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Steem is decentralized. Steemit can’t be censored because it’s on the blockchain. Great concept, in theory. But I’ve seen it again and again, the abuse.

The flagging feature is the only tool to get rid of people who spam and plagiarize and those two groups are generally the only ones I flag (especially if it’s another dumbass who thought copy&pasting my posts would be a great idea).

But many, many people flag because they disagree with someone. Is that ok? Let’s ask the ones who implemented the flag feature, as every time you tap the symbol a helpful little guide pops up about what to flag:

•	Disagreement on rewards
•	Fraud or Plagiarism
•	Hate Speech or Internet Trolling
•	Intentional miss-categorized content or Spam

The only disagreement I see here is „disagreement on rewards“ which is, in my eyes, a bit tricky. Still, I’ve seen it more than once that someone flagged a comment without any reward just because they didn’t like what the commenter said. And I’m not talking about the dumb „nice post, upvot me pls“ comments. Those are spam and can be flagged to death.

Hate speech and internet trolling is tricky too, because something isn’t automatically one of the two just because you disagree. It requires a certain level of finesse I suppose.

But what I see over and over again is people with a high reputation and/or SP threatening to totally destroy somebody else, just because they don’t agree with their views.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to flag those I disagree with and there are a lot of them, especially on steemit. But I’m not the one who can decide what’s right or wrong, even if I think I know better than them. It’s just not my place.

But many think it’s their place. And as a result, they totally destroy accounts of users who didn’t do anything wrong (this does not include users who started a flag war. If you flag something that isn’t spam/plagiarism and get flagged back as a result… tough luck but you brought this upon yourself).

What I’m trying to say is that there are many extremely aggressive groups of people on steemit who search certain tags for people whose posts they disagree with just to flag those users down to zero, both in rep and payout.

This creates an atmosphere of fear, people become afraid of posting what they think. And when that happens, steemit will sooner or later stop getting new users, because nobody wants to be active on a platform where they can be destroyed for stating their view (agreeing or opposing) on a wide range of conspiracy theories.

I haven’t found a single of these theories I agree with. In fact, I’d be happier if they wouldn’t constantly be discussed on steemit. But especially the ones who believe those theories are true are incredibly aggressive. And while I generally try to follow the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall

>"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

The fact that people abuse their power to silence those who disagree makes me want to abandon this rule and flag them. I won’t. I said earlier I only flag spam and plagiarism/stolen content. But it makes me furious. 

Because if you want free speech, you better grant it to everyone else too.

If not, you’re just another asshole and not better than those you claim to fight.