Elonk is another actor who is part of the same show. But he is someone quite dangerous because he presents himself to the masses as a potential hero of change.
Now more than ever we must make our network continue to strengthen its infrastructure, therefore its social networks, an open space to express ideas and questions freely. Sooner rather than later people will take refuge from censorship and the whole apparatus of blackmail and repression, so we must be prepared for the next waves of users who will come in search of absolute freedom of expression.
We must be clear that only certain platforms allow censorship via downvote. Down votes, for example do not affect trending on 3speak and many other platforms too. In the near future, once the offchain Union indexer systems are integrated from SPKnetwork trending will be far more customisable and eventually the power to affect trending will be both in the hands of the user directly or on community social token layer two systems where prominent down votes abusers will likely be excluded completely
What method is used to suppress speech does not at all matter to whether or not it is censorial. EVERY means of suppressing speech is censorship, from hanging by the neck until dead to a wink and a nod to advertisers. Twatter doesn't take any action that directly touches creators they censor. All they do is remove their content from the feeds of those that might seek to hear their content. Nigel Farage has been debanked. All of HRC's 'friends' have been executed. HW downvotes every post and comment of whoever they choose.
All of these methods suppress speech. All of these methods are censorship. Censorship is critically necessary to social media because it is necessary to prevent spam, scams, and plagiarism so that society can interact meaningfully, and those things will degrade social interactions if they aren't censored. Deploying any censorship outside of spam, scams, or plagiarism also degrades social interactions, and denying it is censorship doesn't affect it's censorial affect.
I greatly appreciate every attempt to limit toxic censorship while permitting beneficial censorship to continue.
Thanks!
Downvotes are not censorship, though. There is a fundamental difference between the two. The fact that platforms or account settings can prevent low-reputation users and negative-reward posts from being hidden is just another one of the reasons our decentralized structure is censorship-resistant.
Yes, agreed
So seizing the bank accounts of politicians isn't censorship either, nor is double tapping to the back of the head.
Censorship is defined as any suppression of speech. DV's are blatantly within that definition, and you are just in denial. DV's are essential to the function of Hive, because they are wholly competent to eliminate spam, scams, and plagiarism, and they are only able to do that because they are potent censorial technology.
As I have said previously in numerous posts, it is less important what I or you think about downvoting, but more important what the public perception in web 2 land is. Only yesterday I heard Jimmy Dore in conversation with Last American Vagabond (iirc) and they mentioned that demonetisation is censorship. I personally agree with this because in a competition for attention, money is used to increase the odds of winning (which basically means your content is read/viewed by other people) and so payouts are relevant. If it costs money to get views then those with the least money experience the same situation as if they were blatantly and overtly censored. If money is deliberately withheld based on ideology, then that is literally censorship.
Again, although we seem to disagree on this - it is more relevant what other non Hive users think and it seems that generally (at least among the people I listen to on web 2) they see demonetisation as a form of deliberate censorship at times.
For me, the solution is layer 2 communities that can self govern to solve the problems associated with bad actors misusing downvotes. Note: Originally, on Steem, downvotes were a last resort only - yet somehow on Hive some people have ignored this and just used them for ideological reasons to nuke accounts (including mine), without much comeback. Layer 2 technology correctly designed will eliminate this problem and make for the most secure and reliable free speech communities that are possible. :)
Yes, also the better the layer two economy and economic model, the more easily it will be able to use profits to buy layer one
Absolutely, yes, it's almost perfect and I'm excited to see it take shape. I want people to learn more from the world of open source software, where sharing means the easy ability to completely disassociate with the versions that came before and start again if you want to. If people want to benefit from the shared effort of Hive overall, then they need to respect that other people think differently to them and work with them in an productive way - otherwise, face the consequence of the community fragmenting and it's overall momentum being stunted.
The other thing here is that the stakes which have clearly abused their downvote privelages won’t likely be included in some community social token drops. Should these communities build great economies for themselves, it means they will be able to buy up the layer one and nullify what they see as down vote abuse on the layer one too.
Possibly, yes. Short sightedness inevitably results in pain sooner or later!
I am inclined to agree with you about Elon, yes. The brain implant technology is the massive red flag there for me.
Well said, yes, communication, education and orchestration of people for efficiency are important here - but sometimes a challenge to delivery effectively in a decentralised environment!