Censorship Free environment - Flagging explained
Steemit is not censoring anyone
Just a quick one as of recent discussions. Steemit is a platform where everyone can post and express their opinion. This is good, there is no central institution that is censoring anything. The Steemit community is taking care of the community by voting up (like a Facebook Like) or voting down aka flag which is designed to support the community especially used to protect the reward pool when people are not in agreement with certain post payouts. If you are interested why I write this read on.
Other common reasons to flag or down vote which are commonly accepted by the community are:
- (as said) Disagreement on rewards
- Hate speech
- Abuse (including Spamming and Scamming)
General rules for Downvotes
Well there are no official rules but if you look at the official Steem FAQs you find this:
What are the valid reasons for downvoting?
Users are allowed to downvote for any reason that they want. There are many users in the community who recommend only using the downvote on posts that are abusive. It is up to you if you want to follow this etiquette.
Does a downvote mean that I did something wrong?
Just because you received a downvote does not mean that you did something wrong. The downvoting person may have just been voting to reallocate the rewards in a way that they felt was more beneficial to the other active posts in the platform. Often users will leave a comment explaining why they downvoted, but sometimes they might not. If they left a reason, it is up to you to determine if you did anything wrong, and if there is anything you want to change.
Source: https://steemit.com/faq.html#What_are_the_valid_reasons_for_downvoting
Why do I post about it?
Actually I did not wanna post it at all but given some recent discussion I wanted to have that on my profile for people to understand why I might flag. People that know me are aware I hardly flag anything but prefer to support good content by uprooting instead of wasting my power for flags. But there are exceptions. My Steem Power is way too low if I would go fully after reward pool rape, circle jerks, copy / paste artists and all other spammers and scammers. I fully trust the big whales (we are some great ones!) to care of reward pool rapers and official accounts such as @steemcleaners or @cheetah for finding scammers and plagiarism experts. If I flag it is mainly for hate speech. As anything on Steemit such as what is good or bad quality this also is probably subjective. There might be other users that consider things as hate speech I would not and the other way round.
What do I consider as hate speech?
If you are sill reading this you might continue lol - I actually only wanted to post a screenshot and 2 sentences but now I do another mistake - talking too much. What is hate speech for me? There are two main areas I would flag, which are:
1 - If someone is attacked by serious threatening
2 - If I see radical propaganda I personally consider as hate speech (could include racism, radical political opinion making no matter if left or right wing - but can also include other hate posts against certain communities)
Steemit is an open platform and community, everyone is free, everyone is allowed to upvote or down vote whatever they want. No one has to outline any reasons for a flag or an upvote. I might still give a reason for a flag simply because I do not flag often - but in case you get one read this post and you might know why!
Thanks for reading!
I absolutely agree that there should be abuse flaggers. But I also feel that if there is to be a balance then there needs to be just as many people who want to use their voting power on rewarding people. Ultimately both of these things are just the nature of human communities. Like police & charities. Both of them have their intentions for the overall good of the community, but achieve it by totally different means.
I'll explain:
We've read posts from people here stating that Steemit is a microcosm of human civilization, and believe this is true. Steemit Inc gave us this platform, and they set the parameters in which all our activity occurs. Everything from posts, to comments & replies, to upvotes & flags, balance transfers - everything. These are like the physical laws of nature that were given to us by the universe. And according to those physical laws, it's totally possible for me to go over to my neighbors car if I wanted to, and bash out the window and take his car stereo. It's perfectly possible to occur given the setup of physical laws. However, the community within that reality has decided that it's probably not a good idea to do that, and that I should probably be punished for doing it, and that my neighbor probably deserves some kind of restitution if I were to do that. It's not the universe's job to police us, but only to provide a platform in which to do things, to exist at all. Same with Steemit. It's not their job to police us, because WE are the community. WE are who need to police ourselves, just like we do in the real world. Police don't pop out wearing blues when they're born. We invented them at some point from within the community. That's where initiatives like SteemCleaners came from. It's a symptom of that same human nature taking place in the system.
And what's funny to me about it is when people get called out on doing things they can but probably shouldn't, they use the excuse of "take it up with Steemit, Inc. They created this place and it's their responsibility to change it if they think it's bad. It's in the code, man!"
I'm starting to equate that to when people in real life say *"Take it up with God. I don't make the rules," and that's a huge copout. That's passing the buck.
Thanks buddy - probably the longest comment i ever received by anyone here - even before reading have to vote that. Agree - it is us to make the community comfortable - having said this - not planning to tell anyone my thoughts are the right ones at all. Others might be more correct - I actually wanted to stop any discussion - isn't it better personally to focus on shit posts and avid any discussion. But sometimes I get this - Fuck Hell - i can not stay calm all the time - it is not a money machine but a community.
Otherwise - this thing will be dead soon - at the least the steemit community - not talking about the currency.
Exactly! Good post, and good comment @winstonwolfe
Fully agree with you!
Here is what happened to me today.
I exposed a spammer today and now she is trying to put pressure on me. Im new and shes not.
You can see everything in the Post and the comments. But what to do now? Just wait and see? Should i be worried? I guess not if i compare followers and Steempower of us both. Looks like she is being downflagged a lot or noone upvotes. Im new to steemit, please tell me if im wrong.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@remotehorst23/steemit-and-mass-flagging
Hi @remotehorst23 - i checked your conversation with the lady. The repeated similar comments might look a bit spammy - but there is much worse here. Seems your counterpart mainly writes original stuff so I would not get into any fights there. Not worth the time and both of your Steempower is not making a difference. Think most here know there are spam issues but less than on other platforms.
If you feel something is spam rather report to @steemcleaners and you might even get paid for doing so:
https://steemcleaners.org/abuse-report/
Und nun frohe Ostern!
Thank you for the Feedback and the hint. Im not interested in a Fight, just wanted to know how things work.
Danke, wünsche Euch allen auch frohe Ostern^^
Interesting post, @uwelang. I've been thinking about censorship on Steemit recently, and although having the freedom to post on here about whatever you want is a good thing, I do believe that the small print to that should state 'within reason'.
I can't say that I've seen any hate speech, but there are certainly plenty of posts that I've thought about flagging recently. These will usually be spammy comments from users trying to gain upvotes without putting in any effort to interact with the community, or posts that are quite clearly plagiarised without any thought.
However, there are posts from some very high SP accounts on here that definitely should be flagged. Notably, these posts will offer very little in terms of content, but will receive huge rewards, presumably from a voting circle or friends. The fear for many users like myself is that by flagging this content with our tiny SP accounts, any form of retaliation will all but destroy the value of our accounts.
Now, this is a morale dilemma I suppose. Do we do what we know is right for the platform and risk our own accounts, or do we let it slide in order to protect ourselves? I've opted for option three, and am focusing on rewarding as many worthwhile accounts as I can. I see it as doing my part for the community, without risking being destroyed by an angry, platform abusing whale.
Danke für diese Worte.... darum hab ich auch meinen letzten Post geschrieben :)
Immer gerne, Dein BCH Post? Schön, dass Du wieder postest? Les ich gleich mal durch :-)
ja, lol. Man muss echt mal was machen gegen dieses Ponzi... sonst verlieren noch mehr Leute Kohle durch diesen Schmarrn.
Da hast Recht junger Freund - ich hab jetzt noch mal einen Post gmacht, der meine Unzufriedenheit darstellt ggüber der rechtsradikalen Community - da die zum Glück hier überschaubar sit und aus maximal 5-8 Usern besteht (im deutschsprachigen Raum) hab ich alle gebookmarked und werde ab nächste Woche Blumen posten (war Spass....)
Ja musst mir die Namen gleich durchposten via discord für meine Blacklists :)
hey buddy... spot on with your opinion but am not sure if their shouldn´t be some kind of regulation to the downvoting as such. It very much seems especially in terms of the flaggwars taking place between haejin & co that there is just no such thing as any kind of control, sense or reasoning behind... once "normal criticism" is being punished and pretty much censored through the big players on here nobody really can expect this being an "open" community.
I know that I this is a very sensible topic and many think differently but once peoples regular comments and posts are being flagged down just because one put some criticism out because one doesn´t agree with the general idea what one is doing then something is more then just wrong here...
agreed - the major flag wars are dangerous for the entire community - even there have been agreements no one cares but also it is always the same whale(s) that is taking care of such a problem which is very crucial. But this is reward pool rape, the most tough one for the survival of steemit as such. Mine here is simply covering some society issues - I also flagged obvious spammers and scammers but my Power is too weak, not sure there will be any solution to the big war thing as who should drive it if not the Steemit Inc - they will not - or the big Stake owners - doubt they will as long as they make profits.
spot on bro... don´t think anything will happen until STEEMIT is actually puttin in some kind of regulation on how many posts one can post and/ or how much in upvote one can receive for a single post. Eventhough that would mean you are about to limit steemit as such it would at least show the most of the community that some action is being taken onto the issue.
For the general aspect of flagging your right as well... an individual who is posting - lets say "below average" content and getting rewarded tons of SBD just for the sake of it should defo be questioned... if it happens once in a while ok but if that kind of thing is happening all day long action gotta to be taken
they never will - why should they :-)? They have other priorities such as SMT. Re community rules it is the job of the witness community to agree - the Steemit Inc is out of this I would say - you might as the witness you trust.
I'am only on Steemit for a very short period of time but I already have a feeling that other than hate speech as you described in your blog there are bots getting out of control on posts. Let's stop the spam and make Steemit great (again). People are promoting themself on unrelevant topics. Hunting for the profit. Not reading posts and commenting nonsense. I get it. People want money, who doesn't. But that is not how it works. THE CONTENT PROMOTES ITSELF There is no need for excessive spam. I don’t want to go into details or in to calling the names “as a matter of fact I recently caught someone copying my comment” but you get the idea. However on the other hand I looove steemit. There is so many good and creative souls I met here. I've already made a few of steem dollars, and I don't plan to cash it out any time soon. I convert it into steem power of this community, because I feel that it is well worth it. To me steemit is a sanctuary of free thought and real life. A place where you can just blog about what you have going on in life and complete strangers wish you well and root you on. You can talk about things that are important to you and others from around the world can comment and share experiences. And that’s why I love steemit in spite of some negatives.
Good points I totally agree - I wore about these issues in the past already. I think the bot topic is something where you can argue from both sides and the good thing is some bid bot owners constantly work on improvements to black lists poor content spammers. Maybe a return to before HF20 could help here.
The post is mainly covering a different topic as you might have realized which is not so dangerous for the reward pool but still dangerous :-)
Got flagged for the first time last night. Truth is that it was my fault and I had to agree with the flagger. (don't worry it wasn't hate speech)
I agree with you on the point of the hate speech. Although I think flagging at large has to be left to the community to decide but general guidelines definitely would help.
This was good to see. I agree, I much prefer to upvote good and leave the flags for the higher rep and higher SP accounts. I think it is a good idea before a small account gets much into flagging, that they learn the risks associated with it.
(If you are still reading[...])
i am not used anyone reads my post hence the little hint lol
To hear the speech version of this post click the play image.
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I know blind people that use computers. This would be a handy gadget when using a machine not set up specifically for them.
Upvote and resteem.