The Steem Blockchain can censor nobody but frontends can.
Anyone with a Steem account can post whatever they want to the Steem blockchain.
This can be the link to a photo of the steak you ate yesterday, a chapter of a book you wrote, a Steem Monsters battle JSON, Your dirtiest fantasies to even super duper secrets you want money for.
The Steem blockchain is decentralised. No-one can take it down. Whatever you put in it will stay in it forever.
Access to the blockchain
To access the Steem blockchain most people prefer a Graphical Interface. Like a website or an app to 'see' what's in the blockchain and to communicate with it (like posting or upvoting).
Steemit.com allows you to 'see' what's in the blockchain. Busy.org does the same thing. Steempeak.com does the same thing.
Partiko and Esteem do the same thing on mobile.
There are many more.
All these FRONTENDS allow users to 'see' the blockchain but they are not THE STEEM BLOCKCHAIN.
They are just tools to access it.
There is no censorship possible on the blockchain level. Period.
Having made that clear.
There is censorship possible on the FRONTENDS level.
FRONTENDS can decide which data they want to display from the Steem Blockchain on their own Frontend. And it's their right to do so and I'm glad they can.
I can think of many reasons why Frontends would want to Ban certain content from view.
Be the Hero. And not the keyboard kind.
Steemit Inc. recently banned content from a certain account from view. It violated the TOS (or for some other reason, we don't know).
Again, the content is still in the blockchain it's just not displayed on Steemit.com.
But here's the cool thing.
Anyone that complains about Steemit Inc. banning an account recently from Steemit.com for violating the TOS can setup their own frontend and display everything that is posted on the Steem Blockchain.
All the information is always there in the blockchain! You can be the hero!
You can even choose to only display the BANNED content.
And If you want to be really cool I would also recommend you setup a company first in the United States and also have your servers there as well. Just like Steemit inc.
You can then act extra hero by being strong and tough when the authorities come knocking and discover how much fun that is for yourself! From what I hear it's ULTRA fun.
Sorry for being sarcastic, but man, for most of us mortals this is simply no option. And why risk your business for it?
Wether this is considered censorship or not I will leave in the middle.
But I do hope I made clear on what level the censoring takes place.
And it's certainly not on the Steem Blockchain level only the frontends.
All the information in the blockchain is always there!
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@exyle,
Yeah but some people didn't understand this simple theory and complain!
Cheers~
Great post and I totally get your sarcasm. I was a little worried a while ago when I saw Partiko trying to pull in the people that were leaving Tumblr by claiming they are censorship free. That is a slippery slope that businesses should be really careful about. It's all fine and dandy when you are just showing stuff that someone else might find offensive, but when you are making visible things that are illegal, then you are going to have some tough questions to answer. Taking the moral or creative high ground is going to do you little good... Thanks again for this post. I think it was well written and very timely!
Really solid point, hear a podcast mentioning how steem had failed it's mission because it censors people and I was like wait up, you mean steemit frontend. The steem blockchain is is different
The problem of the majority people is that they don't know the difference between steem and steemit.
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
Same like ether and ethereum haha
Posted using Partiko Android
Or ETH and ETC
Hahahaha. Nice one. Some Ultra fun with the FBI. 25 years in prison. All fun stuff :)
That totally make sense. Some people don't understand this point though. They think that if you can censor content on Steemit, that means you can do that in the blockchain itself.
That will take some time but the censorship will become a thing of a past. Just curious how much it will take.
Posted using Partiko Android
it's kinda spy games for me, James Bond style! all info is on the blockchain for all to see, so if you want to read it, go find it. It is there, forever!
We all have the freedom to do what we want but there are always consequences we should be aware of and also influence actions so this should not be any different.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Thanks Mark for explaining this even more so that all Steemians can understand how things work on the blockchain. Real TRUTH can Never be Squashed totally. Things will be Exposed and The World we Live on will be changed Dramatically Over the Next Couple of Years. @exyle
I said that in at least two of my five last posts. You cannot censor the steem blockchain only the front-end. That is why I think that we need to create something that we could use to solve the problem of one point of failure of the front-ends since they could be prosecute depending the post that they stay opened.
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface