RE: The ability to speak freely, not earn freely
I think people take the greyed out comments and post issue to serious. There was an individual that had all of his comments greyed out. It did not stop me from being curious as to what they said and looking at the comments. It was just a simple click to see the comment, most of the comments were relative to the post, I asked why, I was told, I gave my opinion, and the person's comments are no longer greyed out, I am pretty sure I did not persuade anyone to change their mind, but I spoke up. Even if they did not stop the auto down voting of this person I still would have seen each and every comment of his if I saw his name I would just ungrey it for myself.
On the other hand there are comments that are greyed out that I will not bother to look at, these are from disgruntled woe is me types, or spammer accounts. So the auto down votes do not bother me, people can still look and still see the comment. It is just a click away after all. I do still look on occasion to see if they have changed their ways and if they did then I will look at their comments and post also.
If a person is concerned that someone they follow is being censored all they have to do is look at the post. They can resteem it so others that follow them can see the post. They can make a post and then put a link to the greyed out post. There are ways and means to remove perceived censorship on the Steem Block Chain.
If they do not like the fact that a tribe or a community has blocked/muted a friend then they can always still use the steemit front end. Unfortunately if they did that they would have no reason to play the woe is me I am a victim card and try bullying others to get their way.
Look, my only concern is avoiding downvotes.
Nobody told me I shouldn't pay for bid-bots (isn't this a free-market).
Nobody told me I shouldn't self-vote (wtf).
Nobody told me I shouldn't copy stuff I posted on other blogs.
Nobody told me the whales can't be criticized.
I'm just trying to figure out "what the rules are".
There is no way, method, or manner to avoid down votes other to never post or comment. The Steemit FAQ on down votes: "Users are allowed to downvote for any reason that they want." So it is impossible to avoid down votes.
Bid Bot's Buying/selling Votes"Selling or offering to buy votes/resteems/follows, or schemes that facilitate this." is considered abuse.
The FAQ does have a lot of information in it. People just don't like to read it because then they do not have the sympathy card of I didn't know. There are a lot of things that people are never told, it does not take long to see the results of ones actions. If an individual does not like the consequence of what happened to them because of their own action, they can either ask the individual what they did wrong, ignore the issue and continue on with their ways, or change their ways, and the issue may go away.
The rules on steem block chain are like the rules in life, the laws are always changing based on what the leaders want or what the leaders perceive society wants, or what they feel would move society in one direction or another.
During WW2 in America there were rationing laws, and internment laws, and removal of freedoms for some groups of people, those laws at the time made sense to those in charge, and to most people because they did not vote those individuals out of office.
HF20/21 the EIP was talked about discussed, and voted on by the individuals that the users of the steem block chain voted in as witnesses, the majority of the stake agreed with the assessment because the majority of the same witnesses are still in the top 20.
As for "Nobody told me the whales can't be criticized." they can and often are. If it is criticism then they may look at it, if it is name calling and ranting and raving about their lack of brains or other such nonsense then retaliation is going to happen. To many people think statements such "You're an asshole" are criticism, it's not it's an opinion. Most so called criticism is nothing more than opinion.
A short search on the word criticism: "the act of expressing disapproval and of noting the problems or faults of a person or thing : the act of criticizing someone or something. : a remark or comment that expresses disapproval of someone or something."
Name calling is not criticism, attacking a person character is not criticism. To many of the people that say they were just criticizing a whale or an individual we instead attacking the individuals character
So, basically you're saying, "there are no rules".
I'm not, the FAQ pretty much says no rules when it comes to down votes. Society and the leaders of society change the rules when the rules need changing. The witness on steem can effect what rules get put in place.
There are rules, there are a lot of rules. People just like to think there are none, to think life is total anarchy with no collective direction of travel. There is a very wide spread diversification of rules in the world, and in our daily lives, and not all of them are written down.
The HF's are the rule changers on Steem Block Chain. People can either accept them try to change them in the next HF, or ignore them and live with the consequences.
I do not like the down vote issue. It has always been broken since I have been on steem block chain. I have put my thoughts and ideas out there as to how I think it could be fixed. I really do not like the blind down vote Army that makes no post, leaves no comments, and does nothing but down vote. I have urged the removal of the delegated steem and I have made suggestions on an auto comment in the down voters name and account so that the community can decide if the down vote was justified.
if people see something they do not like make a post, or leave comments/ideas on fixing it on those post that ask for opinions on the direction of steem block chain. Go on discord or in the steem chat rooms and leave messages. (I try to no longer use the chat or discord). There are ways and means to get ideas out there to effect change, will those ideas get adopted at some point in time, will the right people see the idea at the right time, no one knows. I do know, I do know, if the idea of fixing something is not put out there then there is no chance in hell of that non-published idea being adopted.
Well, as long as rampant downvoting feeds the "reward pool" and the "reward pool" feeds the top-earners and witnesses, the powers-that-be will continue to encourage (ignore) abusive downvoting.
nOW, how do we onboard new users..?
Oh, yes, tell the newbz some evil people are posting nasty stuff on steemit and they need to open an account so they can DOWNVOTE them!!!
100 million new steemians practically overnight!
It is funny when it comes to some of the people who I have heard complain. There was one who said that using another frontend than Steemit is not viable, because they don't like the layouts of the others and they are used to Steemit. First-world problems.
I think the tribes are a pretty good mechanism to avoid censorship and, it is possible to create an identical Steemit frontend if one chooses, I even think it is opensource for the most part.
!ENGAGE 30
@bashadow you have received
30 ENGAGEfrom @tarazkp!View and trade the tokens on Steem Engine.
Yeah a lot of people are so simple they don't recognize how easily most anything can backfire. There's a name for that:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect