A practical proposal to combat abusive flagging

I'm foregoing my usual custom digital artwork because my equipment is not available today and I'd like to get this post out while the iron is hot, so to speak ☺️

Propose solutions, influence Steem to be what you want it to be

We are all stakeholders in the Steem social network blockchain by investing our Steem into it in a process termed "powering up" when done directly from liquid steem, or by reinvesting rewards of newly minted steem we are awarded by investing our time, reaped in the form of author and curation rewards.

As stakeholders, no matter how small, you have some power to affect the steem system. In real life as well as on the blockchain, if people come together in a common cause, they can have a much larger effect than when working alone. In my opinion this is what defines a really community, working together. Not all the time or on every issue, but a good mix of ideas and projects.

With that in mind, I propose a system here to come together in ad hoc groups to combat abusive flagging. It is a solution to a perceived problem. You may not agree with it but you might find this solution interesting none the less.

Flagging!

Flagging on Steem is something that causes users some confusion and bad feelings. As it directly reduces potential rewards on a flagged post, there is a concrete real world effect which can seem like "stealing" rewards (though I personally disagree with that interpretation). Sometimes a significant number of people think it is unfair, despite the fact that it is a normal part of the system, and is apparently a requirement for various reasons outlined in the whitepaper.

The developers are reluctant to make any changes to such a fundamental part of the system, for many reasons. In my opinion a change to deal with abusive flagging will not happen easily, soon or without a whole lot of support from witnesses and whales. Witnesses can simply reject an unpopular hard fork, and this is problematic for the stability and unity of the system as a whole.

While shouts about the unfairness are likely to fall on deaf ears, especially to the blockchain system which does not care, I believe we can organize to do something about it, and potentially about any problem.

The proposal

I propose here an Anonymous (the hacker collective) style ad hoc volunteer raising initiative, supported by a bot infrastructure. Essentially it works off the blockchain and could be joined in with manually, but to provide a more solid network and increase ease of participation a bot app will be made.

This will be simple to run, and probably just work off your local machine on any of the three main operating systems. The technical proposition was made here for the Steem FOSSbot org.

It works like this:

1. Someone makes a post to suggest an abusive flag. This post has a certain format (to be determined) which the bot can recognize. It can be done manually or through the bot app, which will automatically format it to the spec.
2. The bots pick up on this, and the user running the bot is notified and decides whether or not to participate in action against it
3. The bot performs the action

Suggesting an abusive flag

The abuse notification is a public, normal steem post for several reasons. Firstly, because it is public, anyone can see it, and it opens the user to scrutiny as to why they raised the potential abuse. Previous posts and comments, as well as rep score, can be looked at to see if they are "trustworthy". If someone abuses the abuse notification (confusing? 😐) they can be ignored by those running bots. This will be handled in bot app with a suggestion black list.

Secondly, because it is public, anyone can get involved without using the bot. Seen out of the context of the bot, it's really just an initiative for people, who think flags can be abusive, to come together and do something about it, using the same might-is-right justification that flaggers use, and indeed IMO that Steem is fundamentally based on, for ill or good. The bot really just ads ease of use for this, as you may miss a post from the previous day if AFK for a day, etc.

Thirdly, having it as a normal post allows users to leverage the usual post format by explaining why this flag is an abuse. They should use this to convince others this is actually an abuse.

Action against abusive flag

I suggest that the action taken against flagging is a simple up vote. One of the effects of flagging is to reduce potential reward payout and visibility. Up votes increase reward payout and visibility, so this is a natural and importantly, positive action to to take against abusive flagging.

Perhaps you think that the action should be a retaliation flag. I would not be in favour of this personally as an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, as they saying goes. This would be more like what Anonymous really does, personal and directed retaliation. That's not really what interests me, I'd prefer to support the poster rather than attack the flagger.

Another would be to auto comment on the article with support but I feel this would be ineffectual and not look nice as no one really likes comment spam bots.

Maybe there's a better solution but I think an up vote is something nearly everyone could agree on. It is important to have broad agreement because this will only be successful if the combined SP of users using it is at least as much as the flagger. This is an extremely important point. So there must be wide adoption, and hopefully some adoption by dolphins or even whales.

The consequence of up-vote-as-action is that there is a cost to "defending" someone who you feel was wrongly flagged - a temporary reduction in your voting power, just like any other time you up vote. But no one said standing up for others was free 😜

White and black lists

In the bot app, you can decide to white or black list certain users. If a whitelisted user posts an abuse notification, the action will be taken automatically, though the bot owner will still be notified. If a user is blacklisted they are ignored when posting abuse notifications and the bot owner is not notified, but can look at a kind of "spam" view to see these notifications if desired.

Additionally, you can optionally. set followed users to be automatically whitelisted. Muted users to be automatically blacklisted. Not everyone uses the follow / mute feature in the same way so this is very optional.

Critique me!

If you see anything damaging about this project that I don't, please shout. I'm not convinced this is the best solution, but it's an idea I had that I think is pretty good by my current estimation.

I've preempted some possible critiques here:

I don't believe flagging can be abusive

In that case this really isn't for you! For the record I think this is perfectly valid, but we have to accept that this is not the opinion of everyone.

Bots are bad for steem and Steemit

If you think this you can still participate in the idea by using the posting format and allowing humans and bots to see potential abuses and perhaps up vote the flagged post in response.

For the moment (and I believe, permanently) bots are a part of the system. We are all free to do what we want in this regard but for my part I want to build software which has a positive impact here.

If you reject bot usage entirely then this solution is not for you.

This encourages seeing down votes / flags, as a bad thing

Some people really believe this. I don't think I'm in a position to tell anyone that a down vote, when made without reasons, compassion or logical explanation, is unfair. It's up to everyone to decide what is fair.

This is bad collusion

This would be a valid point, if the group was a solid voting block. Consent is baked into the idea, and while some users' abuse notification can be auto-accepted, there is no good reason to do this for all users, because anyone who disagrees with the system can post "fake" abuse notifications to mess with the effort.

In fact, the same critique could be made of guilds, which are a more solid voting block. They are basically collusive, but many feel their work is good. You'd have to reject both to reject one I think.

Anonymous are blackhat hackers and I don't agree with their methods

As I said above, this is not fully in their style as it's not retribution against abusive flaggers, but support for people receiving flags. It's white hat all the way 🤠 (there's no white hat emoji, but you get the idea!)

I agree with this! What do I do?

Comment to show your support. If you're a dev and want to get involved, let me know. Read the ticket for the tech idea so far.

If it's a popular idea, I'd be willing to develop it on my own. I don't think it would be too complicated and I've learned a lot already making a voter bot.

But to be clear, if I get convinced this is not a good idea, I will not continue with it. Make your case 😅

Thanks for reading

Perhaps I'm getting my feet too wet with Steem related posts and getting involved in the drama, but it is interesting. I'd like to return to more general posts soon though.

😋 🙏 😎