That was, when I disagreed with someone who claimed that war was just a part of life, that without war there had never been any human development, even humanity wouldn't exist.
I told the angry steemian that not even Darwin had claimed that evolution was exclusively about the fighting of all against all. Even the founder of evolutionary theory had recognized that life was a lot about symbiosis and cooperation.
After I dared to mention the word "cooperation" I was told that I would be so much better off with my cronies the Social Justice Warriors on Facebook.
Is this really what steemit is all about?
A fight of all against all, while begging to get some whale-scraps?
And if your opinion doesn't jibe with the general consensus you are sent back like a naughty child to facebook?
Steemians claim that steemit is a platform of open discourse with no censorship.
But actually most western mainstream media outlets claim the same for themselves. Likewise, the western so-called democracies claim that they are the hubs of freedom of speech and expression. Journalists are next to never arrested or killed. And it's also true there are rarely any censors going around, confiscating newspapers and books or banning them from publishing something or other.
The problem is though, that only those editors will be hired in any mainstream newspaper, TV- or Radiostation who will comply with the corporate or the government policy of the private or the state owners.
And editors and staff-managers will hire only those journalists who already have proven that they will comply with the same policy. The journalists in turn will censor themselves, taking care to write only in the appropriate way and about appropriate topics.
If they would ever dare to step out of line they know will be fired.
In other words for a journalist it comes down to either he complies or he won't eat and feed his family.
At the moment facebook and youtube are excedingly cracking down on dissenters, most often just by demonetizing their content. But until now those platforms are still far more tolerant than the mainstream media had ever been.
Steemit has no publicly stated policy of what is appropriate content and what is not.
However, we do know that it was developed by anarcho-capitalists and libertarians. The developers are still the ones who hold vast steem shares, together with some major investors who generally seem to also share the founders' political views.
These people are nicknamed "whales" on steemit, because they own giant amounts of influence tokens called "steem power"
The disparity between the whales' steem power and that of everybody else is so vast that the majority users' influence as individuals is practically negligible on the platform.
Even joining a guild, that is a coalition of low-influence members, won't change much, since you would need thousands of members to outvote a whale and all of them would have to delegate most of their voting power to their leaders in order to vote with one voice.
Normally the leaders of any given guild would also try to get some positive attention from some whale and the loan of the whale's voting power in order for the whole guild to gain any relevance on the platform.
This means that the guild leaders will also follow the inoffiziell rules set by the whales.
In other words the so-called whales own the steemit platform lock, stock and barrel.
Without the vote of a whale or a whale supported guild you will not be able to get your post onto the "hot" or the "trending" page. The post can then only be seen the very few minutes it is still visible on the "new" page.
Additionally there is the provision that giving your vote to a post, that was already upvoted by a whale or his bot, will give you a multiple higher so-called "curation" pay-out than upvoting a small paying post. Therefor most users(and their bots) will automatically rather go to the trending page for content to read and vote on.
The consequence, of course, is quite logical:
If you want your post to be read by many users and/or wish to get a good steem-reward you better post something the whales like to hear.
This brings with it a rather crawling attitude in many users, where their posts contain lots of over-the-top praises for the platform. Users don't just proclaim how much they like steemit, but how it is the greatest thing ever created in the universe or so. And this mantra is then being repeated in every other post.
This crawler thing is not a small temporary glitch.
It's the way the system works when you've got such giant wealth disparities.
And this pretty much a mirror image of the neo-liberal system and its mainstream media-outlets.
Those who pay the piper call the tune - even without having to state on the record what the tune should be at any given moment.
And, of course in all fairness, if you as entrepreneur start a media company and put in a lot of sweat and effort in its development, and when you then succeed in finding like-minded investors, why shouldn't you have the right to do with it what you want? Why shouldn't you use your influence on the company's policy spreading your own views throughout the realm.
But one thing still needs to be understood:
Steemit and Dtube are not really censorship-free entities where you can go for ultimate freedom of speech and expression. They are not THE alternatives to facebook and youtube, after those platforms have started to crack down on the peace- and truth-movement. Unless we are ourselves committed anarcho-capiltalists we "truthers" really need to find something else
True freedom of political speech, where all topics can be considered and discussed on their own logical value, can never become a reality in a profit based system that has got large wealth disparities, be it called Neoliberalism or Anarcho-Capitalism
Sorry...
As for me, I might still be hanging around occasionally, to watch and analyze a bit, see what the outcome will be.
For those three of four of you who occasionally take a look at my posts, I will share my findings, but not exclusively.
My chances of being read or watched by more than a couple of users are much higher on wordpress and even on youtube than on steemit or Dtube.
And of course, I will still keep my promise and pay out the 10 Steem for the winner of the writers-contest of a peace and truth article.
Now, dear steemians, don't you dare to upvote this post, after all a whale might find out, and then you'll never get another chance to make a steem... a really scary prospect