Flagged By Steemit's Tech Manager For Sharing Views About Vaccine Science.
Today I received a heavy downvote/flag from sneak - the manager of the technical side of the Steemit project because he disagrees with my dissenting voice against the government narrative on vaccinations. He stated that he intends to downvote/flag any post on the whole network that contradicts the 'official narrative' on vaccinations and thereby will stifle discussion of this important topic on steemit.com.
I offered him an opportunity to comment on the actual science involved rather than resorting to personal attacks, but he has so far not responded.
Given that there is a fairly strong presence on Steemit of parents who have experienced injury to their children as a result of vaccinations and given that Steemit is held up as being a system that those who prefer free speech can benefit from participation in, what does this turn of events mean for us?
What do you think? Setting aside your own position on vaccines, do you think it's good to be able to shut down conversation on topics you disagree with? Let us know in the comments below.
▶️ DTube
▶️ IPFS
@sneak is Vaccine Damaged, so you’ll have to excuse his autism spectrum disorder. But he’s an excellent example of why STINK is a miserably abusive company run by completely inept “executives”.
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Highly rEsteemed!
I like your comment about him being vaccine damaged! full upvote for that one!
I am pro-vaccines but this comment is hilarious. I will give you that :D
followed, muahahaha
Scientism is a big religion here for some of the bigger players. Disagreements of this nature should generally be handled with words, and not financial sanctions.
If @sneak wants to soft censor people, let the market know it.
I intend to, yes - I am about to upload a video where I am starting to explain how to apply to social networks, lessons learned over decades of research into systems and balance. That's my constructive action for the day. The next mission is to make a detailed post highlighting the details of the actual flagging and hypocrisy involved here.
@kafkanarchy84 One of the most important and underused words of our time right there.
Free speech is on it's way out. There are quite a few topics you better not write about if you don't want to get flagged or taken down. If steemit get's big enough to really make a difference in public opinion, it will go the same route youtube has taken. Dissent is not liked anymore. Neither by the powerful, nor by the indoctrinated. Future generations will be sterile, controlled from cradle to grave, socially engineered, have an IQ of 80 and will love their servitude. All we can do is to enjoy irritating the politically correct morons as long as we can. Will be over soon enough.
I have actually had two death threats on G+ for writing about vaccine science and also had a huge comment section shut down on iflscience.com for posting peer reviewed studies that demonstrate the weakness of the 'official narrative' regarding vaccines - instead of commenting or correcting/rebutting me, they simply stopped comments (which had been live for a long time).
It isn't really possible for Steem as it is to be as controlled as youtube - it would require a huge shift in the code to make that happen, but it is certainly not impossible. That said though, the code can be duplicated and run by anyone with the knowledge to do so - so in one way or another the idea will persist.
Well, you are pretty safe on steemit because your reputation is high enough. If one with a lower reputation gets flagged by someone with a higher one, the reputation goes down and your posts will get greyed out and not be visible anymore. I have seen blogs destroyed by professional downvoters. I got attacked myself and have to avoid certain topics since my rep is not high enough. We now have a small window of opportunity as long as steemit is insignificant enough and does not pose a real threat to post our stuff onto the blockchain.
But in the end, it is not about information or the truth or discussion or right or wrong. If what you say is against the official narrative, you will get shut down if too many people could hear what you have to say. We live in a post-fact world. Opinion matters. 'It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.' — Henry Kissinger
i do appreciate the problem with downvoting and reputation, yes. i had that problem early on too with a post about 911 that got wiped out by a trigger happy corporatist. in that case i was able to buy a vote from a bot to counteract the problem (bots were a relatively new thing back then). i then went on a rampage to expose the situation and my post was the first one covered by the @freezepeach account (as I recall) that is set up to counter this problem. As a result of that I met some good whales here and learned how to defend myself.
I see the main issue here being a lack of understanding of the system and also an absence of coherent teamwork among those who want to be protected. I intend to co-create educational videos soon to help people understand some core ideas that can be used to make their life here easier, though I don't have an ETA yet.
Yup. I had a similar situation and got help from @freezepeach and @r0nd0n as well. They are great and most helpful. I also pondered the idea of creating some kind of support group. The main problem I see here is the structure of steemit. I don't know of a way to create a tutorial which would be easily visible or accessible over time for newcomers to read when they get hit. I am sure there is plenty of helpful information already out there but buried deep under millions of posts. You have to know what to look for and where. For me it was just plain luck that I came across freezepeach. I also used a whale to get my reputation up a bit just to be safe from a particular stalker. But at a certain level that can get quite expensive I suppose...Anyway, nice talking to you :)
I'd like to ask, "is the flag mechanism helpful at all?". People who post content no one likes get unfollowed. It may feel good to flag someone who is annoying you with spam, but does it really help with spam? I'm guessing a determined bot user would just make a new bot. Isn't there another better way to do this?
I agree with you. The potential of abuse far outweighs it's usefulness. If you don't like it, don't read it. If you disagree, write a nasty comment. If I don't want spam, I don't follow the spammer. If I am dumb enough to fall for spam, well then I am dumb. I don't need some politically correct moron to protect me from information he thinks I should not have. The only usefulness I could see would be to flag spam in the comment section, not for original posts. But I guess it would be pretty hard to change the rules. There are plenty of professional downvoters who make a pretty buck...
If you mean, "flag spam in the comment section" of your own post then I agree with you 100%. This only because I view post by yourself as being property, and as such, common law/ principals ought to take effect.
Which is exactly why we are banding together to create an Informationwar community where we expose the narratives of falsehood, and give people the tools they need to understand how to defend free speech/liberty/justice.
Interesting. What exactly do you guys do? What's your strategy? How do you stay in touch? I might be interested to join.
here is https://steemit.com/informationwar/@informationwar/about-information-war-3-3
you can also join us on Discord
https://discord.gg/EzAwQeb
It is absolutely unacceptable for someone involved in the development of this free speech space to take this kind of action. If @ned isn't going to do something about it, they whole team needs to take a dive off a short peer. I won't be staying here long due to this and the reward pool abuse. There is simply no reason to be here anymore.
Hmm... I typically only flag for abuse, and though I'm entirely 100% in this opinion, I think flagging in this regard is fine, though it obviously hurts the victim's account confidence and pride.
The flag button does say 'disagreement on rewards*, so he's abiding by the system.
The more I type though, the more complicated the grey areas get. Regarding the philosophy of flags. If you remember our one interaction long ago you'd know I'm highly against your views in general but unlike most I actually enjoy debates counter to my side, so I wouldn't even consider flagging such things.
Sneak can be seen in another post stating clearly on this topic a specific list of criteria in which he personally thinks it is acceptable to flag and he specifically states that personal opinion differences is not one of them. The only one he states that could possibly fit is that he disagrees over rewards because the post contains lies. Since he has failed to even attempt to demonstrate how that is true, we are left to speculate.
Since the system has no enforcement process for ensuring that any guidelines regarding flagging are adhered to, there really isn't a system being applied to flagging in the sense of determining what is good/bad flagging, there are only unenforced and thus entirely voluntary words.
As far as disagreements and truth finding go - I actually aim to have zero belief, opinion and 'views' - looking instead to back up everything (or most) of what I say with replicable evidence. The challenge here is that substantial amounts of the world are convinced that what they think is true 'must' be true but when pushed they haven't actually done the necessary due dilligence research to know either way. Therefore, any minority position can find itself the target of ridicule, regardless of it's accuracy.
Indeed, and I'm sure both of us are guilty of this as much as we hate to admit it and really it's causing some issues for the reputation of this platform movement, with a recent publication from polygon reporting about Dtube in a light that is... less than flattering - https://www.polygon.com/2018/3/7/17087668/steemit-dtube-bitchute-youtube-purge
But I'm hesitant to call it wrong, per se. Correct policing is fundamentally an issue with the philosophy of the site...
Regarding Sneak, yeah I certainly agree that those at the head of STINC need to behave with a certain, impartial manner as you said in your video, i've seen some incredibly childish exchanges on their twitter account (not sure who runs it but hopefully they've since been fired).
Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that before. There are some odd lines in there, for sure.
I was under the impression that:
a) Dtube isn't operated by Steemit Inc. and thus it is not their legal responsibility to take down videos that infringe copyright. Steem is alleged to not be controlled by Steemit Inc. so as far as I can see there isn't a direct connection. Videos that are linked from Dtube in Steemit.com aren't embedded.
b) There is no way to remove videos from IPFS or the steem blockchain, so the only way that Steemit inc. could conform to the idea of taking down a video is by Steemit inc specifically blacklisting posts in Steemit.com - which I am not aware they do and which contradicts what Sneak has said about censorship on Steemit.
The claim that Dtube is effectively 'Youtube for conspiracy theorists' may be part of why Sneak is taking the stance here that he is, since the false claim made by the piece on Polygon is not one which he might want to have associated with the platform. If anything the claim lets us know some of the intentions behind the author at polygon (a site I had never heard of before).
From what I have seen, the author of that piece on Polygon is a prime example of what I was pointing to when I said that people are convinced that what they think is true 'Must' be true without doing any due diligence research. The quote about alex jones and david hogg is a good example since Alex Jones did NOT say that David Hogg was a crisis actor - as far as I am aware (having put a few hours into researching it), he merely said he was trained and as I recall that some of the children there are actors - WHICH IS TRUE - and one of them is on IMDB for acting! Since Alex Jones' videos were removed the mainstream media went on a rampage making claims about what he said that then couldn't be checked on youtube. As it turns out alex jones has stated that he is opening multiple court cases against the many agencies involved, which i presume may be for slander or worse.
Conspiracy is a crime that is prosecuted every day in courts - if conspiracy is 'dangerous' to talk about then police should be arrested since that's what they deal in every day. @corbettreport made a wise comment on the doublethink attitude regarding 'conspiracy theory':
According to polygon, @ned has stated that 'hate speech' is removed by flagging, so this completely negates the stance that @sneak takes by claiming that flagging 'isn't censorship'. - you can't have it both ways guys.
I intend to make a full post in response to this link.
He has on many occasions flagged posts based on only disagreement and nothing else.
No one should be getting flagged here. Isnt this the whole damn point of the creation of steemit? Maybe dude should go apply at google...Im sure they can use his skills...lol
I thought all this "decentralized" mumbo jumbo was to empower the "individual" by cutting out all the middlemen. Well, on this platform it definitely empowers SOME individuals and ironically makes them the new middlemen. It's the same game just cleverly disguised over at Steem Ponzi Headquarters.
thats outrageous! the whole point of an alternative platform is to share alternative ideas?! ideas that might differ from the spoon fed media - state funded tripe which has corrupted our society so much! thanks for bringing this to light .
I think you've had a bit too much to think there chris.. simmer down.. ;)
I shared a video by The Leak Project about the dangers of vaccines about two months ago. I have read many reports and studies on this topic. No I do not believe in any form of censorship of conversation on any topic as long as the non-aggression principle is being adhered to.
https://steemit.com/life/@gurugnu/if-you-love-your-children-and-family-please-watch
Peace and Love.
Absolutely. From a scientific perspective, Ad hominem attack is clearly a form of aggressive attack and has no place in the process - so in that sense it is Sneak who has violated NAP here.