We know there are investors, there are content creators, there are curators, there are people who do a little bit of all of this. Yet with all of this there is one thing that is NOT good for our community. That is to attack each other.
I've been an advocate for taking certain steps to limit the ability of our community to in a sense attack itself. I am not going to talk about those limits. This is not a post telling you how to fix it. This is a post about some behavior I am seeing that is damaging to the community. I am going to explain it without naming names. If you know what I am talking about or the people I am talking about please do not name names. This is about strengthening our community, not about weakening it by naming people.
Those of us that have been here for awhile (or perhaps those even here for a short period) know that those with a lot of steem power have a lot of actual power.
This site takes all kinds of people. If we down vote people for reasons other than spam, abuse, and plagiarism but instead focus on down voting on opinion or because we do not like the way someone is choosing to exist on the steemit platform we are limiting the platform. We are closing it. We are trying to make the platform over into an image we demand, and not leaving it open to grow and be inclusive to all.
This is particularly bad if someone with vast power here targets someone else who is powerful and is an advocate for steemit and steem outside of steemit.
One of these celebrities is known to post articles here. This celebrity also up votes other peoples content if you check the steemd profile. What the celebrity does not do is respond to comments on his posts. He approaches posting comments here on steemit like a FIRE AND FORGET missile.
Someone with significantly more power than this celebrity has taken notice, and taken aim. They have begun to crusade for down voting this persons posts simply because they do not respond to comments. This is another one of those subjective attacks where they feel a post does not "add to the steemit platform" yet that is the problem with using the down vote in this fashion. The steemit platform should be inclusive. It should not be about becoming the personal playground of the powerful. We must realize not everyone is going to use it the same way.
The powerful person that is doing this has good intentions. I simply think they are perhaps missing the damage these actions could have. Sure they may not like the fact the celebrity ignores steemit. Yet in reality as more and more celebrities join steemit this is actually likely to be a common approach some people take. Especially if that celebrity is involved in many other projects outside of steemit.
I made this post as much for this powerful person as I did all the rest of you (us). Please sheathe your sword. There is no reason to attack our own community. It is going to form neighborhoods and groups that approach it different. Attacking them because you do not like it is bad for the platform.
In the case of the celebrity I've noticed they are powering down for the first time since they joined the platform. They have advocated for this platform outside of steemit and they were BUYING steem and powering up. I don't know if this person is powering down due to the hard fork, or because they have seen the flaw that is the downvote (flag). It permits the powerful to effectively neutralize people they disagree with. I did not say censor, because technically their words are there. Their payout and experience on steemit is vastly different than other peoples though. Instead of an open community of thought and sharing they are actually in a way under attack.
I don't see how such activities can help this platform. They don't help reddit. They make reddit hostile and even though it has a lot of users, they are a fraction of what they could be. There are a lot of people that will not visit reddit because of how hostile and troll infested it can feel. It is in our interest to NOT emulate that approach.
Allow people to take their own approach. If you don't like it, don't follow them, and don't vote on their material. Yet we also shouldn't attack them.
Steem On!
