Steem/Tron - Downvoting Censorship?

Welcome back to the channel. I hope you're all having a great day. Uh, so title of the video is downvoting a form of censorship, right? And this has come many different ways, uh, speaking specifically about the Steam chain. So, um, you know, I think that if we look at downvoting on Steam blockchain It has been such a controversial topic, such a divided topic, that has led people to create their own blockchains where there's no downvoting at all. That is quite similar to what you get on Steam. I mean, as far as the software that's run, right? So we would call them clones of Steam. Some would call it some type of pseudo fork, whatever you want to call it. There's been several versions of Steam using the Steam-like software and attempting to actually basically implement some of those things that maybe people thought would work better had Steam done that or something to that effect. And some of those things included downvoting. Now, to try to understand the reasoning behind downvoting, in a situation where you have a decentralized social network, you're going to have many issues with people spamming, people doing, posting insensitive material. People posting, um, things that are harmful to others, some to some degree, and you name it. Just many things could come with, um, with a decentralized chain where nobody can do anything. This thing lies immutable on the, uh, on the chain, right? So without some type of measure to, uh, deal with a situation where you would have, uh, those possibilities. You would need something like downvoting, right, in order to address that. Um, and of course, looking at downvoting from that perspective makes a lot of sense. It makes a great deal of sense, and I 100% agree with that. I still agree with downvoting and I would probably more likely support the idea of why downvoting is important. But there are some that believe that downvoting is a type of, or a means to, not I guess only silence voices, right? You know, at best what happens is you can kind of have these posts that will say something like it's been taken away for low ratings and you can just click on it. But it obviously sends a message that, you know, something's inappropriate or wrong with that post. But some would consider that censorship. Exactly. The next part is, uh, you lose, uh, whatever that value to that post or some percentage of it. You lose some percentage of it when you're downvoted. And looking at one of the posts I did, I, you know, I would— a title like this, Steam Tron Y side with Justin Sun, I would— I'm surprised there's any money here at all. In fact, I think I was speaking with somebody earlier from the Steam community and they were saying something to the effect of You're, you know, you're fortunate there's some money there at all. And, um, I, I believe about over 66% or so of the money that was here is gone from the downvoting, right? Because they can do that. Uh, so it's probably less about a— if you want to use a term like that, it's less— maybe it's less about, uh, silencing your voice and more about our taking away what the value the chain thought you should partake in. And they also say something to the effect of, well, you know, the value wasn't yet paid out yet, right? It's still in transit, it's still in queue, right? And so it is not your money. Uh, and so in that way, uh, that, that would mean that downvoting shouldn't be an issue to us at all, right? Um, there, there is also the other thing in reverse where the value of a post, it obviously through the algorithm, uh, pushes it up more. And, uh, and if a person can take away that value through downvoting, it does kind of minimize your voice, right? So is that a form of censorship? I don't know, but it's, it's all interesting to think about. Moving on to the, the overall good of downvotes, what I find quite interesting as well is that no matter where the progress is on the Steam chain, downvoting is always an issue. And, and every time there's talk of a fork or some change to Steam, downvoting comes up. So at the very least, downvoting is a very complicated topic, and it's one that I don't think has really ever been resolved, uh, since the start of the Steam chain. Uh, because if it had been resolved, there wouldn't have been, uh, various clone sites of Steam that thought it was a bad idea. There wouldn't be, uh, people who've invested quite a bit of money in Steam arguing against the people downvoting their content, right? So obviously downvoting is a very complicated thing. So is there any solution to downvoting? Well, I had kind of came up with some ideas about how downvoting could work because in some aspects of downvoting, you know, what you get is you can actually get a situation where downvoting can be a very good thing, but maybe downvoting itself should go through a more democratic process, right? So I think what happens with Steam is the weight of your downvote is in direct relation to your stake. Similar to the voting structure. And, um, the representation of, um, I guess you could say, uh, one person in relation to everybody else, um, can somehow create problems in that that one person's opinion could equal the opinion of dozens of people, right? Um, and that, that's kind of tricky. That, that gets a little bit tricky. So one idea I came up with was something like a commission of downvoters that, much like witnesses, are elected by the chain, but they follow a certain etiquette. They, they follow a certain, uh, uh, um, process in determining, uh, what is downvoted, right? And that, uh, um, in that— in the downvoting process, um, that there are, uh, are circumstances where if a downvote takes place, that maybe a checkbox is done, and that it is clarity on the quality of the content being downvoted more so than people's opinions, right? Because whereas I can even agree that downvoting is not censorship, right? I would say it's not censorship, but I would say it has these very scary elements of what we get in censorship, right? You know, and one of the big issues about decentralized social media was always that Um, in decentralized social media, many of the reasons why people came there to decentralized social media was to get away from centralized social media where there may be ideas that are politically driven that cause people to be banned from the chain, right? So then decentralized social media becomes a place where you don't have to worry about your content being removed from the chain. It can be an opinion opposite of someone else's, right? And you're not punished by the opinion, um, you know, in that way. Um, and whereas again, I don't think downvoting fits into the category or of anything like that, I do believe there is a correlation between the value of a post and the effect it has on the network, the, the value of it, the weight of its voice. And if a person can diminish, one person can diminish the value of that voice, um, that's a, that's a little bit concerning. And, and so even when you think in terms of something like EOS Voice, where everybody gets the same amount of, um, tokens every day, and they can use these tokens to push their, uh, voice to the top through a bid process, which means somebody outbids you, you get your tokens back and you can rebid again until Your voice has as much weight. Even something like that, I think, answers a question a little bit more better than downvoting somebody and reducing the impact their post has on that network, right, in some fashion. Uh, so I, you know, I think at the end of the day, we have to decide, even though downvoting does serve a purpose and it has— it's a necessary thing. How we carry it out, is it doing more harm than good, right? Because if we're, if we're losing people, uh, based on downvoting, uh, and a relational loss of this is, is not, uh, balancing out and comparable to the good that it's doing to protect the chain, then, you know, I think we really do have to think about not necessarily getting rid of downvoting. I don't think that would be the solution either, but having a commission, having a group of people, much like the witnesses that are voted in to administer this and to administer it in a way where we deal with the quality of the content that is not spam and that people aren't being penalized just based on their opinions. right? Because if you penalize people on opinion, uh, you're, you're sending— it may not be censorship, but you're sending not a very good message, and it's not a very, um, inclusive message to a lot of people who might be interested in joining your, your chain. And I, and I think that can, uh, be a negative thing for the Steem blockchain in the future So much so that it is more, um, uh, harmful than helpful. Just my opinion, you know. But I would like to see downvoting done in a way that's responsible. You know, interesting enough, I think, um, I was on one of the major social media sites. I don't remember which one it is, but anytime you get ready to dislike something, dislike some— somebody's, uh, content or something, or downvote it. Um, you go through this process of, are you sure you want to do this? Why are you doing this? And they let you know that's what you're doing. Are you sure you want to do it? So there's a lot of, um, uh, uh, procedure to just, uh, doing that to make sure that you're not flagging a person, uh, just, you know, based on something personal. Perhaps, right? That it is, you know, based more on the quality of the content. And I find that so interesting. And I think that would be a great move for the Steam chain to move in. Not get rid of downvoting. We need it. You know, you're going to have people gaming the system, spamming the system, and a variety of things. But what can happen with downvoting As you can see even from my post, you can start to lose a lot of your voice and influence in the Steam community just based on a difference of opinion, right? And that's never a good thing, right? It is, and if not in actual act of censorship, it is sending a resounding message that this is the mood of it and this is the feel of it, right? So I'd love to hear what you all think about that. Downvotes, do you think it should be some changes in the system? Do you think it works great how it is? Um, you know, and speaking to the Justice Soon situation, uh, I, I believe, and again, you guys could correct me if I'm wrong, one of his policies, uh, was going to be to get rid of downvotes. And, uh, of course the other thing was, uh, um, the power down, the 3-day power down or something like that. I don't agree with the power down if the getting rid of the downvoting was the, um, was another policy. Not that I want to get rid of downvoting, but again, the idea that downvotes, uh, the downvoting comes up so much Um, everybody who forks the chain, everybody who makes changes or clones Steam or something like that, downvoting is one of those things that they address. And so one big issue with this entire Just As Soon, uh, situation has been that, uh, it look— it's looking like from my, from my, from my viewpoint that, you know, a lot of people talk about, well, Maybe what should have happened is we should have spoke with Justin Soon from the beginning. It should have been a lot more communication and, and, and this and that. But I now I'm really beginning to think that, uh, it might be the case that Justin Soon meant from the beginning to come into Steam and make changes to this chain. And some of the policies that we're hearing that he's pushing for still, uh, were his direction. And if that is the case, I don't think any negotiations, I don't think anything could have been done different from the Steem community. So unfortunately, if that was his plan and goal to do this, this was going to be a fight no matter what, because that means people are going to have to agree with Justin Sun's policies, right? About the early payouts and the downvoting and so on and so forth. But something interesting to think about. Again, would love to hear your opinions on it. Uh, our project BitcoinMYK, there is no downvoting. What we do is we act like an overlay for the Steam chain. Uh, when you post, uh, everybody receives a certain amount of our cryptocurrency similar to voice, uh, tradable on the Steam Engine marketplace. Um, and, uh, we think experiments like this is going to lead to a, uh, a different interesting approach to how to deal with some of the issues, uh, people are finding on the, on the Steem blockchain. But that's all I want to say in this video. If you like content like this, don't forget to like and subscribe. And until next time, take care.