Centralization...maybe just the tip?
A while back I had this doomsday scenario pop into my head about a potential vulnerability with Steem and I suppose with a lot of DPoS systems. @andrarchy recently made a post talking about how Steemit is attempting to combat issues like hate speech on social networks. He brings up how centralized solutions like Facebook or Twitter can just ban these accounts, which violates free speech, but is a quick solution, even though it's one that's extremely riddled in controversy.
He mentions Steem being the answer to this because of proof of brain, people's ability to flag things from view, but the ultimate permanence of the blockchain. I'm summarizing, check out his post to get a clearer idea of what he's saying.
Anyway, I commented on that post, about my doomsday scenario and I wanted to toss it out there for you all to get your opinions. To get straight to the point without mincing words the underlying function of Steem is...
Money = Power/Influence
@andrarchy presents the system on Steem as being provably fair. More skin in the game = more influence. That's a better sounding way of saying it, and both are equally accurate. Also for the record, I think this is the way it should be, I probably just wouldn't necessarily classify it as "fair". I really wouldn't even broch that word because it's so ambiguous and would mean a lot of different things to different people.
Anyway, my doomsday scenario is what if a really bad actor or actors has a ton of money? Can they just hijack and destroy the platform? Would that be fair? If the KKK or the taliban put out a mandate that all members start powering up Steem, and they collectively amassed millions, then used that influence to create hate fueled posts that they forced onto everyone that's here. Would everyone who's dedicated a ton of time and energy here, just be screwed?
I think if this actually happened most people here would be begging for a centralized solution. They'd be screaming for @ned to do something, for STINC to do something, they scream for them to do all sorts of stuff now, and it's not anything that serious.
My question to you all, is what would you want to happen? Are you ready to wrap yourself in the flag of decentralization and ride or die with it until the end, or would you want STINC to come in with a hammer and just make all the baddies disappear with the flick of a switch?
Also, I made that image up there, so this is still an art post :D
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and as always, thanks for looking!
Well, I guess if someone wanted to spend millions just to say something, that's not exactly 'free' speech. I think there are cheaper solutions to spread hate-fueled propaganda. They could pump the value just to say something stupid, we can all just sell, troll the living crap out of them in the meantime, then buy back in after dumping the price and leaving the haters there holding the bag while they pretend to be proud of something.
lol, that's actually a really good solution. I suppose the protection against this is that it would be a huge waste of money since the price would undoubtedly drop dramatically.
buuuuuuuut...
The other part of this doomsday scenario that I mentioned in my comment, but not in this post is if it was corporate sabotage. I know this is getting into some far fetched conspiracy stuff, but if Steem started to eat a chunk of Facebooks profit, Zuck could potentially power up a ton of Steem, flood trending with a million flavors of disgusting content, and cut his losses, because in the end it would be cheaper than losing all those users.
He'd be better off buying us out. Steembook.
There have been flag wars before, there will probably be flag wars again. Enough flags on something to push the rep low enough and the posts are still going to be automatically hidden by most of the interfaces I know of no matter how much sp the account has. They're emotionally and resource tolling enough that they do seem to go away after a wihle, but at least nobody dies or has their neighbourhoods destroyed like in a real war? XD
On an individual level, there are usually mute buttons somewhere so you can silence annoying users for yourself.
Oh I haven't talked about my other doomsday scenario. Steem gets bigger than FB. Celebrities, politicians, states, countries all have Steem accounts, and there are proxy wars going on to control the reward pool as the USD loses all its value...this has the makings of a cool comic. Hmm.
START WRITING.
XD
Dear Artzonian, thanks for using the #ArtzOne hashtag. Your work is valuable to the @ArtzOne community. Quote of the week: Art, freedom and creativity will change society faster than politics. -Victor Pinchuk
Steem is essentially decentralized but the applications running on top are mostly not. Therefore the application developers have every right to block and refuse to show specific content through their app. The blocks which contain the content may exist but since we have a variety of block explorers, how that content is presented exclusive from the blockchain.
In regards to rewards, those are Central to the blockchain and are subject to it's rule regardless of what someone's opinion is. One thing that should be noted is that both upvotes and flags affect the reward pool and it's something that all curators consider regardless of their personal belief.
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Ahh okay, I wasn't aware of that. That's pretty comforting. I know the frontends developed by different people are their livelihoods, so they won't let some bad actors come in and screw it up. On the other hand if those bad actors want to go and make their own frontend I guess they can have at it and proceed to pump our bags for us.
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