Powerful words on Censorship from Steem's Whitepaper #steemit - #steem
Recently there has been a lot of discussion on censorship:
What sort of content should we flag?
Is flagging an appropriate approach?
How do we prevent low quality content from gaining prominence?
I think we, as a community, can gain insight from the comments on the subject that developers expressed in Steem's whitepaper:
Freedom of speech is the foundation of all other liberties and any infringement upon freedom of speech undermines the only peaceful means of reaching consensus: discussion.
Without free discussion voters cannot be fully informed, and uninformed voters are a greater threat to society than losing the right to vote.
Censorship is a means of stealing votes through limiting public discourse. Steem is committed to enabling free speech and building a free society.
A few days ago, I was recommending a militant flagging campaign, but I now see that this risks conflicting with Steem's original vision.
While I still believe outright spam and plagiarism should be flagged, and will still remunerate it - I stand against any aggressive flagging campaign.
If a user submits sparse posts for example, or more pertinently, if a user expresses a vision orthogonal to the prevailing consensus - I believe flagging would risk dissuading challenging opinions from being expressed, which does not stand in line with the ideas expressed in the whitepaper.
Let's be an inclusive community that welcomes all contributions regardless of their ideological stance, and as "committed to enabling free speech and building a free society" as was proclaimed in the whitepaper.
Steem Paper link (link jumps to the page, just scroll down)
I agree, and have also spoken out about the censorship. It has not made me popular with the in-crowd... But I will keep trying to propose rational solutions.
Here is my proposal for 3 simple features that would allow community curation to fix this problem before it gets out of control.
Instead of creating automated censorship tools: Allow the users to fix the problem through curation.
Read your post , I think your ideas are good but have some objections.
I would think it's better to 'mark' a spammer, then if your private marking coincides with more than x users, the spammer disappears from the feed for z days. No permanent bans.
Tag requests could be an icon you click next to a post, and with more than y coinciding tag requests, the tag can be changed.
As for your third point, perhaps they can add search criteria to omit certain topics in the trending feed.
Even if topic blocklists are used, I think users should be informed as to what topics are blocked the most, so that they can adjust their posts to have a chance to earn more Steem power.
I totally agree. Blanket blocklists and ignore lists are bad and will result in censorship
Any blocking should be a users personal choice, and not under control of someone else, or a bot. That is why my suggestion requires the users to tag problem posts, and requires the users to decide what tags they want to block. This leaves all the power in the individual users hands.
Your suggestions are exactly the same as my proposal. Re-Tagging by the community, and the ability to block posts re-tagged by the community from a personal blocklist. The only difference is you are giving control to someone else to manage it.
Sorry thought you meant individual retagging.
Probably didn't read properly.
Flagging duplicate content (I call them spam reposts) are important.
Don't flag things you disagree with (opinion wise). Only if it is something NSFW (not safe for work) and isn't appropriate without an advance warning, etc.
I think we want to downvote "severe junk and severe plagiarism and obvious spam"
I elaborate more on my post and have a lot of comments that help:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@intelliguy/i-just-spent-30-minutes-downvoting-7-posts-from-a-plagiarastic-spammer-please-take-time-to-do-the-same
I agree. Excellent point you made about lowering the value of the platform as a source of content. And also on the fact that it literally represents a sub-optimal allocation of Steem, that could've gone to a more productive user.
Great work.
i think all contributions are welcome, nice post to talk about it 8]
Sure, lets be
Obviously there are a few exceptions such as people rallying ISIS members or displaying or speaking favorably toward pedophila or other things that should just not be allowed..... illegal content or just flat out disgusting tasteless low quality content should be flagged of course.
This is a difficult subject.
If content is not spam I'm not sure it'd be justified to flag it.
Perhaps the community could counter "wrongful thinking" by exposing logical fallacies.
I don't think it's right to speak favourably about pedophilia, but I can't endorse flagging it.
I'd only flag if users were being groomed, or there was an active plan to engage in the act.
If you can't endorse flagging it then you must not have children.... I know we live in an upside down culture but some things are just WRONG and we shouldn't be afraid of being politically incorrect. Just my $0.02.
"disgusting tasteless low quality" this is what I want to avoid. You don't want people to be afraid of posting something that challenges the prevailing thought.
Well ok then @positive!
thank you