure that power could not be corrupted?

I will never down vote anyone, regardless of what they post, I am all for freedom of speech. Overall people on Steemit are respectful in my experience, hope it stays that way.

You may encounter the occasional jerk. Don't panic. Though they are still here they are far more rare than anywhere else.

Best ignored so they do not latch onto you, right?!

Ignore if they don't follow you around. Yet can also stop following, voting for, etc so you don't help power them up.

The other day I was wondering about this possible refinement to the flagging process. If you flag someone a box pops up asking why you are flagging and you have to select one of the options, which might be a) plagiarism b) spam c) abuse d) other. If other you have to type your reason. Whatever you select then comes up as a comment on the post. It won't stop flagging, but it will force the person to give a reason, for all to see. So increased transparency. What do you think?

That box already pops up, but doesn't require selecting a choice and it doesn't add the comment. That'd be interesting to see but that is a UI aspect of the web it might work for people that use your particular web page, but it'd do nothing to those using other sites busy.org, zappl, chainbb, command line, steemdb, etc. It could help some though, but it wouldn't necessarily stop it. It might reduce it a great deal for new people that decide to use it.

I've never flagged, so I didn't know a box popped up. I suppose I'm suggesting tweaks to that box and how it works - forcing people to say why they've flagged and have it displayed.

All those technical aspects are a bit lost on me. I've never posted using those other ways in - can people upvote / flag through them as well? And you're saying that my suggestion could only be enforced on those voting / flagging directly through the Steemit interface, and not through others?

I wasn't necessarily thinking it would stop people, more that it would make them accountable to a certain level.

All those technical aspects are a bit lost on me. I've never posted using those other ways in - can people upvote / flag through them as well? And you're saying that my suggestion could only be enforced on those voting / flagging directly through the Steemit interface, and not through others?

Yes to both of those. :)

I think its a great idea kiwideb!

This was very well written! Flagging definitely is justified in some cases if the user is plagiarizing or spamming and continues after being warned.

You hit the nail on the head with this:

There are going to be problems with steem and steemit. We cannot magically expect them to be fixed. This is something that has never existed before. This means it has new challenges as well as opportunities. We as the community can solve a lot of them as changing it in code often will not be the answer.

There are so many issues that will arise over time, but as long as the community sticks together, we will be just fine in the end!

Don't panic is right. Just ignore them is probably the best advice and most of the time they will go away. If they keep flagging you then speak up.

Thanks for your valuable post @dwinblood. I have had a few flagging incidents, which were solely based on them not liking facts I had posted. This information helps in dealing with triggered folk.

did you need me to take a look at some of them and help? what posts were they?

No, but thanks for offering to help @truthforce.

Someone else saw what happened and immediately stepped in and reversed the down vote. I don't even know who it was, but they saw what was going on, and knew this down-voting person was being a grub.

I'm still angered by what happened but it was resolved quickly and in my favour. It's made me very mindful of being targeted and harassed simply because of truth telling and opinion.

Thanks for the beautiful piece

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