Source

I have recently received my first flag. More importantly, at the same time, some people I know have had their accounts almost destroyed by what I consider unjust flagging. These completely unrelated but contemporaneous flagging events made me have a little think about the practice of flagging, when it's warranted and when it's not.

Since I never made a post celebrating X number of followers or anything like that, I thought I'd do one about flagging!

However, I want to approach this from the perspective of the flagger. What I want to argue here is, that flagging often harms the flagger! And the SteemIt community as a whole.

Hopefully, by the end of this, some of you will have become more reflective, current and future, flaggers.

Yes, but, don't I get any badges for getting flagged?

Sources: @steemitboard and here.

Story of a non-flagger

I have never flagged anyone in my life. Even spammy comments on my posts. I just let them be. Whenever my SP allows, I upvote all comments to my posts that have meaning and content and are not spammy. I even upvote negative comments, when they are not spam.

Why do I do that, you ask? "Because I'm a philosopher" would be the short answer. But who cares for short answers: let's stretch it out!

I'm very much in favor of freedom of speech. I can't imagine myself in a university classroom full of philosophers, debating, and flagging people whose ideas I don't like. By flagging them, I deprive myself of their unique points of view, and lower the chances that I will be exposed to views that might challenge and even change my own. And next time they think about disagreeing with me, they will think about the consequences.

They shouldn't! All they should be thinking about is the logic of their argument.

Don't get me wrong: I would flag a philosopher if he started shouting, breaking chairs, slapping people around, breaking people's noses, or daring to say that David Hume is not the greatest philosopher who ever wrote in the English language. Any of these would be intolerable, and would earn swift and appropriate punishment (in the Hume case, immediate expulsion).

But let's proceed to examine in a bit more detail what kind of environment fear of flagging creates.

David Hume.

Achievements: Woke up Kant.

Source.

Fear of flagging

I've had literally dozens of people contact me by DM to state their opinions about certain high-rep individuals (or state their opinions unprovoked in a discussion). Their words are too x-rated to mention here! Their content, at any rate, doesn't matter. What matters is this: I'm not the one who should be hearing those things. The person who should be hearing those things, and who would most benefit from hearing those things, is that selfsame high-rep person.

So why, you ask, don't they tell that person to their face? Answer: high-rep! "He who goes into a mill comes out powdered" is a specific reason I've heard.

In other words, what this high-rep person is doing, is building a bubble around herself by punishing any divergent opinion. She is rewarding kissarsery or at the very least silence, and punishing true speech. Put a bunch of these individuals in a platform like steemit, give them power, and this creates an intellectual climate where free thought is less likely to flow freely. It's not unlike the sensitive PC (some call it PMS) culture found in universities today. Or even in certain countries.

Kim Jong-Un.

Achievements: Stifled opinion.

Source.

Flagger or troll? A self-assessment questionnaire

So I thought about this a bit, and I came up with a few self-assessment questions that someone might want to take the time to answer before considering flagging someone. This is really the meat of this post. The preliminaries can be discarded and forgotten.

1. Ask yourself: This post/comment I'm about to flag, would I report it to steemitabuse, @steemcleaners, @sherlockholmes and other relevant abuse and spam authorities? If not, then on what basis am I flagging it?
   _{(Here is a post I found by doing a quick google search of the terms "abuse" + "steemit". It mentions the circumstances under which a post or comment is worth reporting to #reportabuse and relevant tags.)}

2. I want to flag this post/comment for reasons XYZ. Is this the only post on steemit that displays the characteristics XYZ, or are there equal or much more egregious XYZ posts on steemit worth flagging? If there are, is it possible that I am flagging for personal/emotional rather than objective reasons? Am I flagging similar content across the board, or am I fixated on a singular individual?

3. I only have x amount of SP or y number of votes per day. It's impossible to flag everything that deserves flagging. Have I made a list of posts on steemit worth flagging and ordered them from most to least offensive, and started flagging from the top? If not, is it possible that I am flagging for non-objective personal reasons, and could I thus be guilty of intellectual dishonesty?

4. Check the trending posts. These are posts that, because of their popularity, are in much more urgent need of flagging. Are there any offensive posts there? Have I flagged them?

5. Am I being consistent in my flagging? If I flag a post with the title "DNA analysis reveals human link to Neanderthals", but I don't flag a post with the title "DNA analysis reveals famous actor is father of woman's child", could my reasons for flagging have more to do with my private beliefs rather than objective objections?
   _{(These examples are random. I hope no one has been flagging for similar reasons recently!)}

6. What is the difference in rep points between me and my flagging target? Am I doing the equivalent of what bullies are doing in high-school? Am I picking on a smaller opponent? Am I possibly doing it for enjoyment?

7. Did I flag-threaten this person in the past, having no idea what his posts were going to be in the future? If yes, have I contacted @steemit-abuse-fortune-tellers to ask them if they can verify my future prediction? Could my actions be emotion-driven?

8. Have I shared my intentions with a clear-headed steemian friend of mine, known all around for his impartial objectivity and soundness of judgement, and did he confirm that the relevant post/comment does indeed deserve flagging?

9. Has my target ever gotten into an argument with anyone else on steemit? Has she ever argued? Has she ever spammed? Has she ever flagged? Has she ever been flagged? Is there anyone at all who has any gripes or complaints against her, or has had negative dealings with her? If the answers to all these questions are "no", could I be flagging for biased reasons?

10. Is my flag the only flag on this post/comment? If yes, why is there such a lack of consensus? Could my reasons for flagging be in fact non-reasons?

11. Am I flagging a comment on my own post, or am I flagging another's post? Much more wiggle room is permitted in the first than the second case.

"I predict you will be needing flagging in the future. Consider yourself forewarned!"

Source.

Curtain

Ideally, flagging should be discussed with non-like-minded individuals before we proceed with it. The questionnaire above, hopefully, will help a person examine his own motives for flagging. Some are trolls and that can't be helped, but sometimes people will flag wrongly even if they are not trolls, because they get carried away by feelings they can't control or hold personal grudges of have had their dearly-held beliefs challenged.

The list above is by no means exhaustive, of course. It might not even be correct in all its points. I'm sure any one of you can think up a dozen more items, probably better than mine. The questionnaire's goal is to get you into a certain mental frame that will act as a mirror that you can hold up and hopefully examine your intentions more closely. At the end of the day, it's your own personal growth as an individual that is at stake. Are you doing your best to expose yourself to as many challenging and varied belief systems as possible? Or are you using your power to create a comfy environment of apple-polishing court jesters? If we do the latter, then we are harming the free exchange of information in this community. We are stunting our own growth and development as intellectual creatures, by using power to stifle thought. We are creating a yay-saying environment that penalizes honesty, and then we complain about lack of honesty and money-grabbing attitudes on the platform.

For the unjust victims of flag abuse, I have these closing words, that might offer some puny comfort. A flag is the equivalent of violence. Rest assured that when a person unjustly flags you, it is because they have exhausted all their mental arsenal, and have no more arguments left in their armory. Unjust flagging is essentially an advertisement and admission of intellectual defeat. Brawn is what the brainless resort to. At the end of the day, before we flag, we should all ask ourselves: "Do I want to be a woke man like Kant? Or do I want to be a little c*nt like Kim?"

_{(If you are a North Korean about to flag, then let's say the reference is to Kim Kardashian.)}

This post is dedicated to a number of individuals, you know who you are. I hope your accounts will rise like Lazarus!

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