Since the invention of the Internet, many online forums have sprung up; many have come and gone, others carried on with various degrees of grace, while others absolutely bloomed into multinational behemoths with hundreds of millions of users.
With the proliferation of these forums and social networking tools, communication and access to information has become unbelievably easy. It is quite easy for me, here in Ibadan Nigeria, to catch up with the happenings in somewhere distant, like Kuala Lumpur for example, in real time.
But in the midst of all these seemingly progressive strides by man in conquering the communication space, more than a few serious problems have arisen and have now deeply entrenched in the human social psyche:
Tribalism, Racism, and Bigotry:
The internet gives a veil of anonymity to users, and people, maybe mistaking anonymity for invisibility have turned the social media space into a virtual war zone. Yes, the world is filled with various opinions and different preferences.
Offline, people would pretend to tolerate each other and/or appreciate each other’s differences but when they put on the veil of the internet, they unmask their inner devils and go all out with hate speech about those who do not belong to a label they attach to their existence
In many multi-ethnic nations, it is not uncommon to find hatred flowing online between members of the major ethnic groups. Most of these e-battles started with a couple of small minded people with cheap data plans spreading hatred, lies, and propaganda online. Some even going as far as asking for ethnic cleansing and what not. You cannot help but get infuriated when you read these comments, many even call for war without weighing the consequences of their statements and the ripple effects it will have on their societies.
Cyber Bullying:
The internet is not a safe place to share your voice, or for you to be to be noticed. There has being a recent spate of suicides which can be attributed to Cyber Bullying on Social Media.
There is something seriously wrong with a society where people can be so mean to one another; with teasing, emotional blackmail and torture so intense that it ruins the self-confidence of the victim and sometimes even pushing such victims to suicide.
What is wrong with humanity? Why do we get such sick pleasure from seeing other humans fall apart? We can push people to the limits of their emotional capacity when no one is watching, and then run back feigning clean hands when shit hits the fan, we like to think that are not liable when things go wrong; some even say what happens online stays online
Spreading of Ignorance:
On the internet, everybody is an expert about everything. I could easily write an article about a contentious issue... like, say; There is no such thing as Global Warming; I don’t need to give any data or empirical evidence proving my statements.
Shockingly you would find out that at the very least, 35% of people who read the article would believe, some of them would even go as far as cite me in arguments about global warming among friends,
they would win a couple of these arguments with my baseless statements, gain converts to my way of thinking and from there the cycle of ignorance can only grow.
Online Scams:
I am Nigerian. We are most famous for being the biggest and most powerful black nation in the world. It as also very well known that Nigerians invented/ perfected the art of the internet fraud. I do not personally know any internet fraudsters, but I have heard about many through acquaintances. These people are said to be willing go to any length to secure a big pay day.
Some are said to justify their actions by saying they are getting reparations for the Billions of Dollars carted away monthly from our economy by western corporations & corrupt politicians.
But we all know that all of that is horse-shit! These people are selfish psychopaths whose primary purpose is to ruin lives of unsuspecting victims and nothing else.
These sociopaths are less than 0.00000001% of the Nigerian population; most Nigerians are hardworking, upright and honest. However; do not fall for a “Nigerian Scam”, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is; except it is steemit.
Now to Why Steemit Rocks.
I have spent about 2 and a half weeks lost in the wonder Steemit now. I can boldy say that; apart from the singular unfortunate troll I once got on steemit.chat, none of the above is even conceivable.
Steemit is a forum that moderates itself.
Cynics might argue that Steemians just seem to be perfect human beings because they are afraid of getting flagged, as getting flagged affect their potential payouts.
Yes, one can argue that! But think of it this way… The system ensures that almost everyone is courteous, law abiding, insightful, kind, focused on spreading knowledge and creating value; leaving time off spreading malice and ignorance. There is no need (like on other forums) to create an enforced online police state where moderators have to track every statement and post to make sure they are not offensive or controversial.
I once saw an attempt by a scammer to dupe members of the community, the way the community; especially the likes of 
A cynic can argue that some Steemians might be terrible Human Beings pretending to be good people, but there can be no argument about Steemit being the best and safest forum on the internet. If you think otherwise, drop your argument in the comment section