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We all know by now that the tech giants of Silicon Valley are in bed with the government and they’re not afraid to censor posts they disagree with from their social media platforms. So what if there was a decentralised, open source, blockchain-based social media alternative? On today’s thought for the day we talk about the censorship problem and the Steemit solution.
SHOW NOTES:
Facebook Threatens to Shut Down Popular Libertarian Page
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
A complete guide to all the things Facebook censors hate most
Redditors are outraged at r/news moderator’s handling of Orlando shooting news
Announcing the Twitter Trust & Safety Council
Twitter Shadowbanning ‘Real and Happening Every Day’ Says Inside Source
Blockchain Social Platform Steemit Takes Advantage of Reddit’s Heavy Censorship
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) will receive $2 billion dollars of tax funding over the next 5 years. Though I am intimately familiar with the CBC Submission Guidelines, my comments to CBC “news” stories routinely disappear into the “Content Disabled” void. If this was a private company, fair enough, weed out comments that don’t support the corporate agenda. I, however, have no choice but to fund the CBC with my taxes.
I have been saving my censored comments as I believe they contain a wealth of information. I suspect the censored ideas are likely the ones that draw too much attention to awkward & uncomfortable facts…. false ideas pose no threat to those who make a living concealing truth.
That’s a fascinating idea… m.clare…
It would be pretty interesting if someone started a website (centered on political/social issues) that allowed people to submit content that was censored and see what sort of picture started taking shape about many of these websites/social media sites. It’s important that any centers of power (particularly with the media, social media, etc) are held accountable as much and as frequently as possible. These sites could potentially be referenced to by alt media as well. If we want to retain freedom of speech, we need to fight for it in these sorts of ways within our world.
Possible site names?:
MediaWatch
SocialMediaWatch
CensorshipWatch
Censored.com
Etc
Also, I’m from Windsor, Ontario. So, it’s great to see other fellow (awakened/awakening) Canadians on here! : )
jay.z – I really like your idea. Giving people a bigger picture of what is being censored would be particularly interesting. And I bet it would be one of those things where people would flock to it just because it’s forbidden.
I’ve considered such a website but stalled when I considered the legal implications; I may have signed away my rights to anything I submit to the CBC when I signed up. Is it possible that once put into writing and submitted to Big Brother my thoughts are no longer my property?
You can’t lose “ownership” of your opinions. Don’t be cowed so easily.
Yes, I can probably post my CBC censored comments on my hypothetical web page, however; what are the odds of CBC granting me permission to include the material I was commenting on? Without this context, my comments are harmless.
“Under certain circumstances, it is permissible to quote or excerpt from a CBC.ca article; however, prior permission is required before using any CBC.ca text in this manner. Please submit a Permissions request for our consideration.”
Is there a chance they would take legal action were I to proceed without their permission?
Some combination of ignorance, fear and apathy have rendered us collectively paralyzed. Your point is valid. I refuse to be cowed.
— Julian Assange and POWERS —
Google and The White House and The Pentagon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmGyKvFoH-U&feature=youtu.be&t=13m36s
Yea… I am not a follower of Assange. But I like to be in tune with what the scurry of the moment is.
ha! (Chuckle) I kind of retract any denigration of Assange.
Sibel Edmonds changed my mind.
Watch the 7:30 mark of this video about WikiLeaks, Clinton, and Gulen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tctl8FNasFo
Julian Assange threatening to release Clinton’s email a month or so before the November election = Julian Assange works for the Zionists that support Trump
a.k.a Bibi Nethanyhu
Steemit does not look decentralized at all. It looks like a standard social bookmarking site, with the added feature of paying for tokens to increase your post/comment ranking. Seems like interest groups with deep pockets could easily game the ranking system, moreso than other sites. In fact, this operation seems more like a scheme to sell digital currency than a publishing platform:
https://steem.io/roadmap/launch-and-sale/
As for the blockchain, besides the nice buzzword, I’m not sure what it solves in terms of preventing censorship, besides providing a public cache. This function is performed now by image-hosting sites, private websites, archive.org, as well as the social network platforms themselves. The big problem is discovery and ranking, how people actually communicate and find out about stuff, which Steemit is still very vulnerable to.
It’s very odd that Steemit requires a Facebook or Reddit account to function, with plans to add SMS verification, but no stated plans to remove these restrictions. Not sure what permissions they ask for, since I haven’t signed up, but it certainly opens the possibility of those social networks reading your Steemit posts and punishing you on their platform. In any case, it’s a big hint that this is not a decentralized system and is doubly strange because most platforms do not have such a restrictive requirement. A truly decentralized system would not have a spam/fake account problem, except as DDoS, since it would not rely on a central index.
Steemit does not look like any better of a solution than Facebook or Twitter at this point, except to the extent that you trust the people running it more. The links to the User Agreement and Privacy Policy are broken and there is no ownership information about the company on their website. Caution!
The fact that you need to log in with a facebook or a redit account raises a big red flag for me.
Any legitimate block chain technology should be internally self regulated by its own users (if not, then that is probably a sign that something is wrong!)
By linking facebook and redit IDs with block chains you could very well be getting the worst of both worlds.
The information in a block chain is as about as public as information can get, facebook could still suspend the accounts of users based on what they have said on Steemit, the though of loosing a facebook account for some people would be enough to practice self censorship. The importance of having and keeping your facebook account is actually being reinforced by Steemit.
I suspect the criminal elite know that they can’t stop people from using block chain technology so instead they will pretend that they like it…
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/blockchain/
Then find ways to subvert the technology by introducing new systems that are vulnerable and defeat the purpose.
I haven’t looked into what makes Steemit tick, but if it is truly open source, I hope it is cloned by others who remove the requirement to log in using an ID from an NSA backed organisation.
Until then, I will not be using it.
After watching Luke Rudkowski’s video about Steem ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esFCwzVlDHw ),
the one looks a bit creepy too me.
Additionally to facebook/redit problem there is a big gamification scheme on Steem, that supposedly can provide monetary gain to everyone. But not just virtual money, Luke was able to convert it to FED notes.
Who is paying for this?
Free lunch is not possible.
With rewarding gamification in place, people might spend even more time on the internet, in virtual world, walking around their avatars.
Who will work to change the Real world, where you have to take real tools in hands, that causes blisters occasionally.
Otherwise, I hope that someone will tweak this open source solution and remove deficiencies. Basically sounds good to me.
I know of an alternative to social media and especially steemit. It’s called Jawbuck. All posts are unauthored and you can tip people. It’s in testing now.
The idea is that people on social media don’t discuss ideas, they attack each other. with authorship unknown, the ideas become the topic. It is very well suited to people who want to remain unknown. Because there are tips (of dollars) they can’t make it anonymous. But the company doesn’t keep user information so they can’t reveal identities. It would take a court order for them and paypal to do it.
If you want to try it, go to their website at https://jawbuck.com
m.clare, this might be what you’re looking for. 😉
I think this systems looks promising as well…(likewise – have not tried it myself)
“Wifibroadcast – Analog-like transmission of live video data”
https://befinitiv.wordpress.com/wifibroadcast-analog-like-transmission-of-live-video-data/
Normally with the Internet it is not possible to view something without first sending some information about yourself. The Wifibroadcasst system allows a TV signal to be broadcast to the local area and picked up by Wifi receivers that are passively listening in without being logged into any network.
It was designed to provide live video feeds for hobby drone pilots, however I do not see why it could not be adapted for broadcasting pre-recorder video material such as the Corbett Report from fixed locations around populated areas….perhaps linked together by mesh networks?