Upvoting Satan: ethics of upvoting rapists, trolls, theives, and violence

When people first start on the platform they almost always start the same way. "Follow for follow?" "Upvote for upvote?" Soon after they realize that it didn't get them very far. Then they try spending hours a few hours on their perfect post... it flops. Then they get frustrated. Then they think Steemit is a scam. Sometimes they even go after people personally that are making good money on posts.

"How dare you earn, when my post went unnoticed?!? I deserve to be paid. How dare the whales skip my post and award that other post?!? It isn't even talking about what I deem to be good, important, or well-written."

Sometimes they start confronting the whales. "You circle jerking asshole, how dare you upvote that shit content!" Sometimes it's true. Most of the time it's just a whale voting for someone they've interacted with positively before and supporting their content. Yeah, so, they go a little insane. Then they catch a flag.

This is the point all hell breaks loose

People from the outside world aren't really capable of handling negative criticism. They can't hold themselves responsible for their actions. They are used to causing harm and harassing people all day without consequence. When they get to steemit and find out for the first time that there are consequences for their actions and they are held responsible it's like they snap. They can't take it.

So, now it's flag war time, but these fuckin' morons don't understand stake weighted down votes.

OK, so now they are losing because they started a flame war

Yeah, so they realize that their little votes don't do much so they just start flaming people. They go on posts, they go into comments, maybe they build bot armies. They say horrible shit about you. They start tracking down friends and family. They post all of that shit online thinking they are some empowered crusader on a holy war of biblical proportions because you held them accountable with a flag.

Ok, so now you have to escalate cause these fuckers are everywhere

What else are you gonna do? You're mad. They broke the rules. You were within your rights to flag, and now they go even further out. Worse yet, the flags didn't go down as you thought they would. Instead of outright nuking the little fuck now they found a whale that supported them. All the post rewards you took and all the ways you shattered their rep just bounced back and got more monies. So, not only did you not silence the critic, not only did you not take away all their rewards, but now you have a pyschopath with a whale backer that didn't exist before. So, while you're trying to escalate and nuke the moron that's clearly in the wrong. You're burning SP and wasting rewards on some little shit who keep getting saved.

First off the answer is deescalate

I found this out in my very first flag war. I dropped some nukes and a very clear psychopath ending up getting whale support and none of it went as planned. So, I realized even while clearly in the right that it didn't have the effect or consequence I was looking for. So, now while I still support flagging in the sense of self defense going balls out nuking isn't so much of a great plan. You gotta find a way to deescalate shit.

Stopping others from upvoting Satan

Let's say there is a massive troll that's up to no good. We'll call them not2good. And let's say they are supported by a powerful whale with millions of SP or for god's sake what if even one of the founders was supporting a well known troll. What do you do?

I think the trick is to undermine the whale support. Going all out on attack isn't going to have intended consequences. Getting the whale or possibly the founder if that's necessary to realize they are supporting people calling for violence, rape, trolling behavior, the death of family members, etc seems critical. Doxxing isn't ok. Calling for harm is bad. Literally just going deep into personal insults or involving family is way over the line.

Cause once the troll is isolated you're in a better stronger place, but when you nuke this platform seems to have a way to support the troll.

So, moral of the story from what I can figure out is when hit with a troll you can flag them, but it's probably best not to nuke them, because it calls in support of other people who think even troll rapists flaming every post with drivel have a right to speak. Violence in self defense seems aok, but when you switch to offense this place will rally for the wrong team. If you go too far, it's best to deescalate yourself and get the whale support to back off.

But please check yourself.

If you find a well known troll on the platform please don't upvote them, don't support their posts, and don't encourage them. And if you're a massive whale or you're like a founder with a ton of sway please don't spend a ton of your SP on saving horrible people on this platform.