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RE: Will Flagging Ultimately End up Killing the Steemit Platform?
If Steemit were to keep the flag system because of spam comments alone, that leaves us in the same predicament whereby richey-rich the instaWHALE could downvote posts based on his or her ideological leanings.
The sad reality of the situation is, the ability to buy heaps of SP thus empowering them to up or down vote content, is what gives the currency the current value that it possesses. Other than this what sets Steem apart from any other cyrpto? It's sort of the bane and beauty all in one. I for one am glad that at least everyone can click "reveal" and judge the situation themselves. Wish I could do that on YT or FB. (Lolz, who am I kidding I wouldn't touch FB with someone else's fingers)
LOL, I hear you @imjustsaying. I'd much rather believe that people are buying Steem as a means to promote their posts, or gain extra bandwidth, as opposed as a means to soft-censor the posts of others, but you're probably right.
No-doubt, by now some people may be purchasing Steem to flag posts, and I'm pretty sure that flagging in spirit anyhow wasn't initially intended for the purposes of anything other than removing spam posts, or abusive trolling posts.
One thing is for certain, if that worse case scenario comes to be, and I question if it isn't already in some cases, then Steemit will take a significant reputation hit. I think I realize why I had my initial misconceptions in the first place.
It may be that Steemit employees look at it is nothing published on the block-chain is ever censored actually, the problem is most people aren't reading the block-chain directly, they're using the Steemit interface to read it, and when soft-censorship happens in the realm of the Steemit interface it looks like censorship.
Another thing to point out would be, that people who engage in unnecessary flagging are actually working against the spirit of the platform, if they weren't the downvote function would be right next to the upvote function. It wouldn't be hiding in the upper right hand corner as a flagging utility.
It seems to me that the only reason they have 'disagreement with rewards' as one of the guidelines is because they simply have no control over whether or not people use the function as it was intended.
So that guideline write up in essence; is the ultimate out, it takes Steemit out of the loop in a weak sort of way, and puts the burden of frivolous flagging on the user who engages in it. In the future I see the problem becoming untenable, and potentially antithetical to the spirit of the platform.
I will have to go back and watch some of the early promotional videos and interviews that the founder has done in promoting Steemit, and listen very carefully and try to make sense of the exact claims that were made, if I am to make any sense of what is going on.
Thanks for your insight, into the matter!
I defiantly don't like it when I see it. But the first thing I do when I see a hidden comment is I click on it to see what's there. It actually draws my attention much more than normal posts and comments do. I HAVE to know why. often I end up bringing up the flagger's profile to see what other stuff they have been flagging. It's sort of a two edged sword, yes they can remove the payout but it certainly gets my attention. If I see someone serial flagged I usually follow them to see what transpires. I've yet to be flagged but I may get a string of them with my last post. I just couldn't hold my peace anymore about things I see as damaging to the community as a whole. If your interested I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
followed <3