Why Steemit Matters
There is an implicit rationale for the growing interest in censorship on social platforms. What makes the platforms new is that ideas of any sort can be floated and can then either gain adherents or not. There is no filter of how "far out" the ideas can be.
The elites HATE this idea. The strongest power of the status quo has been to set the agenda of what is "legitimate discourse" in media, in academia and increasingly even in private discourse. So anything that overthrows that ability to eliminate "non-legitimate discourse" (in the eyes of course of the status quo powers) is a huge threat to their power.
To my mind, the status quo is now in major failure mode. It is marching us towards environmental disaster later in this century. It is generating a life of ever more financially driven control and ever more surveillance both for-profit and by government. Alienation, at least in the United States seems at an all-time high as indicated by suicide rates, opioid addictions, mental health problem rates etc.
This all tells me that now is the time we should be exploring alternatives to the status quo. And we certainly shouldn't let the elites define the limits of that search. We need to allow people collaborate and discover/create GOOD new ideas on how to operate a society.
It is a shame that there is such censorship in these social media platforms but in a way it almost becomes a natural expectancy to any large media platform. In my opinion Steemit is only immune to censorship because it isn't large enough for censorship to be a concern for it. However, if steemit is successful over the long term and if it gets a lot bigger then what it is currently, then it will also naturally have to begin to censor its content as well. I'll explain my reasoning.
The platforms themselves are a corporate brand and the opinions of the members who use the platform naturally become associated with that corporate brand - both consciously and subconsciously. Individual users who put forth unfavorable opinions into the public domain actually end up reflecting poorly on the platform itself. This in turn can have a negative effect on its revenue stream. If advertisers stop buying add space because they fear that their product and their brand will also become associated with offensive fringe thinking then they will stop buying add space. As an example, if you had a company and you bought add space on a social media platform, the last thing that you would want is for your advertisement to run in the middle of say a white supremacy group ranting about hate. That would be seriously bad news for your brand. You wouldn't want any conscious or subconscious association with offensive material. As a business it is better to stay neutral. So, advertisers not buying up add space naturally becomes a serious threat to the social media platform itself, so they in turn have to begin to censor their content and inhibit content creators that reflect poorly on the platform. With this in mind, I personally do not think that steemit is immune to censorship albiet temporarily. Steemit simply isn't big enough to have to worry about censorship because it does not have strong enough advertisers to influence their operations. If steemit gets bigger and starts taking on big advertisers as clients then it will also begin to censor its content out of fear of losing those large revenue streams. Its a shame that it happens but in my mind its based on economics. It kind of begs the question "do we want steemit to get really big and popular and have to start censoring their content or do we want it to remain small so that content can remain uncensored?"
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The more attention and education put out there to bring awareness to this censorship puts the odds in our favor to stop it.
Big Tech is blocking and censoring certain groups in search engines as well as their right to express their beliefs.
Great thoughts, I have been really impressed with how Steemit allows people to pretty much be themselves without hindering any of their creativity or vocalizations. I think it is a great platform.