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RE: Ostracism on Steemit: Why or Why Not?
What about people that have a negative rep because of subjective reasons. or just one butthurt whale that decides your the target for the week?
What about people that have a negative rep because of subjective reasons. or just one butthurt whale that decides your the target for the week?
That is definitely a problem. One we haven't really solved yet.
This, a thousand times this. Steemit took a huge hit in terms of a positive reputation for free speech just about two weeks ago when a whale voted an SGT Report out of viewership - I don't have the specifics in memory at the moment, but SGT reported on it to his YouTube followers and I have to say --- it did not look good for Steemit. Especially since SGT has been praising Steemit as an alternative to other social media platforms in light of their censorship tactics and this guy has a HUGE following because he is smart and has access to and can reach practically everyone in the alt-media/crypto sphere. People could still view the Steemit-buried report on Youtube, but on Steemit it was no longer even possible to view. Needless to say, that is highly counterproductive for Steemit.
If whales disagree with something because it does not align with their subjective views and they can neither prove nor disprove arguments for or against a statement in a factual manner then proceed to eliminate it from conversation or viewership on Steemit nevertheless, that is authoritarian censorship, plain and simple. What happened to "I may disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it?" That is the gold standard of free speech, not "If I don't like what you say, I will kill your message."
Of course there will be bumps and hiccups along the way, but it appears there should be some sort of explicit community contract that whales agree to abide by when they reach that stage and perhaps an appeals process of some sort where petitions are posed to the user base as a whole.
This has happened in cycles for almost a year. It is one of the biggest remaining problems with steemit, though we haven't really come up with a fix for it, though we do have ideas we've all discussed, but those ideas don't really matter unless steemit inc. decides to experiment and try some of the ideas out. I do know steemit inc. is working on quite a few things for the future, but I don't know how likely they are to do something about this.
The argument of course will be that it wasn't censored since it is still on the blockchain. That too me is equivalent to saying "it wasn't censored you can file a Freedom of Information Act request". What are the odds someone is going to be viewing the blockchain in a way to monitor for such posts. Then there is the funding side of things. If a person cannot earn when some people appreciate their work because a powerful person(s) down votes it then that could be a form of financial censorship. They'll argue then "if they are here only for the money they don't need to be". Which arguing that someone doesn't view Steemit the same way you think they should is kind of silly too if we plan on having a lot of people here. We'll end up with many people, using it for many reasons, and we don't need people deciding who and who cannot benefit from and enjoy steemit. That is negative PR as you said.
These things go in cycles. I've been very vocal about this in the past. I've also warned of exactly what you describe, them doing this to someone with a large following and causing negative PR outside of steemit.
Balanced and reasonable response, thanks for the feedback. Now following.