Flags are censorship, and that is why they exist per the White Paper. You and others simply refuse to use the accepted definition of censorship, as if that actually matters.
It doesn't, because we live in reality, and flagging content suppresses it, which is why you do it. You do so predatorily, profiting from deprecating Hive and it's primary value of free speech.
Economic stress is a substantial source of psychological stress, and psychological stress is the leading indicator of life expectancy. It is false to claim that manipulating Hive's economy is not coercive.
Your lack of philanthropy will be your undoing. It is the very wealth you have accumulated that deprives you of your ability to adapt and sustain the civil society on which you are utterly dependent, and current geopolitical conditions strongly indicate that the time that inability will become of existential import is either presently, or soon.
How will you feel when your tokens evaporate before your eyes, and you realize that if you had strengthened the community instead you'd have goodwill to depend on instead of your worthless stacks of tokens?
I know how desperation feels, because I experienced it when Citi stole my property. Your solvency depends on the UN continuing to allow Hive and exchanges to be resolved by DNS, and the UN has begun taking sites down it does not want online.
I suspect this is goodbye, because I don't think Hive and cryptocurrency exchanges will long survive the introduction of CBDCs, and that has already begun.
Good bye @smooth.
"Flags" don't exist in the white paper. Elewhere this thread I linked to an archive of the early steemit web site that didn't have "flags", it had upvote and downvote. Go look.
We all presumably do what we think is best for our investment, even if we happen not to agree on what that happens to be. For sure I'm not guaranteed to be taking the right approach, even though I think I am and you don't. And even so, many blockchains have failed and will fail, so I know there is a significant chance my stake in Hive declines in value or becomes worthless. And further you are not wrong that decentralized blockchains may collapse altogether (in value even if not operationally). Not what I would like to see of course, but it goes with the territory.
Pedantry regarding voting is without merit.
Free speech was the specific use case Hive was intended to reward financially, and departing from that has continually degraded the platform and community ever since. Proposing that purpose now be abandoned altogether is tantamount to euthanizing an athlete after amputating their legs because they can't run the mile competitively anymore.
Never more than now has free speech been more valuable, or necessary to our very lives and humanity, and consideration of value beyond mere financial considerations has never been more potential of immense profit to them that are capable of it.
Your wallet will have no value to you, regardless of the financial worth of the tokens in it, if censorship silences forthright speech and malicious lies are all society is availed during a global crisis of governance specifically bent on duplicity and covert genocide. You can't take it with you into a mass grave.
You, and all on Hive and alive, deserve better than such a fate, and it is now, and has always been, my position that free speech is essential to our survival, while mere money is but a convenience while we yet live.
I urge you to act to protect Hive's original remit and profit not only yourself thereby, but the community that will thereafter be able to increase and multiply that goodwill and fortune into treasure beyond the dreams of Midas.
Troubles are upon us, and to prevail will take extraordinary acts by ordinary people, but the decentralization and independent means that will follow our victory over the totalitarian tyranny oligarchs seek to implement over us all will usher in a golden age unimaginable to us now.
Seek the greater reward for your investment.
And it does, but not everything gets rewards.
No one said everything should. What a crappy straw man.
The issue you're dancing around is despite quality work, massive engagement, and some of the most diligent promotion of the platform that has ever been undertaken, @kennyskitchen is getting flagged because of differences of opinion.
You will deny it's censorship to suppress speech, but rational people will accept the longstanding ubiquitously accepted official definition of censorship anyway.
Dozens of quality creators marketing Hive to the wider world have been driven from the platform by this mechanism that I can personally recall, and no fewer than thousands just weren't willing to even start after seeing this kinda shit.
Free speech is far more valuable than whatever rewards you milk by censoring creators you disagree with politically. Censorship is bad for business, and worse for society. Even though you may not agree with it now, you might later. A lot of folks are having epiphanies of late, now that Jacinda Ardern has stated she will never stop jabbing her subjects, ever, Israel just announced 7 more boosters are going to be mandated, and even the enemedia are admitting the jabs are causing massive numbers of heart attacks and cardiovascular injuries.
The 'conspiracy theories' you don't censor just might turn out to be timely warnings that save your life soon. I give it two more weeks (/s).
You're not benefiting the platform, the community, or promoting quality content, despite your continued misdirection. Folks know that, even if they're unable to state it succinctly.
You're personally profiting financially from censorship, devaluing Hive by doing so, and claiming otherwise. It's disingenuous, counterproductive, and a huge waste of time, so you must really need the water muddy to keep rollin' deep.
Honestly, your life is far more valuable than your wallet. When you quit censoring people like @kennyskitchen, a life you save might be your own. You are ill advised to profit by censoring him when he's providing you that valuable service of cutting through bullshit being promulgated by lying genocidal war criminals to enable you and everyone else to defend themselves from existential harm.
You should be upvoting him instead.
Differences of opinion over what should be rewarded, yes. That's exactly what downvotes are for.
Since our speech here on Hive is the source of rewards, and everyone needs must express an opinion to speak, what you are claiming is that censoring opinions you do not agree with is what flags are for, and that is utterly contrary to any conception of rational debate, discussion, or discovery, and free speech itself.
Dial it back, or simply slap an armband on and demand plebs march in goosestep to your personal notions of what is acceptable to believe.
It is not the opinion regarding an issue that determines one's right to speak it, but how that opinion is expressed. Is it well researched? Is it well written? Is it spammed in every blog in comments? Is it used to trick people into parting with their stake? A preference for the color red is not an acceptable reason to flag, while expressing that opinion in various ways can be.
I may choose to communicate my preference for the color red by using a knife to turn people red with their own blood, and that is not a mode of expression any just legal theory would say I have a right to undertake, regardless of my opinion of the color. There are reasonable limits on our right to expression, and flagging well researched and written posts to zero exceeds those reasonable limits, regardless of the opinions involved.
In fact, so censoring certain speech might as well be stabbing people to death, because security and safety signals are absolutely dependent on free speech to promulgate. Free speech is of existential import. People die of the lack of it far more than of the lack of money, IMHO.
The worse censorship grows elsewhere, the less Hive should be censored, and the more valuable censorship resistance becomes.
Excuse me? Except for posts involving downvote drama and other insider nonsense that has no or negative marketing value (but still perfectly legitimate to debate, just don't expect to be paid for it), I only ever downvote moderately, such that there is still a very significant reward. If you think that getting a payout of, for example, $100 instead of $120 for something that in most cases couldn't earn a penny anywhere else is censorship, I don't know what to tell you. I can't speak for others' downvoting, take it up with them.