RE: Downvote early, downvote often
It's interesting watching you and Baah debate this, as when you first came on my radar I had suspected you both are the same person. Still not completely ruled out, as a master debater (which both of you clearly are) is capable of arguing positions they do not hold personally. Having said that, I see both sides of this issue. Several I have enjoyed here have been targets, I myself have been downvoted for not only interacting with some who are but resteeming them. I never allowed that to stop my support of the person being targeted.
I agree that at times this targeting is a dick move, made because at the end of the day might makes right. In life, and here in an environment that the law is stake based. One of the ones most often complained about here for doing this (Bernie) has said more than once, if you don't like it buy Steem and power it up to protect yourself. Obviously for many here that isn't feasible, yet that isn't the systems fault but those of us who don't have the means. We come into this system (Stake based) knowing that those with more stake have more power and by the same token at any time can choose to walk away and not honor such a system.
I am curious on your thoughts on a thought that keeps gnawing at me. I have watched platforms censoring/de-platforming for some time now. I see many who I agree with being targeted by this, many of these people having many followers and perhaps a good amount of wealth to various degrees. So my question is this.
If platforms (including Steemit) in unpalatable due to (dick moves by those in power or outright censorship) why aren't moves being made by those affected to create their own platforms where they can decide the rules. Baah points out a lot that Steemit is not Steem. The claim (as I understand it) is the chain is censorship proof (I know, most of us do not have the knowledge to access the chain without the front ends such as Steemit). The front ends are privately owned, and can allow how they wish. With the upcoming SMT, it seems like one of means (or a group with means such as the Freezepeach group could utilize the benefits of this chain using their own tokens, their own rules to allow the types of speech that is felt is being censored/hidden here. Why isn't this solution reached for by the many who agree with the premise many are being censored here?
I've written on this in the past. Here is one of my last posts on it several months ago, if you're interested.
https://steemit.com/steem/@practicalthought/trying-to-force-the-square-peg-in-the-round-hole
I have neither the time or the money or the expertise to "start my own blockchain".
I believe an elegant solution would be perhaps for someone to clone steemit and reverse the rankings (this would be the ONLY modification). It could be steem.freespeech or upside-down.steem or some other generally self-explanatory title (@ura-soul and @themarkymark, could you please give me a quick opinion on how feasible you think this idea (a reverse rep view of steemit) would be to implement?).
That way, the most downvoted posts would show at the top of the trending page.
And everything with a payout or pending payout above 20 steem would be automatically hidden (with a reveal button for the curious).
It might look a mess, but I'd definitely check it out.
To delegate, right-click and open this link in a "new incognito window" (so forms and cookies don't get cached) https://steemworld.org/@practicalthought - then click "delegation" on the left, then delegate or undelegate or modify existing delegations as you see fit at any time. It doesn't require your master password, just your "active key", so any "risk" is extremely low. I believe delegating is much better than upvoting because you don't have to do it every day (it's like a semi-permanent upvote to the account instead of to a single post) and you never lose the steem-power, you can take it back whenever you want.
So it's kinda like a "super-pat.reon" because you don't have to give anybody your credit card info and you can take the money back if you find a better priority and nobody can stop you (pat.reon could potentially ban certain users in the future).
It could be steem.freespeech or upside-down.steem or some other generally self-explanatory title (@steemchiller, could you please give me a quick opinion on how feasible you think this idea (a reverse rep view of steemit) would be to implement?).
I don't think that it would be worth the effort. Many (I guess most) shit accounts have a low rep, so one would need to filter manually and go through all the mess just to find a few interesting posts.
Since the majority of people actually don't want to see most of the downvoted stuff, there is not much money to be made with such a system. It's not a super bad idea, but I think it should be solved within the regular platform by providing more filtering features.
Sustainable platforms can be found where the mainstream hangs around. With currently only ~ 1.4 million users on chain it's probably just a waste of time. Many good projects died, not because they were bad, but because the targeted audience was just too small at that point in time.
Would it be relatively easy to just make a page that showed the top downvoted posts? And maybe the top downvoted users? I'd like a page that perhaps showed downvoted posts that my voting power could be used to counter-vote. Maybe something like this is already available and I just don't know about it?
The regular APIs are designed to return the data ordered descending. For a performant solution one would need to implement own API calls on blockchain/hivemind level and provide own nodes which run the new logic or build an own database that is optimized for the new queries.
It's not just about forking condenser and changing a few variables. Most changes would have to be made on the backend.
Ah, so, maybe not as easy as, https://usesteem.com/steemwhales/ (which appears to be down at the moment).
Here we go, https://steemitboard.com/ranking/?p=54401&s=reputation
As many also don't. However, I notice that some of those being touted with large followings elsewhere never seem to consider such an idea. I laugh when I see some pushing to bring them here as they would find themselves subject to the same treatment you are posting about here.
As mentioned before, I don't delegate as it would require me to give an active key to a third party. I sent the 1 Steem as I said, which will benefit them more if they power up as they will always have it without fear of being undelegated.
The reason I mention someone(s) who feel the stake system is unfair start their own token system either using SMT or the Steem engine is exactly what Markymark explained. It is hard coded into the chain itself. The only way one could utilize the blockchain and neutralize current large stakeholders would be creating their own tokens. They would benefit from all the pluses of the chain itself (speed and cost) while not being held to the same punitive (nor rewarding) possibilities. This would probably be more feasible in the long run than bringing many who are actually being deplatformed here, as I pointed out they would also probably incur some of the downvotes from those being mentioned for disagreement over their messages.
Thank you for your support.