Steemit seems like a great place.

You can earn reward for content, and curation, but it has a slightly more sinister side which I'll try to outline.

The community is meant to be able to influence posts, voting up, allocating power. You can build up a powerful account and have a big impact, and be rewarded.

If we look at something like Reddit, with their equal power up/down voting, the community manages to curate it's own content quite well. Things that are obviously scams, lies, illegal or rubbish get voted down into oblivion.

But what happens if you have a lot of flagging/censorship power in the hands of a few big dogs?

Before I tell my story, I just want to say I hope this post isn't censored. It's objective, as accurate as I can be at 12:49am, and while a criticism, is analytical and non abusive. I hope this isn't like North Korea, and we are allowed to talk about these things. I have seen posts that have been censored for being negative.

Recently a post of mine was flagged (you can check my account if you want to read it). I had about 10 upvotes, 50 views, and then along comes an "anti spam" couple. One with almost 1 million Steem, and I'm censored into the abyss.

My post was a discussion on crypto and it's impact on fiat currencies in the future. It then went on to discuss risks associated with BitConnect.

It was well received on my Facebook and in some slack channels I'm a member of.

I had an affiliate link for BitConnect. I also had an affiliate link for purse.io, and genesis mining. There was no promotion, just discussion.

Cut to 7 hours later, and a copy/paste comment has been applied, and my article has a "low rating" because it is spam.

It would appear that the actual community had little say, and I doubt whether the down voters even read the article. I would imagine there is a list of URLs that are searched for, and things are automatically flagged.

If we look at posts from bigger steemians, almost every post has affiliate links for poker, and genesis mining codes, meanwhile the linked videos promote BitConnect and include affiliate links. These posts are free to roam, and are rewarded with $50+ SBD from followers. Almost 1 post per day.

I've put in a request for review from the down voters, but who knows how that will go. I'm also happy to change my content - but the flagging is so random.

There has been no reply in their chat channels for 4 hours, and no response on my reply to their copy/paste comment.

Are we in a walled garden curated by whoever has the biggest stick? Votes driven by bots and automation - both up and down?

Or a couple of whales, who if they don't like content, no one can see it?

It seems like such a subjective decision to flag my content, while others doing legitimate spam and promotion are left to run wild.

What happens if a big player comes along and objects to something that you've written about? It could be anti-abortion, or gay marriage, religion, politics or finance. It could just be links to a site they don't like, or don't agree with.

I can appreciate some curation mechanism, but if it's as unpredictable and exclusive as this, and the appeals process is so painful, then there has to be a better way. The freedom of the many should not be restricted by the power of a few.

Who curates the big curators?

Thanks

softgrip