It is called checks and balances. Steemcleaners is a project made by unofficial people acting in an authoritarian role and claiming they act for the majority. I applaud their actions against phishing scammers. However, no one elected them, yet they act as authoritarians and I have witnessed them flag legitimate businesses simply because those businesses re-post from their own blogs and do not jump through the verification hoops of Steemcleaner's policies. I went to their discord server to communicate to them this mistake and showed them a link to their blog as authenticity. These people don't accept it because they want power over others. Their policies are illegitimate and their authority is self-assumed.
They and all those that delegate to them are at risk of legal action.
You cannot harass a business and cause them economic harm or damage to their reputation without it creating an opportunity for that business to claim financial damage and defamation.
Downvoting a Steem account once or twice should not be legally actionable, but Steem is a public utility and as such human rights do apply. If it can be proved that Steemcleaners, any Steem account or any collective of Steem accounts in coordination have relentlessly acted against a business presence on Steem and has caused damage to the reputation or financial operations of that business all participants of the flagging account or group of flagging accounts, including all delegating accounts, can be made liable for any resulting damages.
The argument "its a reward pool" and "its a meritocracy" are ideologies and will not hold up in a court of law. The legal system will most likely recognize the business' rights over their SP purchased and use in promoting their own business (just as @haejin does for his business haejin.com). The Steem blockchain functions so as to allow for self-voting in order to promote one's own post. This is a functional feature of the Steem blockchain and might be a deciding factor for a business that invests in a Steem account and a large amount of SP for the sake of self-promotion.
While bidbots may seem to be a bad thing for many people having a certain ideology, from a legal standpoint an upvote service is a completely legitimate business no different from an SEO service or any other service.
If an individual account or a collective of accounts and delegating accounts were to target a business with a presence on Steem and excessively downvote the business to the point of causing clear damage to the business and its operations the aggressor(s) most certainly could be sought out in a court of law for damages.
"The legal system will most likely recognize the business' rights..."
Having some familiarity with US courts, I have zero confidence in this. The US court system is the best money can buy, and this is proven over and over in rulings. The best lawyers are the worst people, and this goes double for judges, as well as legislators that control them through the confirmation process. Need I even mention the unfortunate affect of the nominating executive?
In jurisdictions where judges are elected, all the problems of representative democracy apply, and few pay much attention to judicial elections, which is reflected in the low numbers of votes cast in those elections.
Money talks, and therefore walks all over poverty, which bears all the costs in systems dominated by stake weighting. Exceptions but prove the rule.
A huge barrier to legal action based on Steem is that pseudonymity is potential here, and creates effective immunity. Given my confidence and expectations in and of courts, I actually think this is a good thing, particularly due to the effect of stake on the courts.
Individuals have been personally linked to actionable torts on Steem, and to my knowledge no legal actions have been undertaken to date. Such tortuous acts have included death threats, sexual harassment, and libel, and the evidence remains in the blockchain making liability easily provable.
This is much of the basis for why I suspect Steem is being killed deliberately, because absent nominal payment to the witnesses, that evidence filled blockchain is likely to be deleted when the witnesses move on.
and the evidence remains in the blockchain making liability easily provable.... that evidence filled blockchain is likely to be deleted when the witnesses move on.
But...
The blockchain is a public ledger system which is currently not deleted and easily copied for any purpose whatsoever including future legal actions.
So, purposeful deletion of the blockchain is unlikely to result in complete deletion of any such evidence. No one can be quite sure that there aren't multiple copies being made every few days.
This is very true, and entirely possible, and I actually think there are folks undertaking to do so.
I hope they succeed, without reservation whatsoever.
If they're not, there must be reasons for it. For myself, I reckon I have no cause of action, and neither any capacity to undertake such expense in time and treasure.
It is called checks and balances. Steemcleaners is a project made by unofficial people acting in an authoritarian role and claiming they act for the majority. I applaud their actions against phishing scammers. However, no one elected them, yet they act as authoritarians and I have witnessed them flag legitimate businesses simply because those businesses re-post from their own blogs and do not jump through the verification hoops of Steemcleaner's policies. I went to their discord server to communicate to them this mistake and showed them a link to their blog as authenticity. These people don't accept it because they want power over others. Their policies are illegitimate and their authority is self-assumed.
They and all those that delegate to them are at risk of legal action.
You cannot harass a business and cause them economic harm or damage to their reputation without it creating an opportunity for that business to claim financial damage and defamation.
Downvoting a Steem account once or twice should not be legally actionable, but Steem is a public utility and as such human rights do apply. If it can be proved that Steemcleaners, any Steem account or any collective of Steem accounts in coordination have relentlessly acted against a business presence on Steem and has caused damage to the reputation or financial operations of that business all participants of the flagging account or group of flagging accounts, including all delegating accounts, can be made liable for any resulting damages.
The argument "its a reward pool" and "its a meritocracy" are ideologies and will not hold up in a court of law. The legal system will most likely recognize the business' rights over their SP purchased and use in promoting their own business (just as @haejin does for his business haejin.com). The Steem blockchain functions so as to allow for self-voting in order to promote one's own post. This is a functional feature of the Steem blockchain and might be a deciding factor for a business that invests in a Steem account and a large amount of SP for the sake of self-promotion.
While bidbots may seem to be a bad thing for many people having a certain ideology, from a legal standpoint an upvote service is a completely legitimate business no different from an SEO service or any other service.
If an individual account or a collective of accounts and delegating accounts were to target a business with a presence on Steem and excessively downvote the business to the point of causing clear damage to the business and its operations the aggressor(s) most certainly could be sought out in a court of law for damages.
Having some familiarity with US courts, I have zero confidence in this. The US court system is the best money can buy, and this is proven over and over in rulings. The best lawyers are the worst people, and this goes double for judges, as well as legislators that control them through the confirmation process. Need I even mention the unfortunate affect of the nominating executive?
In jurisdictions where judges are elected, all the problems of representative democracy apply, and few pay much attention to judicial elections, which is reflected in the low numbers of votes cast in those elections.
Money talks, and therefore walks all over poverty, which bears all the costs in systems dominated by stake weighting. Exceptions but prove the rule.
A huge barrier to legal action based on Steem is that pseudonymity is potential here, and creates effective immunity. Given my confidence and expectations in and of courts, I actually think this is a good thing, particularly due to the effect of stake on the courts.
Individuals have been personally linked to actionable torts on Steem, and to my knowledge no legal actions have been undertaken to date. Such tortuous acts have included death threats, sexual harassment, and libel, and the evidence remains in the blockchain making liability easily provable.
This is much of the basis for why I suspect Steem is being killed deliberately, because absent nominal payment to the witnesses, that evidence filled blockchain is likely to be deleted when the witnesses move on.
But...
The blockchain is a public ledger system which is currently not deleted and easily copied for any purpose whatsoever including future legal actions.
So, purposeful deletion of the blockchain is unlikely to result in complete deletion of any such evidence. No one can be quite sure that there aren't multiple copies being made every few days.
This is very true, and entirely possible, and I actually think there are folks undertaking to do so.
I hope they succeed, without reservation whatsoever.
If they're not, there must be reasons for it. For myself, I reckon I have no cause of action, and neither any capacity to undertake such expense in time and treasure.