Recently I have been catching myself more and more using the Steem blockchain in ways I hadn't really used it before.
Yes, it's a social network with a lot of promise, still many challenges and an ever-evolving community. But when I recently wrote about Steem being our legacy I found that I had started using Steem as investigative tool in the sea of censorship that has become most social networks today. Politically correct narratives everywhere slowly drowning out organic voices.
I found Steem to show amazing promise to specifically enable me to find articles on controversial topics I was looking into, and to hear as many diverse opinions on it as I could, even right from the time the story in question developed...
Using the swarm
Ever since youtube came around (and before it got overrun by trolls and paid interests promoting certain agendas) I have cherished the comment section for what it was - a place where I could quickly gather a general sense of the popular points of agreement to the video's content, as well as scout out the arguments why many people weren't in agreement with what was presented.
A comment section is a treasure trove of feeling out the swarm, because it allows us the luxury to question our own views on the matter presented through solid argumentations we may have never considered, as well as get a good feel for the "energetic potency" of the counter-arguments presented: Are there only childish, superficial opinions bashing the video with ad hominem attacks? Or are there sophisticated voices making a good argument I may have overlooked when initially diving into the topic?
Feeling out the swarm can be a great benefit in analyzing any topic, precisely because of the people it attracts and their way to communicate their views. Have already written about that aspect more thoroughly if you are curious.
Where then does Steem come in?
Well, I was surprised to find that whenever I am looking into something these days, I don't do a freakin' google search hoping to get some facts (instead pointing me to controlled-opposition websites or mightily funded PR campaigns to force the official narrative into the public mind).
Rather I find I am doing searches on Steem. Searches for anything that is even remotely controversial or hard to discern. Steem searches are a great starting point.
What have people already written about the topic in question? Is there already a great article on what I am looking for? Chances are, there is.
What sorts of articles do we have from the time in question before the controlled narratives were rolled out and how much proof of brain has been put into them?
What problems existed with a given project or situation before featured videos and mainstream nonsense on youtube displaced most of the powerful analyses that pointed out the major flaws within a popular narrative?
And most of all - what other opinions do we have? How well founded are they? How diplomatic are the people engaging in discussion, what else are they normally writing about and what are their basic assumptions? checking out their blog is easy and gives a great picture of their take on life.
In this sense Steem can be a great tool for doing detective work into ideologies, assumption clusters and majorly popular but unrecognized biases of our age.
The Reddit-style tree structure of the comment section on steem is still my absolute favorite as it allows for clear and concise consideration, analysis and weighing of all these factors. I never had a problem with highly-upvoted comments being shown first, I know that to find the underdog comments I scroll towards the bottom of the page. And while some comments may be greyed out (most of the time due to flagging wars and interpersonel differences, least of the time due to being actual "spam") I find that there are no comments ommitted from the discussion preemptively like they often are on youtube. There it may look like everything's there in the comments, but I often had the experience that youtube and google can't be trusted one bit when it comes to fair and balanced displaying of free thought. Too many categories, "marked" comments and "lost" entries.
Steem is WAY better in showcasing a fair, balanced discussion underneath any post.
And I gotta say, that the level of disagreement in Steem's comment section seems quite strong. Healthily so. While there certainly is a great deal of name calling I often see healthy disagreements between people that actually lead to enormous amounts of insight for the third-party reader just considering both sides presented.
At least in the comment section (not talking about the trending page) - right now we have this magnificent timecapsule engine that is Steem, and as it grows I find we should use it even more liberally to get to the bottom of anything we want more information on. It's all right here and many pages are still blank waiting to be filled by people capable of producing great and illuminating content on the topic of their choice.
Why wait for anyone else to do it? Do what your intuition calls for right now and it will be forever searchable and potentially wayshowing to many future users to join this place. Let's get to it!!!
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