The way it works now, is that marky's vigilante mob adds whoever they dislike to their blacklist.
And as much as they like to pretend it's not "arbitrary" it absolutely is "arbitrary".
Once you're on marky's blacklist, everyone everywhere sees a red "(1)" next to your name.
Every post, every comment, even on your profile page, you get a scarlet letter 100% of the time.
Marky even had a proposal to create a cross-platform standard so all front-ends could use one set of blacklists.
PURE CENTRALIZATION OF POWER (CENSORSHIP).
And if they really don't like you, they can add you to a blacklist that makes all your posts and comments undetectable to other users (@joe.public). And there's nothing you can do about it, except beg marky and the gang for mercy.
The VOLUNTARY blacklist idea would work like the NSFW settings on each individual account.
It's also like the "safe-search" default settings you get on a lot of websites.
If you like marky's vigilante view and you think that everyone on their list is "evil", then you're perfectly free to subscribe to marky's list.
Then you will only see posts and comments that marky approves of.
However, I for one will be among the first to OPT OUT.
And if I happen to see something so horrifying that I can't risk ever seeing it again, I'll add it to my own blacklist, but that won't stop EVERYONE ELSE from seeing the horrifying (low-effort) content (unless they CHOOSE to adopt my blacklist).
Each person should be able to choose for themself what they want or don't want to see.
Thank you for explaining more. I have wondered what the red number meant. As for joepublic, he was one of the few examples I saw that demonstrated someone could actually be censored here. I received several notifications from steemchillers app that he had commented to me, yet could never see it on the front ends to read fully and reply.
Hoping they would make the lists opt in only, not forcing us to go to individual lists to opt out. I know how to mute people myself and have done so. No need to track down someones list to take someone off a mute I never muted to begin with.
I'd hope it would be just a toggle under your user settings, something like "safe-search" which you could select "off".
I guess I am against the red numbers but not against letting people create mute lists.
With VOLUNTARY blacklists, the red numbers would only show to people who subscribe to your specific blacklist.
But why would they see the red numbers if they want to subscribe in order to not see the muted people in the first place?
Some blacklists might show show a "warning" (red number) and others might mute them completely, depending on the list.
The red number has no value if subscribed mute list still shows up in the newsfeed for the subscriber of the mute list. If they subscribe and then they no longer see those listed in the newsfeed, then no problem. If they still see them, then it is meaningless, or if it hides them from everybody.
The red number acts as a warning.
Like a scarlet letter.
I find that to be even worse than the Blue Twitter and Facebook Checks that they have that allegedly says they are real accounts or whatever. I had a blue check on my Twitter one time, all I had to do was send Twitter money back like in 2009 or so. People should tell Trump that they millions of people sent Twitter $20 each. I don't know how many people sent in money and how many sent in dozens and dozens for multiple accounts but I wonder how much money that is. But then I lost some of my accounts and it was like the money didn't get me anything, like a scam. People don't talk about that and I kind of forgot about sending money to Twitter when I talk about censorship until like a second ago.