Blockchains take pride in being permission-less systems and that has been a great strength. But It is not a purely good thing. It's got pros and cons. On the good side we have a censorship free platform where everyone is given opportunity. Anybody with an internet connection can access and reap the benefits of various cryptocurrencies. To use STEEM you don't even need to invest a penny or go through an exchange. You are just given a tiny bit of STEEM and you can earn crypto while posting. But the flip side of this is that you cannot exclude anyone without going through a fairly complicated and divisive process. Even when community had millions of dollars to gain, the forking of Ethereum was very divisive. Just imagine how things would be like if STEEM decide to hard fork away from a certain account holder. Now think that account was an official account of a government or a government agency. Imagine Chinese Communist Party having a STEEM account that flag all posts that are against China or Socialism. Imagine CPS had an account that was made to counter all the hard work of @familyprotection or NSA/FED flagging posts on privacy and off-shore asset protection strategies and other legal tax dodging.

How Will The Community Deal With It?

We are considering a malicious or semi-malicious entity with almost bottomless funding acting like unholy pricks on a social media blockchain. If top witnesses accept to remove a certain account how would the community react? How much time will it take? The decision has to be swift because the malicious entity could simply power down in 13 weeks. I haven't seen much of a discussion on this topic. We have to understand that the "Tailored Access Operations" are a real thing and we have to acknowledge that bankrupt governments won't be very happy about an Alexa Top 1000 website spreading information that they would find unpleasant.

Some Known Targets and Collaborations of TAO According o Wikipedia

• China
• Tor/Firefox users
• In concert with the U.S. CIA and FBI, TAO is used to intercept laptops purchased online, divert them to secret warehouses where spyware and hardware is installed, and send them on to customers.
• OPEC
• SEA-ME-WE 4 – an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between -
  Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, -
  Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France.
• Mexico's Secretariat of Public Security
• TAO's QUANTUM INSERT technology was passed to UK services, particularly to GCHQ's MyNOC, which used it to target -
  Belgacom and GPRS roaming exchange (GRX) providers like the Comfone, Syniverse, and Starhome. Belgacom, which provides services to the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council discovered the attack.
• Försvarets radioanstalt (FRA) in Sweden gives access to fiberoptic links for QUANTUM cooperation.

According to a 2013 article in Foreign Policy, "TAO has become increasingly accomplished at its mission, thanks in part to the high-level cooperation it secretly receives from the 'big three' American telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint), most of the large US-based Internet service providers, and many of the top computer security software manufacturers and consulting companies." A 2012 TAO budget document claims that these companies, on TAO's behest, "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks and endpoint communications devices used by targets". A number of US companies, including Cisco and Dell, have subsequently made public statements denying that they insert such back doors into their products. Microsoft provides advance warning to the NSA of vulnerabilities it knows about, before fixes or information about these vulnerabilities is available to the public; this enables TAO to execute so-called zero-day attacks. A Microsoft official who declined to be identified in the press confirmed that this is indeed the case, but said that Microsoft can't be held responsible for how the NSA uses this advance information.

None of these things are conspiracy theories. Aside from the fact that people are sticking their heads in the sand, these information are pretty much mainstream. STEEM has the imutability as it is a blockchain. But it still is a social media and although the content is there, it can be almost impossible to discover for newcomers. @informationwar and @familyprotection could easily be 2 of the most targeted accounts/tags by a malicious entity simply for the reason how good of job they are already carrying out.

One Of The Most Important Things About STEEM

SP is like hashpower and those with the most hashpower controls most of the network. This is a high risk high reward situation. You could even frame it as good guys with guns vs bad guys with guns. Those who with the most power and take action wins. The entire stake based voting system counts on the stake holders to make good decisions. But since we are a social network, not all decisions are objective and on a technical level, the code permits anybody to use the stake as they please.

So the only real way to make the truth prosper on the blockchain is for the stake holders to vote on and support truth and progress. Think of SP as nuclear energy. On good hands they will do great and on the hands of governments or other nutjobs with deep pockets, truth would be made obscure on STEEM.

Make Strong Networks Before The Malicious Groups Get In

Most of the STEEM is locked as SP to begin with. Most of that is held by steemit @ned and other accounts that belong to the developers. If things get really bad, Steemit, Inc can step in. But that would be an extreme measure. The best thing to do is to make things look like an unwinnable war. If anybody who wants to censor us thinks it wouldn't work out well, then we have won without even going o war. To do that we need to support valuable content. Even more importantly we need to stand up against abusers. @grumpycat and @madpuppy tried to force arbitrary rules down the throats of STEEM users and acted in hostile and unfriendly manner. The accounts used to have over 500,000 SP within them and now they have powered down 98%

This shows that we can actually win. Sure, @grumpycat and @madpuppy weren't as bad as Chinese Government starting a censorship campaign on STEEM. But these two accounts at the very least gave up their original plans. You could say they were sort of unintended guinea pigs that gave us a taste of possibly much worse things to come.

Stay Vigilant And Use Your SP Wisely To Support Good Projects

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