I experienced my first downvote rampage today. #newsteem Multiple comments and posts of mine were downvoted 100% within a minute of each other by a disgruntled steem author who had tried to express a climate change opinion, and failed to gain support for it. His response? "Fuck you!" and then ping, ping, ping and more ping with Gina struggling to process all the pings, like a harried mom trying to manage a toddler having a meltdown over candy in the supermarket.
Image by Александра Туркина from Pixabay
Yesterday, in the course of my @ecotrain curation, I defended someone's right to express an opinion, even if I didn't agree with it. I was curating on behalf of the #ecotrain tag, which the guy had used. My comment was exactly this:
Always good to call BS. And a lot of the predictions and attribution of so-called causes are just that: BS. But we here at ecotrain really want to see SOLUTIONS, adaptation ideas to a changing environment, positive strategies, inputs that enable others etc.... Looking fwd to part 2. :) "Shut the fuck up and stay out of it" is not inclusive, community-based nor terribly helpful to the uninformed. But informing them is!! :) So what would you positively like to add to the discussion or inform people about, given everyone else has it wrong? THAT'S what we'd love to hear and support.
So, to his credit, he took up my invitation to post the counter argument. By the time I saw it today, he'd already received major downvotes by many other people. In fact, he made 10 posts in a 5 hour period, all of which other people downvoted to the extent that they are "greyed out". Today I tried to make some relatively neutral comments to his original post (trying to allow him the right to hold and express his opinion whilst pointing out that it is harder to post content than it is to discredit) and got the big "fuck you" followed by the downvoting rampage.
It made me think about downvotes, and what they're for.
I've used my downvote precisely 3 times snce HF21 - twice last week specifically to downvote someone blackmailing another person for steem to remove downvotes.
I believe in the right of all people to express opinions, not just because I happen to like them or agree with them. I think the best response to content I disagree with is to simply unfollow and ignore. I do it in real life too, not just online. :)
Pondering this little downvote rampage today and what it is there to teach me, I decided that the downvote rampage is exactly the mentality behind facebook, censorship and mainstream media. i.e. I will deny you the right to a counter opinion and penalize you in any way I can for having an opinion I don't like.
Impotent rage is an ugly thing.
Steem is unique in its evolution as decentralized media. I'm personally thrilled at the way #newsteem has improved my posting and curation rewards, and is encouraging far better content. I'm just wondering out loud in this post about downvoting without accountability. I made my 3 downvotes very clear as to the WHY - and they were warranted and behaviour responses, rather than content driven. To indiscriminately rampage through someone's profile and downvote multiple posts and comments in such a short time that it was not even possible to have read them somehow makes me question the indiscriminate downvote. Yes, I know it's somewhat limited by Resource Credits. But might it not be more like Witness Votes? You only get 20 or 30 or 50 in a given time frame, so you better be damn sure they're appropriately used?
Curious how many others have experienced a downvote rampage and what we might collectively learn from this?
Pondering toddlers, meltdowns and people's anger when we disagree.
