I must disagree. I get the impression that you choose to see the upsides (at least in your opinion) and glance over the negative.
I don't see how censorship have to be institutional. That is how we are used to portray it today, I agree, but it is not a necessity. If we are however to follow that idea, there is already "institutionalized" downvoting within steem today. Groups of individuals that have come together to make a downvote-bot for instance. There is no universally agreed moral that dictates what they today or in the future decide to downvote.
To answer your question "Would you call any negative response to an argument, a claim, content censorship?"
By no means, no. Please do not misunderstand me. I think it is an absolute crucial requirement that critical responses is allowed. However, downvoting is so much more than only that that. Downvoting have multiple functions, and I think it is important to address them individually.
(1). It has a monetary element. It affects the distribution of newly created STEEM. Having the possibility to also vote to take away shares from specific "meaningless" posts could be argued for. This function too can be misused, and who is to determine what is "meaningless" and not. Even then, the persons upvoting "meaningless" content did invest in STEEM and are contributing to the added value. Should they not be able to do with their investment as they see fit? To me this topic is not as clear cut.
(2) Downvoting is actually hiding content. To me that is textbook definition of censorship. No way around it. I can see the argument of making pornographically material and the worse less "in your face", but that is still censorship and again who draws the line of what is acceptable or not? Hiding other individuals content through flagging is not freedom of speech, as you imply. That is censorship. Free speech is when you can leave your own comment with a piece of you mind. I am very much free speech, but not "selective free speech". As of now I lean towards that this element of the downvoting is better off removed.
(3) is the element that you are mainly referring to; the possibility to express once approval or in this case disproval. This I would absolutely like to keep. However, it should be separated from the two above. Those are tools for people who want to boost the value of their own opinion over the next person (referring to SP; a low SP individual have a smaller say than a high SP individual), or to express hatred, revenge or simply censor what they do not like (that one is no. 2. - again, that one is pure censorship).
Let me end with a question back to you. Do you think the current downvote function have no negative side to it, and that it cannot and is not being misused?
You bring up good points, these are things I end up discussing quite a lot. They are valid objections in my opinion.
But they are answerable.
1 ) from a rewards point of view, this is the simplest case. until payout, there is a completely open system wide vote on the rewards to be granted to each post, as a proportion of the rewards pool, with each voter enabled to vote to strength according their stake.
Both up and down votes are permitted. No one can take away rewards, as rewards are set at payout time and delivered to the rewarded account. In the seven day window between posting and payout (apart from the last few hours) the voting is open and active.
It is a failing of the main Steem UI steemit.com for setting the tone on both (a) down votes as flags, and (b) encouraging users to see pending rewards as guaranteed rewards, i.e. that their rewards can only track upwards. I've written about both many times and at length before, but that's the gist and is very straight forward.
2 ) posts which have pending or final rewards of zero or less are represented in the steemit.com UI (and all the main others I think) as less visually drawn attention to, collapsed etc. All that is required to show them is a click. An additional click is then needed to show the images.
I don't deny that this has a big effect on whether people choose to read the posts. @valued-customer successfully argued against me that this is not censorship, it is. It is however very very light. There can be scales of censorship and I would not consider this to be Censorship with a capital C. That is the so-called institutional censorship, total blocking of content, deletion, book burning, prohibition from writing or publishing, even imprisonment.
What we have here is better viewed as ordering and prioritization. It is a UI decision that's similar to putting porn in a cover which obscures the cover. This is a real practice. Would you say that this porn is censored? Kind of is the best answer. It's still possible to get, the hurdle is minor. But does it put some people of viewing it at all? Undoubtedly.
Again this is down to the UI. Don't like it? Make your own. The actual blockchain doesn't do this, or any form of censorship. It's important to make that distinction. It can't be more important.
3 ) this to be is a red herring. We can't peer inside people's minds to gauge their motivation. We stick to the facts and assume nothing.
The negative side is that if someone with a lot of SP want to remove your rewards they can. The balance is that you can buy stake to counteract that yourself. If you can't afford it, you can appeal to other large stakeholders you may be able to go by social means to embarrass them or enlist some people to counter it.
That's just from a practical point of view though. Systematically this is the hard reality of Steem, decisions are upheld by stake.
I did not plan to go into a lengthy exchange on this topic when made the first reply. Neither have I spent much time organizing my thoughts on the subject, as this is the first time I put this topic into text or words. I appreciate your response and engagement, I can see that you are really looking for solutions.
(1) I’m not sure if I’m able to see the full picture of how this would significantly differ from the current system in practice, but I find your proposal interesting. I agree that eh GUI on Steemit has an influence.
(2) To clarify, I was not referring to visibility in any of the “trending” lists. I was purely talking about the hiding of content. I know nothing is removed, but as you also point out people are less likely to open and read greyed out posts. When it comes to censorship, yes, there is various ways to do censor with various levels of impact. I strongly would argue that one cannot redefine the definition based on who is censoring, what is being censored and if you support it, or to what degree. Censorship is censorship. Towards the effect of greyed out posts, I would say it goes in a close relationship to conditioning. Greyed out material is commonly associated with a long list of disruptive content, and in general something strongly negative. The more people are conditioned, or accustomed if you will, to such expectation, the larger is the number of people that will ignore it. Personally, I would expect this to be a quite efficient form for censorship.
I would like to try add another angle to your description of this as “ordering and prioritization”:
Take for instance, my replies in this post. Seconds after I post, a bot is automatically downvoting my post. We are therefore talking seconds (3 seconds – checked blockchain) of visibility before its greyed. That means its is put at this disadvantage from the very beginning, not a calculated average after 7 days. Much of the decision whether or not the content is worth reading is taken by the first voter (in this case a bot you can’t beat).
Perhaps my posts could be used as an example to ask this. Do you (anyone whom would open and read the post =)) think these posts/replies deserve a downvote?
While on the topic I would like to thank you deeply for your upvote, persons, but as you can see it was all eaten up by the initial auto-downvote on my post.
(3) I might not have been clear on this point, as I cannot imagine that there is anything to disagree upon here =). I’m simply advocating free speech and that is already covered by the fact that we all are allowed to comment on whatever and to whomever we will. We do not need a downvote not upvote for that. The “tools” I’m referring to is point 1 and 2, but it might have been unclear. Wanted to keep it short.
In addition to removing rewards (which is not what I oppose), negative sides I would say is the hiding of content (strongly enhanced by the used of bots that shoots blindly). When set on auto fire, it have a strong discouraging effect on the creation of new content. The main targets for many of the bots, will likely just shrug of the inconvenience, make a new account and continue on. Along with creating resentment which often only encourage the behavior the bot creator presumably was trying to counter.
Would you say that.... lets see.. Scientology shouldnt have the right to attack those that attack it? And those that attack the practices of Scientology dont have the right to do so?Well it seems @mack-bot disagrees.
Look.. I know getting flags is tough, but if you want free speech you need to have a system in place that allows for those that object to something to have an effect on that, just like in real life..
The reward pool isnt a given. The rewards arent your money, or my "money"... We all share the reward pool and we should all have the right based on our stake, individual or grouped to say where those rewards should go to.
This is as simple as it gets.
The flag system is a must.
Its a shame most people dont use it fully.
And no... i dont think the system can be misused. Absolutely not. Vendettas or anything in that regard arent misuses of the system. Not at all.
Not liking someone and flagging him/her is a shitty thing to do, but we should have that right..
If that goes too far there are corrective measures.
This is a social media website and if you for example came after me (not that i think you would) for dunno, disagreements that would lead to a reaction and a normalization would occur eventually.
What you did to anger the @mack-bot i have no idea, but i hardly believe that the situation cannot be resolved fairly easily.
If you were hollier then holly, then the community would eventually stand up for you out of personal benefit of having such a person and Mackbot would backdown, out of self interest.
No... Flags are a must. Has nothing to do with censorship. But has everything to do with free speech.
I would have to ask you to define what you mean with “attack”. As for any verbal dispute, both parties is fully free to utter their opinions regardless of whomever will dislike it. I am fully for free speech, I don’t see what point you are trying to make here.
I’m not complaining over flags as a reaction to something someone did not like. Neither have I said all functions going further than a mere comment must go. I would kindly ask you to not add motive to my statements, and attack that instead of addressing what I actually say. So, to be clear; downvoting is currently a tool with the functions is has - fine. If someone wish to downvote a post based on it’s content - also, fine. It is made available by the creators, and I accept it as the current situation. Now, Steem is somewhat unique that its rules can be changed along the road. I’m simply raising the question is the current system the best, or can it be made better?
Regarding my bot friend, sure, I can tell you why. Some months back I upvoted a friend of mines comments to give him a boost. Whether this is an ok or not is an individual decision in my opinion. On one side STEEM is getting a boost in value from investors coming for the simple reason of ROI. So, If someone invest in steem to even just to upvote themselves (talking generally now), then it’s a huge boost for the community short term (higher price, and draws attention). On the opposite side, if everyone came for that reason, it would not be a good strategy long term for content, at all. I see both arguments, emotionally I lean towards the last one. And I have no problem with the ones that decided to downvote those comments. Fee speech have spoken. My problem is when this turns into an all-out flat “ban”/flagging of everything coming from that account, as an unmonitored lifetime sentence. If I would choose not to listen to the response, I would simply jump to another account and continued doing whatever I felt like until someone else’s toes were step on. That’s not what I want or do, so, I stayed and listen to the complains (flags).
Now for the bot, as you can see it is downvoting all my posts. Yes, I have made two attempts on contacting the owner without any form for response. Also, these blacklists are copied, and also widely used by 3rd parties that at that point have no idea on why the names are on the list. This is what I would refer to as “misuse”, or perhaps better phrased as unfortunate downside of the current situation.
The effect on me, was that I let myself be silenced. I stopped making posts and commenting reduced to a minimum. As I put a lot of work and research into my posts, and I was writing for others, not my personal diary, it seemed pointless. My motivation for contributing was and is low, as you can see every engagement I do is automatically downvoted and hidden.
I’m looking for solutions, and constructive exchange of ideas. I also understand that you are well set in your opinion on the current situation being perfect. So far, your arguments have not settled my, but I’m more than open to change if have an convincing reasoning.
I’m glad to hear you don’t think I would “come after you”. Hey, first thing I did was to upvote you, even though I disagree with your general conclusion. That’s more than you did for me =P. Truly, I’m not asking for your upvote. Also, don’t, it would only fall into the hole of my bot friend.
Thank you for a lengthy exchange, I appreciate the engagement and I hope I haven’t been too sharp in some of my phrasing. It’s been a lot of typing, more than I’ve been used to lately.
This is what he did a few months ago. Now, multiply that by at least 100.You see, @silentscreamer, it's very easy for people like that to tell themselves they did an innocent upvote, or whatever, and triggered @mack-bot.
As for @patrice not responding, the next most logical step would have been entering @steemcleaner's Discord. But, I guess that's too complicated for us crypto folks.