@BernieSanders Flagged Me For No Reason
I Got Flagged by @BernieSanders For No Reason
So here on Steemit we have upvotes and we have flags which equate to downvotes. It's always been my personal feeling that downvotes on this platform should be reserved for spam, plagarism, racism, hate, etc. Flags according to myself and I would imagine most others are not to be used to flag things you disagree with. If someone posts about Trump and I don't like Trump, I may not upvote their content, but I'm certainly not going to flag it, as that's not what flags are for.
Today I got flagged by @BernieSanders for what in my opinon is something that doesn't deserve a flag. I noticed I was shortly afterwards flagged by a number of other accounts like @ngc @engagement @thecyclist @thedelegator and @nextgencrypto . While those could be other individuals I'm guessing at least a couple of those accounts are also run by @berniesanders.
To fill you in this morning @berniesanders made a post titled The Irresponsible Bot Owners Contributing to the Demise of Steem in which he said bid bots should not allow @jerrybanfield to use their services. I made a couple comments on that post basically saying the problem of people upvoting shitty content and being rewarded for using bots is a huge prolbem on this platform, while Jerry is probably one of the people to benefit from this the most, even if he went away the problem would still persist, it would just be other people being rewarded instead of him. I think this is a systematic problem more so than a @jerrybanfield problem. I also raised concerns about how its a slippery slope to start giving one person, one bot, etc power over who succeeds or earns on this platform and who doesn't. Who exactly gets to decide which posts are "worthy" of earning money?
I actually made a follow up post to this post titled Don't hate the player hate the game in which I kind of disagreed with @berniesanders and said I think this is a systematic problem more than a problem with one user or even a handful of users. Apparently that offended @berniesanders. Well shit at least I'm getting someone's attention on here.
I never really paid much attention to @berniesanders but the little I know about him it seems he feels he should be able to dictate what type of platform steemit is, what types of content should be able to earn, and if he doesn't like you oh no watch out your Steemit career is over. Well fuck you @berniesanders take away my $0.50 I make per post I don't really give a shit. The people I respect on this platform the most are the people who are willing to tell it like it is and the people who are authentic, not the people who kiss ass and play the game.
I had made a number of comments on @berniesanders post. This one I've pasted in below is the one which was downvoted by him and several other accounts. I honestly don't even know who's comment this one was in regards to but my main point was that hot and trending are mostly non-sense and that the problem of poor quality being upvoted is hardly a problem with one user ie @jerrybanfield. Well I must have angered @berniesanders so he downvoted me and I'm guessing after this post I'll probably be added to his downvote list...
Now there was nothing spammish about this comment, there was nothing hateful about the comment, I was simply sharing my opinion but apparently @berniesanders doesn't agree with me so I get downvoted.
For anyone agrees with me that flagging isn't meant to be used to silence those you just don't agree with, or for anyone who thinks @berniesanders is getting a bit high on his horse thinking he and he alone should get to shape this platform and silence people feel free to resteem and/or upvote this post. Can we outpower @berniesanders?
I hope the witnesses can create some kind of etiquette protocol people could follow. I hate seeing so much dissention in the community instead of just supporting and voting on best articles.
I do think etiquette should be against paying for votes. I'd rather see people invest and upvote themselves over big votes going for those who paid for them. I've tried the bidbots and frustrated by the returns and frustrated its tough to get upvotes on good articles because they seem almost invisible. That's my 2 cents. or 0.02sbd
I think they will be the downfall of steemit. Having a pay to play system does not make for good content and a quality platform. Imagine if people could just play money to join and play in the NBA. Do you think people would still pay money to see games if Steve the 5'11" accountant was playing instead of Lebron James? lol
So true. I do see a lot of weakness with self motivating actions.
Yeah that is Bernie's bot trail. It wasn't additional people from what I can see. He is trigger happy on the flags even if you aren't attacking him. He steps over the line in my opinion with a lot of it. I'm always toeing the gray area with him because a lot of times I actually upvote his stuff when it is hilarious or it is picking a fight with someone I perceive to be a problem.
I didn't upvote that post about Jerry's views on taking Flagging away though because I don't agree that Jerry was really destroying value in investors eyes with that......etc.
It is a big issue. Emotions are flaring right now with the crypto crash. People are getting their balls crushed and people are flipping out for sure and starting up more fights.
Yeah @cheetah and a lot of these things kind of annoy me at times. Not only because they are just annoying but on a number of occasions I've had them mess with me on posts, call me out for plagarism for stuff I created and posted here. In one instance I think it was cheetah or some bot made me jump through hoops to login to like an 8 year old .blogspot account I didn't even remember the logins or emails to because they said I was posting other peoples stuff so had to find the logins to show I was the origional creator.
I guess that would be another complaint of mine about bots and automation. The same way many legit people are caught in bullshit by eBay, Amazon, Youtube, etc, etc, etc in terms of being innocent of somehting but having a bot or keyword or something flag something they did and then having to jump through hoops to get something reversed, if someone wants to police Steemit I'd almost prefer they do it manually. Yeah they won't get as much done but it will be more accurate and won't catch innocent people in teh crossfire
Actually, the number one reason for a flag is disagreement with rewards. Not that it has anything to do with the flag war going on here necessarily, just that it is an important reason you left off your list of reasons to flag.
Honestly despite having been on here for a year I really don't get into scouring SteemDB to see what rewards someone got, but thank you for the comment I didn't even know that was a reason. Honestly I earned like $15 off that post, I doubt it had anything to do with me being overly rewarded for it, especially considering whether someone agreed with it or didn't agree with it it was a long form well thought out post.
I don't think that the intent is to scour the database, I think it's more when you run across a one line post and a blurry smart phone picture that currently has a $300 reward you would downvote it just as you would upvote a good post that you ran across.
The reward pool is only so big and if one person is getting a lot it means others are getting less. I think downvoting is as important as upvoting for the purposes of curating and managing the reward pool. However, fewer people use it that way than probably should for fear of retaliation. It isn't hard to find over-rewarded posts by looking at the trending page though.
Don't take it to heart @rulesforrebels Bernie is overprotective of the Steemit platform. He has a lot of skin in the game (as you can deduce from his accts you mention, hint hint). Well, don't take it to heart just yet, because you are correct, you could wind up on his hit list. I don't think so but after this post who knows. If he does put you in his crosshairs I can try to send him a chill pill messg but no guarantees, not even for me.
ps Bernie typically hunts accts like this one ==>> @haejin
You get my 100% full strength agreement. I really like the downvote feature, although i have yet to use it personally, but total agree with your characterization of whats its for. For the record I also completely agree with your grumble that if we want to deal with the people who are gaming the system, we have to change the system. It is futile to change people. Even if they are flagged to oblivion they just pop up with a different name. They didn't care about their reputation in the first place. I like to hear PEOPLE's real (respectful) opinion here.
Keep going @rulesforrebels.
Well he unflagged the post so either he felt bad for the flag or he has a bot that auto flags certain content
I think a flag is still needed but the main reason is that most users come from facebook or twitter/others and they have different posting rules:
Well if you get flagged and excused of reward rape of doing a "shit post" aka a post you would do on reddit/facebook well you won't use steemit at all. Steemit won't be for the average user but SMT might fix that by creating social networks like facebook where you can semi-shit post without getting flagged.
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