This post is an expansion upon a comment I made yesterday. I noticed today that we currently lack the ability to un-resteem a post. I decided to post about my experience and why I think it'd be a helpful added feature.
Because I want to support beautiful photography on this platform, I previously upvoted, resteemed, and replied to a photography post, thinking that it was the author's original content.
The next day after seeing the other content posted to that account, most of it clearly not the author's, I decided to check the image with an reverse image search, and found the image on a number of other sites.
From my findings, it became clear that the post violated community guidelines, as outlined by 
Image: Ability to un-resteem posts #1713 | Source: GitHub, Josh Peterson | Rights: Fair Use
As you can see from the above screenshot, I opened a GitHub issue relaying my experience.
One of the more useful features on other social networks is the ability to un-share a post, whether it be a simple undo or a delete.
As you can see from the scenario that I layed out above, while I expressed my disapproval of the content using the tools at my disposal as a Steemit community member, I'm still stuck with the content on my blog timeline.
This is problematic for two reasons: the first being that the account in question is still receiving traffic to the article by way of my blog timeline; and second, because it remains on my blog timeline, it looks like I approve of the content. This shouldn't have to be the case.
If an un-resteem feature were available, similar to other major social networks, these two problems would be alleviated immediately. This would help to elevate the user experience and further encourage the proliferation of original content.
Please let me know what you think of the idea in the comment section below.
Thank you for reading,
- Josh
View Steemit blockchain activity/edit history | View draft edit history on GitHub | View My Steemit Archive on GitHub
Josh Peterson is a 2016 Robert Novak Journalism Program Fellow and a writer living in Denver, CO. Follow Josh on Steemit and Twitter. Keybase for secure chat. PGP Fingerprint: 4507 3000 1A40 2691 DAB8 ED65 A3EA 3629 73FD B7FF
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
