Internet Bullying on Steemit: the downfall of Freedom of Speech

Believe it or not but bullying seems to be a serious problem on Steemit as well. It is not serious in terms of extend as in the amount of people bullied, but in terms of impact it has on our society as a whole. Bullying becomes a threat to free speech on Steemit.

It is hard enough for people to get started on Steemit and actually earn for their posts, yet some people still do make it harder for others. I came across this Steemian, @mitrado , who is struggling against a single bully, @berniesanders , that just happens to have more SteemPower and a bunch of bots with names starting with @ngc that also have enough SteemPower to grey out and demonetize any SteemPost that he disagrees with. On top of that @reportabuse bot adds salt to the pain, sees the down votes and joins in. Since @mitrado is a Steemian who fights against the oppression of Israeli Apartheid @bearbear613 joins in the down vote spiral.

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As a result @mitrado feels the need to convince them of her political opinion, which has no use as they do not listen to reason, hence a storm of back and forth swearing begins.

@mitrado however is not the only victim of those attacks, perhaps just the weakest (as in Steem rating). Many of those attacks are just unethical, such as flagging a Steemian, @nourtawfiq that simply indicates her survival of an Israeli bombing, or me simply writing an article based on several news sources to get an accurate picture of the occurrences. On top of that the flagging has "nothing to do with the issue" ... ???

I believe though @mitrado is affected the most among the ones I have seen, so when you can maybe give @mitrado an upvote on her articles or comments saying that not all Steemians are enemies.

The magnitude of this information distortion by flagging comes on a spectrum.

The mildest of which is just your every day fake and hate news spreader, such as @raginghumanist or @samui1970 that will insult you if you call him out on fake facts used in the articles, but will not attack you else where. For Steem society alone I can sort of still tolerate this kind of behavior as they don't go around attacking Steemians, though I don't agree with any of their opinions or hate speeches. You can try to respectfully convince them but argument and discussion is not appreciated and will be countered by flagging and insults as they wish to only see their side of story.

medium will go out and actually flag those articles you post, such as @bearbear613 that says he does not agree with Chinese regime but will flag your article against concentration camps by China because he does not agree on your pro-Palestine opinion and thinks those who are pro Palestine are (here's the irony) Jew killing Nazis, when apparently he agrees with concentration camps??????? These people will even stalk @mitrado just to down vote him on all post and I will likely later get to see him in the down votes later after posting this article. Apparently all Germans are to him Nazis, I wonder what nationality the Jewish Refugees that founded Israel had.

Now the Hardcore version of medium would be someone like @berniesanders or @reportabuse who will actually dedicate bots just to censor your every opinion. This is a weakness of the Steemit system. People can simply grey out other people comments who will in return get no Steem and their opinion/news will be unheard. These people do so because they have no life and nothing better to do.

Allowing such people to silence Steemians such as @mitrado allows censorship on Steemit and we should not allow it, or else Steemit will be no different to Youtube or Facebook. So here I recommend you to follow @mitrado and help her counter that censorship.