My analog-world friends had been telling me for the last few years I should be online and expressing myself in writing for a larger audience if I wanted to impact the world in a more significant manner. One of them in particular, an existential philosopher, when I would express my concerns about how the world is developing would always ask, "Well, what are you doing about it?"

In my analog-life I do what I can in little or larger ways regularly. As an educator for many years and having the benefit of teaching in a relevant discipline, I have been able to reach out to thousands of young minds over the years and sow the seeds of critical thought about how the world is run.

But to do so digitally? It was (and is) daunting in a way that person-to-person interaction isn't, the communication isn't fluid, it is broken up into blocks. You can't see people's body language or facial expressions, something that I am very sensitive to. You don't get the fail-start sentences or innumerable other vocal indications that indicate everything from sarcasm to uncertainty and immeasurably enrich communication. I was concerned going digital would be like Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park with people just walking by.

Most relevant to your post here, Deva, I was also concerned about the ability to be silenced. Google instituted the memory hole, and while the websites are merely delisted from the search index, it is very effective for a vast majority of the population. All of the other social media sites have also instituted shadow banning or adjusted their logarithms to suppress dissenting opinions and perpetuate the illusion of consensus, which in turns affects consensus through the mechanism of herd-think.

I did try out Facebook, years ago, and one of the first things I did was share a link to Rivero's All Wars are Bankers' Wars. Within a week it hit the news feed that FB was restricting the link, YT also engaged in a removal campaign that ultimately failed because too many people kept reposting it (I was listening to Rivero at the time, I can't find a write-up on the event). To go with that, basically any centralized site can go offline etc.

When I found out about Steemit and its use of blockchain, my interest was piqued. I actually pondered the issue of joining Steemit for about three months. I was torn and it wasn't an easy decision. On one hand, whatever I wrote or contributed would be maintained for posterity, a sort of free-speech guarantee not available on other digital platforms. On the other hand, given the persecutory environment for politically incorrect, non-SJW, anti-authoritarian thought, contributing something that cannot be deleted could prove disadvantageous should a state actor decide to retroactively prosecute any new law passed regarding non-orthodox speech (the embarrassment of typos that last forever was also in the mix). As we see in the EU today, people are already being fined, arrested and harassed for having a non-politically correct opinion. In the US people are losing their jobs for daring to go against the mob tyranny of the SJW movement. (Imagine if I was at a US university and my discussion of meritocracy was lobbed into a safe space). The potentiality for raising my voice to have serious ramifications for a life hard-won (and hopefully with many years still before me) was concerning.

Ultimately though, it was the inability for my contribution to be irrevocably memory-holed (or at least the difficult nature of doing so) that convinced me to at least try Steemit. As you have seen, I have started cautiously. But some part of me suspects the world is ramping up to a showdown of sorts between the tyrants and the freedom-loving and I couldn't look myself in the mirror if I sat it out on the sidelines just to save my skin.

Blockchain technology, as you said, has the potential to revolutionize how history is viewed, written, edited, passed on, preserved and interpreted. It is a grand experiment the likes of which history has never seen before. Even if Steemit perishes, the information on the blockchain can be absorbed or integrated into another, a database that could in theory at least, last forever. That is an exciting opportunity, the very idea that these words could be read in a thousand or hundred thousand years. Well, that was a bit rambling, but I hope it was at least interesting! Yours - CZ