It has been a while since I discovered Steemit and the great community it represents. As a publisher coming from the Wordpress era, I found Steemit a unique way of changing the way blog posts are distributed. Finally, many writers of content, but also website managers are experiencing a way to distribute their content to the world in an easy way!
Every website owner knows the stress it brings to write content, but not attracting a large crowd of people to their content. For a long time, only the big publishers could participate in the SEO race of being on top of a page, because their content goes along with powerful and costly Adwords campaigns, leaving very little of fair changes for the small publishers with a small budget to make it even to the 5th page of Google or any other search engines.
Today Steemit is becoming a powerful community, with a lot of people who are contributing to the wonderful content that Steemit offers. Unfortunately, that same community is in danger of being judged by people that think they need to regulate content in the same way today's news online is based on fake news or spreading of information that has not been checked by facts. Some Steemit users have setup accounts in order to identify and judge on content being copied or simply stolen from other writers.
As much as this might be the case, and probably unavoidable to a certain level, this discussion is more about those Steemit users that are presenting themselves as the judges and juries of the other Steemit users, by punishing them for the possibility that parts of their content might be copied. The question in judging peoples actions on Steemit will always be leading to the simple question that comes in mind when entering a court: who has authority in judging these cases? Will we allow a regulator or commission to judge on these cases, or will we allow certain publishers on Steemit (Badcontent, Buildawhale, Steemcleaners, Cheetah) to behave like dictators judging other Steemit users and destroying the community?
There are indeed reasons to worry about the actions of these users, as they by themselves spend no efforts at all in checking the facts, something they really should take seriously if they want to act to be the Steemit judges and juries, or even reach a level of journalistic self-respect. But as it appears from the many other Steemit users who complain about being added to these blacklists on Steemit, the blacklist authors themselves seem to be far away from being a trusted source in the cases they deem to be plagiarism.
It is a shame for the future of Steemit that these users are being given such a stage to enlight their frustration, while being rewarded by the same Steemit users who were actually depending on factual information, based on a process of reviews and evaluation, rather than the dictatorial behavior and levels they are presenting today. It might be the case that a regulator is needed on Steemit to avoid blatant plagiarism, the question is more if we want to allow people like the above (Badcontent, Buildawhale, Steemcleaners, Cheetah) mentioned to behave like a regulator that has not been checked in a proper manner.
Steemit is obviously not a platform for journalists or writers only. It is also a platform that allows people to share stories and facts in multiple subjects. This means it could very well be possible for Steemit users to make a review of someone's content, without blatantly copying the content of Steemit (or other online published) content in general. But still, these users (Badcontent, Buildawhale, Steemcleaners, Cheetah) would deem you to be a scammer, content copy offender etc just in the same way as you can be judged by a jury that has no right to do so, with all damages concerned being served to the people they judge upon.
If in case Steemit allows people to behave like a dictator in writing, judging their conclusions solely on unverified facts and opinions, Would Steemit become like one of these countries in Africa where sharing your opinions will cost you your future or life expectations?
I dare to state that these people (Badcontent, Buildawhale, Steemcleaners, Cheetah, etc) should be limited to their damaging actions and held responsible for any future actions that are not backed by proper journalism or any other true facts checking process.
Otherwise Steemit becomes like an uncontroled dictatorship in the freedom of speech debate...