This post is also on SaesDeHonos.com

The more I get used to using Steemit, the more I'm starting to appreciate the platform and the concept. However, I've been having some serious concerns lately. The concerns that I have might not be valid because of my own ignorance, but nevertheless, they are real issues that I'm struggling with at the moment.

As I'd want to focus more on the "Real Talk"-concept, I've realized a possible threat to the concept that could possibly affect my whole account. That threat is the flagging/downvote-system.

While I'm browsing the posts here on Steemit, every now and then I find topics that are very sensitive and controversial. As you would expect, the conversations about these topics can turn out to be really heated. Sometimes the environment may become so toxic, that people will resort to flagging each other.

This might even go beyond that to the point where people decide to make it their life's mission to flag all content you have made, will ever make and thus try to destroy your account/channel completely.

There have been times when I thought of taking part in the conversation and even making my own post about the subject. Then I back down and think "what if they start flagging me, I'd be f*cked!". So once again I decided to just keep my mouth shut so that I wouldn't get targeted.

You might say that these things don't happen that often, so it's not that big of a problem that I should be worrying about it. While you might be right about this not being a large spread attitude, but it's still a possibility that this will happen. After all, we all know how irrational and impulsive people can be and how far some of them are willing to go to ruin someone's life.

Source

It's not that big of a deal if you're already well known in the community, that means you have people you can turn to if things go bad for whatever reason. That doesn't apply to "minnows" like me. We don't know anyone, nobody knows us. We're just a drop in the ocean. If someone decides to bring us down, we will just vanish quietly without anyone noticing. We don't have that kind of a safety net.

What are my options?

While I'm well aware that this is a wild west and there is nobody to hold my hand, I'm still wondering what kind of actions we can take in these cases. Is there any way (other than posting and commenting) we can reach out to the community in the cases of harassment/witch hunt ?

If there is no help available, this leads to a situation where the minnows just need to play along until they become big enough so that they can defend themselves.

I genuinely believe that Steemit has the potential to become one of the absolute top big boy platforms out there. As long as the community works together and puts in the effort in improving the platform, we can make that a reality.