All the transactions, zero censorship
People don't really have a good understanding of how the Steem blockchain works. I know I don't but I visualize some parts of it in various ways that help my develop understanding. For example, some people don't understand the censorship resistance of Steem and think that getting flagged and having content greyed out constitutes censorship. It doesn't.
This is a picture from https://steemd.com/@tarazkp if you scroll to the bottom of the page.
In my two years I have generated 1585 pages of transactions like my first one.
That little number links to the transaction ID for my account creation page which looks like this.
All of this is public. Every post, vote, comment and earning is located somewhere in these 1585 pages.
Now, imagine the blockchain as a whole stream of numbers that each relate to a different component. What an interface does is scrapes the data and pulls the pieces it has been asked to find from the stream. While the post is one piece of data, a comment, vote or flag is another piece. As I have posted about before, the only interface that I know of that greys out heavily flagged content is Steemit.com, all the others show it.
The earnings however are all tied together, rewards all from the common pool at the blockchain level. This means that while a post is still visible and available, it doesn't mean it has earnings. The blockchain is censorship resistant, not earnings protective. However, once that earning hits a wallet, the blockchain locks it away behind an account key, it is now owned. Up until that point, it belongs to the blockchain pool.
Everything is on the blockchain. Well, everything except what might have been forked out for various reasons.
If someone is looking for freedom of speech, Steem has it. It just doesn't mean that all speech is going to get earnings on them that will get locked behind an account key. Earning on speech isn't a condition of freedom of speech. If you need to earn like your speech is a job, you are not free because you require a specific result.
This is the link to my first post on Steem.
https://steemd.com/human/@tarazkp/human
It is available on all interfaces as far as I know but, it isn't available on @steemmonsters, @steemhunt, @dtube and the like because, they don't accept the format, they look for other bits of information on the Steem blockchain that is relevant to them. Censorship!! However, even if no interfaces looked for it, there it would remain on the blockchain, immutably. And, nothing is stopping me from building my own interface to find it.
I could build (get built) an interface that only serves up content that has been flagged. I could filter it to serve only content that has passed the 'grey point' that would grey it out on Steemit.com and, I could implement a token that rewards it if I so choose. It might not be able to earn from the Steem inflation pool but, it can still earn on Steem. Well, perhaps one day with an SMT.
My point is with this post that some people seem to think that Steemit.com is Steem. No, it isn't. Steemit.com is an application among many that pulls some data from the blockchain and visualizes it while some other applications pull other data and visualizes that. Steemd.com has all transactions recognised but instead of visualizing it, it just gives (predominantly) text and links to data.
There is nothing stopping you from building an interface that looks at the data on the Steem blockchain. Well, you might not have the technical skills but there are plenty you could hire that do. One day, there might even be simplified app builders that allow anyone to drag information off, collect and view it in a multitude of ways.
Oh, you can also build an application that doesn't have voting at all, no flags, no access to the pool, no way to hide information, no way to do anything other than post and comment. It will still write to the blockchain but will be unaffected by anything that is pool related. You could call it freetoargueallyouwant.com and have all sorts of people with whatever thinking possible post whatever they want. Freedom of speech - Just not access to the Steem pool with no potential repercussions. you can tokenize it however the hell you want though, if you so choose.
The interfaces might censor. Flags don't remove content from the blockchain. Steem doesn't censor anyone.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
And again, Steemit is not Steem.
Great point!
Mere word play on your part. I can't believe you would be gullible enough to even try it. This site as it currently stands wouldn't even be the kind of site that attracts most people without the prospects of earnings, regardless of how you want to argue it the two do go hand in hand. The objective of it is to go beyond a traditional blogging site and be able to earn for content produced. That's exactly how they sell it the site as a earnings potential. Unless you abuse the site in such a fashion as spamming or the horrid example you used a couple weeks ago, which I don't recall that persons name, or finding ways to cheat the system then there should be no other reasons for flagging. If you don't like what someone says don't upvote it, don't upvote post you don't like, or counter with an objective opinion, but to flag a person's rewards is wrong, those rewards were earned from others and one disgruntled person shouldn't be able to take that away nor should they be able to "hide" a person's post. Nor should they
ever never be able to run over to someone's blog and strike down any pending rewards because they didn't agree with a comment. It happens, and it happens all the time to people.
You want to know what censorship looks like? Just look at the comments below, everyone agrees with you though there are two names down there that I have seen complain about this exact subject that unless you act like a puppet and go with the flow any other personal opinion is not welcome and it gets struck down, those two have said it repeatedly, it's censorship. Censorship IS when people are afraid to speak their minds regardless if rewarded, not rewarded, it's left in plain sight or it's hidden. You cannot put lipstick on this pig and expect it to stick even. If people didn't feel they were being unfairly targeted over something they said there would not be a growing endeavor on here by people to band together to be able to lift flags or take your concerns to freezespeach to resteem back to life.
Remember censorship IS when people are afraid to speak up, not when something doesn't disappear forever.
You can't color, sugar or candy coat that any other way.
Gullible enough to try? wrong word perhaps but anyway.
Steemit sells it this way, Steem doesn't have to be this either though.
This is your opinion on the way things should be, not everyone's.
That is self-censorship, not public censorship. Not speaking because of personal income costs has nothing to do with the fact that someone is able to say whatever they choose here without it being removed or hidden. There can be other costs to speech, just as there would be in real life if you pissed someone off to their face. The words however will remain - The words said/ written are the speech - not the income from the words said or written.
Everyone has to take responsibility for their words and the cost of the consequences. If one is unwilling to pay the costs, don't say the words. Freedom of speech is never free as it is a movement and therefore their are reactions. These can be positive or negative depending on perspective but there is always a cost. On Steem , no one is censored, they can say what they want, they can create a bot army of alts to preach their words, it will all be recorded, it will all be available.
And the people who agree with me? Why is that an issue? Those that don't isn't an issue for me either obviously as people are free to say what they want. Agree, disagree, flag, cry, laugh - That is up to them.
Whatever happened to validity of speech? It disappeared when their was no longer consequence to nonsense and got replaced by outrage at anything that made someone feel bad, no matter how wrong they were. The internet is full of unchecked rage - and all the angry people think they are right.
I will flag anything I want. I don't have to debate your opinions either. It's always you "patriot" types whining your hate speech got greyed out. I bet tarazkp here never gets flagged, because he's not an asshole. If you post content that angers people it's going to get flagged.
I spent my year and a half here tip toeing around all the Trumptards to avoid conflict. No longer giving a fuck about rewards or reputation has been a freeing experience. The idea you and your friends are victims of malicious flagging is laughable. There are lots of people here who are horrified to see the free speech promotion angle bring us all sorts of bigots spewing hate. People are afraid to speak out against that crap, keeping your head down and avoiding all conflicts is a good strategy for new Steemians, but I'm powering down and leaving so i just don't care.
For me the no censorship meant I could post some nipples or drugs and not get zuckered, but a good thing got exploited and now i see it as a weakness in the platform. There should be moderation in a place like this. Since there isn't, the community decides. I don't have to conform to your opinion that only spam should be flagged, there are no rules here, it's the law of the jungle and if someone with more SP than you wants to flag you they can. There is a great argument that large stakes should have more say, they invested more.
You are poking the wrong bear, I have kids that are part Indian, their dad is half Indian, my one son and his girlfriend who is half Indian mean I have grand children that are three quarters Indians. I have nieces from my sister that are mulatto, (half black), I am not bigoted like you think, that's just the problem with the other side of the debate...you get labeled just based on who you voted for.
I would never expect anyone to conform to my opinion, just give a right to express it without punishment. I would surely hope everyone returns the same favor to you.
Yeah there was some stuff going around on twitter about Steem censorship. Looking into it, it was Steemit censorship for the post not fitting in with the community guidelines they have as all posts that were "censored" were still viewable on Busy.
Maybe that's the new Steem Slogan. Steem - have your voice heard.
Better than the earning one Steemit uses.
There are still people who have been here a long time that don't get off the steemit UI which is fine (I use it too about 30% ) but not if they don't understand the way interfaces can look at the information in different ways. Understandably, many people are here to earn on their voice but earning and freedom of speech are independent factors.
Hey @tarazkp!! ¿Can I build a mobile Steem Dapp with an AR interface and shit too? };)
Yeah, I think so. Dlux.io is playing around with VR environments at the moment. :)
Can we get this added to the FAQ's somewhere? :)
Or perhaps copy/paste onto the rather barren looking wiki page?
I wonder who is in charge of the wiki? =D
Isn't anyone free to update a Wiki page? I've never tried.
Isn't anyone
Free to update a Wiki
Page? I've never tried.
- abh12345
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
I had a lighthearted analysis planned for you but you'd gone missing in recent months. Welcome back :D
Profound. Let me go meditate on your Haiku in a cave atop a mountain, and I will get back to you.
Now that you're back, will you be attending the SOS forum this evening? Could be some big news announced, or not, I guess.
I will try, I haven't finished work for the day nor had dinner yet (it is 9pm) but could potentially listen in. What time does it start?
So the witnesses, do not work for steemit, but for STEEM? This is the part that has confused me since being on steemit, the witness issue and who is deciding what gets added and becomes part of the forks. The blockchain belongs to STEEM, the interface I use belongs to Steemit.
If the witnesses do belong to steemit, does that mean that busy.org can have their own witness system, and if they do not like something in an upcoming fork that they can just branch off and become a 100% independent of steemit, and still have access to the STEEM reward pool?
Yes they work for Steem, not Steemit Inc. Anyone can be a witness as essentially, all a witness is is a server that processes the chain. They are tasked by the community to look after the chain / process it. They are the ones who must agree to changes that are put forward.
Yes. So if Steemit Inc disappeared, the blockchain still continues unabated. New nodes can be set up, changes made etc without Steemit Inc.
They don't.
No, they can fork/clone the Steem blockchain but won't have access to the Steem pool. They would have created their own pool from doing so though and then they can apply whatever rules they want - like smoke.io, whaleshares, weku. The issue with doing this is that in order for their new token to have value, it must be used and marketed in the same way Steem has done which means getting listed on exchanges which often comes with a hefty price tag from what I hear.
The pool is the Steem pool and if an interface connects to it, it is governed by the rules of the Steem blockchain always.
Finally, I think I am getting it. It does not matter what steemit wants for the blockchain, it is what STEEM wants for the blockchain. For Steemit to succeed, it needs STEEM to succeed.
Steemit can become a complete wasteland, @ned could sell/lose or closeup steemit when ever he wants, and the blockchain and the witnesses will still continue.
Pretty much.
Yep. They hold a lot of Steem so it would have an effect on price for a while if they dumped it all but, it would recover eventually. I don't think they are going to do this.
If 80% of the people on Steemit use steemit.com because all the other front ends have design faults that are never fixed, and 99.9% of people here have no idea how to build a front end (and not a single person has ever managed to actually build a really good one) - greyed out effectively means censored, and flagged means really pissed off so no longer posting.
I think it is less than 40% that are using Steemit.com now and it is declining all the time. Partiko, busy, steeve, steempeak all have daily volumes of users.
edit: design preferences don't really get in the way of freedom of speech. Most 'old timers' like me still use steemit.com. I find it useful from my phone but from home I likely post on steeve, busy or through steempress.
I do all my posts through Steempress these days, and they now give me biggest upvotes too, but all my other interactions with Steemit are through steemit.com - the other front ends all have issues. Especially Busy - that is appalling - I have friends who post from it but that is only because they are paid to post from it - they don't use it for anything else.
Your use of phone to post long posts is mind boggling - you are a topic of discussion in yourself! But that is not common.
PS - not trying to wind you up - all the best for your upcoming medical stuff
Yeah a lot use busy for the votes, as do I. I also use it for checking transaction times and things too. I don't know, I think I like to have different UIs to play on.
I don't like posting from my phone so they are normally shorter which is why I put the (posted from phone) disclaimer underneath usually.
The fact that the possibilities of using the blockchain to construct any type of meaningful interface exists is why it is so encouraging. What has me engaged here is bot only the writing and reading of what others think or do but also the other projects like Steem Monsters and Actifit that allow me to do much more. This flexibility is what will attract both developers and users in the end.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Dlux-io is playing around with some VR and 3D environments which could be very interesting for game development.
This post has been included in the latest edition of SoS Daily News - a digest of all you need to know about the State of Steem.
Editor of the The State of Steem SoS Daily News.
Promoter of The State of Steem SoS Weekly Forums.
Editor of the weekly listing of steem radio shows, podcasts & social broadcasts.
Founder of the A Dollar A Day charitable giving project.
Hi @tarazkp!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 6.280 which ranks you at #225 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 1 places in the last three days (old rank 224).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 281 contributions, your post is ranked at #3. Congratulations!
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server