Months ago Orwellian censorship started sweeping through Facebook and Twitter under the guise of "Hate Speech Policy" so I was quickly intrigued by Steemit which promised to be an "uncensorable blockchain" solution.
Unfortunately, despite 's and
's pledge to the 1st amendment, I saw how censorship became quite common on Steemit through flagging, and often for arbitrary and petty reasons.
I see now there's finally a flagging etiquette which though says it is ok to flag-censor someone for "Hate Speech"(exactly the policy being used by Facebook and Twitter to censor people) or "Internet Trolling" (open to several interpretations as you can see in this thread https://steemit.com/steem/@ats-david/steem-price-analysis-december-7-2016 )
Under 1st Amendment rights, unless someone is engaging in criminal behaviour ( fraud, plagiarizing, harassing, threatening and inciting violence which are all recognized exceptions to the 1st amendment), there should be no censorship.
btw I can fully understand users wanting to remove rewards from a "Racist"(whatever it may mean nowadays) to prevent him from trending , but I can never understand or accept censorship. Censoring someone is an act of aggression on his fundamental rights. "Bad People" are better punished through reputation damage or by simply ignoring them (mute button works).
Flaggers should be careful what weight they apply to a flag , or maybe a smart pop-up could inform the flagger that the applied weight would result in a post becoming hidden and they should be mindful of 1st amendment rights etc . Personally I'd bring back the downvote button (for anyone to use as they see fit, but without censoring powers ) and have the Flag button (with added censoring powers) separate just for clear abuses.
in the meanwhile a Steemit chat group "defenders of the 1st Amendment" could be setup to neutralize any censoring flagging through counter-voting.
anyway imagine this very possible future scenario if the censorship issue is not addressed :
David Duke signs up and gets flag-censored for "Hate Speech"
Milo Yiannopoulos signs up and gets flag-censored for "Internet Trolling".
result? Steemit would fall off a cliff just like Facebook and Twitter (users are leaving en masse for places like Gab)
I 'd like to invest big in Steem, especially with the new hard-fork, but only if it will be a truly free speech platform. it's absolutely key for its future success in my opinion.