Reddit CEO Caught Altering User Content, Something That Can't Happen With Steemit
Two of the biggest features of the blockchain revolution are that discretionary power can be replaced with transparent rules-based systems and censorship becomes much more difficult. These are two of the advantages that Steemit has over its centralized counterpart, Reddit, and today's news of Reddit's CEO, Steve Huffman, editing user content highlights this difference.
Huffman's indiscretion was fairly benign, and involved him swapping his name for a subreddit thread organizer's name in some nasty comments as something of a prank. We're not talking about major repression or crimes against humanity here, but the fact that Reddit has the power to make changes to user content and censor material is the big story.
By contrast, Steemit content is stored on an immutable blockchain and user accounts are protected via public-private key encryption; Steemit corporate has no control over our content, and that's a very positive feature in today's world of increasing censorship, loss of privacy, and gross violations of individual liberty.
For more super interesting #life, #freedom, and #economics posts, you can follow@cylonmaker2053 or my less restrained alter ego @finpunk.
Image source: https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/16/reddit-harassment-policy/
That's why steemit will stand the test of time. Freedom is always preferable to central planning!
Reddit is a private venture and a business, although a badly managed one. If permitted to by the architecture of the site/service, any insider with access will abuse his/her powers in some way. Of course, since it is a private venture, it is not abuse at all but the betrayal of the unwritten assumption that powers won't be used in a way not favourable to the members and their perceived freedom of speech (which no one except the owner has on private property). If they decide the letter "e" is banned, then you better start writing all your posts without "e". The concept of censorship on private property online is something that is a misconception: you are only free of it on your own property and must continuously protect that property and ability. The only responsibility anyone in Reddit has is to the funders/sponsors/investors.
This piece needs to go VIRAL; causing Reddit users to abandon ship and the social media platform ends up like Myspace.
i do think Steemit will win out over Reddit, but it's not a given. Reddit can continue to evolve, as will Steemit, hopefully our platform going in the right direction to create value. Immutability, censorship resistance, and curation rewards are dominant features.
Upvoted & Resteemed.
I've encountered similar censorship on /r/BOINC repeatedly.
https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@cm-steem/sustained-r-boinc-reddit-censorship-of-gridcoin-and-steem
There are so many questions about this: Is the first time they do this? It will be the last? What measures they will take to prevent this happening again?
I gave up on checking upvotes and downvotes to comments on reddit a long time ago. After Reddit user Unidan got caught manipulating his own comments with several accounts while downvoting other "competing" comments or anything he didn't want to be visible.
So if a normal user can do that what can the ones responsible for the website do? Fact is, we don't know since its centralized. If not enough people care it remains hidden to the public what happened (why my steemit related posts there for example get downvoted usually) or why someone else comment got -25 downvotes from someone who might or might not be using bots/more accounts.
Here on Steemit we can see which accounts downvote what, or try to silence someone or try to do anything shady. Its all registered on the blockchain and without a good cause it usually doesn't get flagged. Of course anonymous accounts can still remain anonymous and try to do bot-flagging, etc but it at least re-assures you that your post/comment wasn't flagged because 20 different users disliked it, but rather some weird accounts who probably are connected to eachother. Plus here they have something to lose when voting against everyone else.
As long as Reddit maintains discretionary control of user content, there's no way to establish a credible safeguard against manipulation or censorship.
Busted CEO = 0
Steemit = 1
Damn I love being on the winnimg team!
Who's to say who really did it? Maybe it was him maybe it wasn't. AI can do marvelous things now days. I'm not suprised if it did happen, because everyone wants to protect their reputation. One thing that has me wondering though and maybe they are two different thing and maybe not is if you can mine Bitcoin and every other crypto-currency in the blockchain then what makes us think everything we put on here can not be broken into if someone works hard enough at it? I guess that goes to show how much faith and trust we put into this technology now days, but if it makes it seem safe from people tampering with whatever we post, then people are more likely to use it.
I just made and posted an animation of Steemit Vs. Reddit. Im so glad I just read this :)
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