I’ve been reading a lot of posts lately and one of the recurring themes that keeps coming up is how to prevent voices from being heard. These calls are coming under several different banners:
Many people are frustrated that a high number of posts and pictures are spammy, copy and pasted from elsewhere or even reposted from other authors on Steemit without their permission. None of these practices are defensible and should be discouraged. I don’t think it is censorship to fight these posts and/or posters but a soft approach should be taken because if even one legitimate post is wrongfully suppressed in the name of spam then Steemit has failed a user. The soft approach I speak of is the ignoring of posts, down voting and innovative tools such as 
https://steemit.com/money/@algimantas/have-you-heard-about-plagiarism-bot-cheetah-well-i-must-say-its-completely-broken-even-i-have-waited-for-its-release-myself
Certain people can’t seem to accept the fact that Trolls are a fact of Social Media life and want a way to eliminate them or look for ways to suppress their speech. As always the best way to handle a Troll is to, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Trolls live for drama. Psychological distress notwithstanding, a Troll can be beneficial. A Troll can add life to a post by resuscitating the comment section and adding curation to a post. Trying to eliminate and or regulate Trolls is a nearly pointless and impossible endeavor.
This one bothers me the most. I’ve heard people saying we don’t need “X” of content on Steemit if we want it to thrive in the future. That is a fine opinion and certainly valid but what is disturbing is when people connive methods for discouraging or eliminating certain types of content or people. We will be no better than Reddit or Twitter if we decide what content or people is unacceptable. We are at the genesis of something great but because we are at the beginning we have to be better and missteps can very devastating.
Steemit has a built in algorithm that allow for the kind of content that “the people” want to rise to the top. The content may be girls in bikinis talking about travel, makeup tutorials, spam or talking about Steemit. Let’s not force the issue on content or suppressing content that may not seem like its right for the platform. Perhaps a year from now the very content we may find unpopular now be what makes Steemit even greater as it is seen as a platform were all forms of speech are welcome.
