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RE: Stopping Downvote Censorship on Steemit: Suggestions For a New Model for Anti-Spam That Prevents Malicious Censorship
I have not been able to find any stats for downvoting yet - how do you know that levels of downvotes are low?
I remember reading comments from whales a while ago saying that whales downvote posts as a method of boosting other more important posts and not to take it personally.. At the time I thought that sounded questionable, but was new so thought maybe it was a way of ensuring community cohesion by drawing focus to important steemit related posts. In any case, it was made clear that downvotes were considered a standard tool in the kit of steemit's organisation.
Through talking with the higher SP holders and some whales!
Also through talking I know that quite a few higher SP holders dont use the flag for 2 reasons; Reputation and wasting of upvote.
Also through talking with some whales, I know they dont have the capacity of detecting and downvoting all the abuse ongoing, and seek good initiatives to delegate their SP to.
I see, ok - i would be interested to see the actual stats since it is difficult to know exactly what is occurring based on a few individual cases.
I dont have stats, and I cant create them. I really hope some engineers in the community will do that though.
I think what he might be referring to as "flags backfiring" is that a lot of times it doesn't make sense for individual to flag a post, no matter how valid the reason, because they fear reprisals from the person they are flagging.
It's not worth calling out a purely plagiarized post if it means that person is just going to nuke your posts/rep. That's where something like Steemcleaners comes in handy, you can report something without fear that your personal account will be flagged to death for pointing out abuse.
I have just watched a guy crying his eyes out because of what looks a lot like misbehaviour by the people running the steemcleaners profile. https://steemit.com/steemcleaners/@aaronmda/44vqeg-steemcleaners-multiple-accounts-for-only-upvoting-themselves-and-downvoting-others
I've been following that as well. I think the problem with some of what you are suggesting is that there has to be a decision on what people want.
If you want a decentralized platform then that is what you will get. Every person/group of people will be free to vote their stake however they like, for any reason, as there are no official rules on what is or is not allowed. You can upvote what you want or flag what you want, its your stake and your decision how to use it. If what you are doing is incredibly egregious/unpopular/so far outside of the social norms then the community will react accordingly.
If you don't want that, then you are saying you want a more centralized platform where there are people officially in charge who set rules on what content is or is not allowed and then come up with an official way to police it. You can't say its the witnesses job to monitor that, trying to sort through the spam/plagiarism/etc.. takes a lot of time and dedication and you can't just force those people to do it. I think a lot of people are here for the freedom to post whatever they like without some central body saying they cant. If you want to say a flag is censorship well that brings me to my next point-
I don't really believe that flagging a post on Steemit is censorship. If youtube or facebook censors you they remove your content and absolutely nobody has a chance to view it. If someone flags you on steemit the worst case scenario is that your post is greyed out, thus requiring one extra click to make it visible. Is having to click a mouse 1 extra time really censorship? I can still follow any author I like and view all their posts, it just involves marginally more clicking.
Not to mention that only applies to the steemit client, not any of the other ways to view the blockchain like steemd where the content isn't changed at all.
The monetary rewards from a post are something different, the rewards aren't yours until they are payed out so the person hasn't earned anything at that point. Nobody is entitled to rewards for posting, it comes down how the community feels. If more steempower upvotes your post as opposed to flags it, you get paid. If more steempower decides they really disliked your post, you dont. That's sort of the premise of decentralized platform, the community and all its members get to vote with their stake on what gets rewarded or what doesn't.
Just my 2 cents on the matter at least...
the existence of a decentralised platform is not dependent on the ability to downvote and hide posts.
as i made clear in my post here, the terms for steemit specifically state that illegal activity will not be allowed and also behavior that:
since it is the terms of service that underly the actual activity on the website, we should go by those primarily and not by what individual commentators might be thinking.
in order for the terms of service to be enforceable there needs to be a method in place to enforce them - however, I am not actually aware of what that is - are you?
Again, I did not say that witnesses should police the network.
I don't see this as a binary situation of 'centralised' or 'decentralised' when it comes to policy enforcement. Presently we have a policy that is not really being enforced and it ultimately being applied 'vigilante' style according to whatever anyone feels like doing at the time. In a sense maybe that is anarchistic - but that doesn't mean that there can't be a more balanced approach found and used here.
I am not advocating for a corporate style 'police team' and I am not advocating for the status quo. If anything, I am talking about some kind of decentralised approach that has actually defined policy, that activity can be measured against - instead of different people just making up rules as they go and attempting to use the power of their bank statement to 'make it so'. The current situation has more in common with oligarchy than it does with anarchism.
I would say that there is no official way to enforce the terms of service, just the community members and their decision to vote their stake is what decides what content is allowed or not.
It seems like you are leaning towards a system where the flag is removed from the average user, as you feel it leads to vigilantism. If you want to get rid of user flagging, thats fine, but then how do you go about removing harmful content if not through some sort of official centralized approach of policing content?
Not saying I have the answer to it, I just appreciate the discussion. If you want to remove the flag as a way for an individual user to make their voice heard on what they do/do not want to see, what replaces it? If you do want to leave people their flagging ability, what is to prevent them from using it however they like other than again having some group of people in charge who decide what is an appropriate use and what isn't?
I have a feeling that you haven't actually read my original post, since I already explained my draft solution in there. It is not a complete solution and I left it that way deliberately in the spirit of community co-creation.
one of the issues with the website having an unenforceable TOS is that in the event that people use the network for serious crime, the website operators may become liable for that and the site could be shut down by government. I don't think that is a good thing from the user's perspective as they would surely lose their money value in the blink of an eye.
I can imagine improved solutions that both do and do not involve downvoting and in both cases that do and do not involve 'spam cops'.
A basic improvement to the current situation would be to make the downvoted posts visible in a separate list, as already stated, to allow transparent viewing of how downvotes are being used. That first step will improve the use of downvotes since it will be obvious to others on the network who is acting in a way that they respect with downvotes and who isn't.
Once the posts are downvoted, they should not be hidden - but instead should be entered into a list from which it can be further ascertained whether they really do violate the intended principles of the site or not. That way there can be a consensus formed before something is hidden - and not just the current situation where those with the most resources can silence others and even destroy their reputation totally.
In other words, you could keep the system almost as it is now, except that there is an extra stage where the community has a specific opportunity to decide on the outcome, instead of it being decided immediately on the basis of wealth.
Such a system could still be abused by the use of bots - but since that is specifically against the terms of service, I 'imagine' that some kind of action would be taken in that instance. If the terms of service are just going to be completely denied then I would not recommend anyone to invest in the system, period.