A CENSORSHIP THREAT TO STEEMIT

New accounts are now being set up explicitly for the purpose of flagging/censoring content they want to suppress. These accounts are not regular users who like flagging a few posts - they have been set up specifically for the purpose of censorship.

And they have enough wallet power to potentially hide most people's posts. This is not from earnings, because they don't actually post or comment, they just flag/censor.

There is one simple solution to this problem, and that is to ditch flagging.

I've been saying this for 10 months now, but it feels like pushing shit up hill.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@sift666/six-changes-i-d-love-to-see-on-steemit

Today several people on Steemit are trying to discuss the real agenda behind entities like Fakebook, Youtub, and Gooble.

And a key part of discussing that is who really owns and controls them. But of course this is one of the subjects that is being censored.

I'd like to do a post about it myself, but I suspect that it might be flagged. In fact I'm not even sure now if this post might be looking for trouble.

Even after the financial spanking we've all had over the past week, my account is still worth over $4000, and I'm the 1343 richest person Steemit! But that is probably not enough power to keep my posts visible if the new censors decide to grey one of my posts out.

And the vast majority of Steemit users have a lot less in their wallets so are more screwed than I am... I really am not into this flag war crap, but I suspect if flagging stays, this where we headed.

There is always some bullshit reason why flagging is "necessary" - whales regulating payouts, stopping spam comments - whatever! - Spammers are like fleas, while this is potentially full blown censorship could make Steemit just like fakebook, and flagging hands the fascists the tool to do it on a plate.

I know I usually like to take the piss a bit, but today after seeing several posts and comments being censored/flagged, this is winding me up...

There are three main reasons I want to have a spazz about this:

Firstly because I hate censorship.

Secondly because a bunch of fascist nazis could potentially screw up our supposedly uncensored platform

And thirdly because this is all so easy to fix. It's like watching a slow motion train wreck - we just need to ditch bloody flagging!

This is what I wrote 10 months ago:

Ditch the flagging thing

This one is very controversial, and I have three ideas. The simple way is to get rid of all flagging. Even Facebook, which is certainly not an example of free speech, doesn’t have flagging (it does have many ways to do the job less obviously). I think flagging is bollocks, so this would be my perfect solution.

Failing that, I’d make all flags (downvotes) carry the same weight, like they do on Youtube. But it’s harder to do that on Steemit because the voters here all carry different voting power, so that’s probably not an option.

My third best option is to make a downvote equivalent to the power of the median (middle) upvote on that post. By that I mean, if there were, say, 11 votes ranging from .01 of a cent to $100, use the value of the 6th vote from the bottom (which is also the 6th from the top) which might be more like 10c.

Possibly some whales won’t like this suggestion much. But most whales view Steemit as an investment, and want to encourage a larger user base. Many of the 99% of people on Steemit who are not yet whales, don’t much like the idea that a whale can potentially come along and bury their post because they disagree with it. As happy minnows are the key to Steemit's future growth, hopefully a lot of whales will be cool with this idea, or one a bit like it.