Some thoughts on the claimed 9/11 hack and removal of content from social media sites.

So... For anyone who doesn't know, there has recently been news about a hacker group that claims to have hacked some incriminating files in regards to the events of 9/11...
And.. This post is less about that and more about how they are being "censored"/removed from various social media however I will touch a lil bit on that and share some of my thoughts.

I just found out that the front ends of steem, both steemit and steempeak have followed suit and banned them after reddit and Twitter and others have banned them from their social media sites.
As of this point in time I do believe that busy and partiko have not yet removed them from their sites. And.. It looks like even if they get banned from all the front end sites that they can still access the steem blockchain manually.

However.. And this is sort of one of the main reasons I wanna make this post.. I have to wonder if it will go even further.
The steem blockchain has been advertised as sort of.. "censorship resistant" and that's one of the main things that brought me and I'm sure many others to the steem blockchain.

I've learned though that at least one time in the past, and.. I could be a lil wrong here.. It's possible they just censored this from the front end, though I was under the impression that one time in the past, at least one time they have removed content from the blockchain itself.
This was in response to someone trying to post child porn and what I was informed was that it took a super majority of witnesses which I believe is.. 17 out of the top 20? To come together and vote to have it removed.

Assuming I'm correct in that and not misinterpreting something I think theoretically the same could happen here.
If enough pressure is brought upon those involved in the steem blockchain, I think you could possibly see the hacker group being totally removed from the blockchain due to a super majority vote of the witnesses. Please anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Though.. What's to stop them from just creating a new account..? And then another one and another one and another one if they keep getting banned? I have to wonder..
If the hacker group wants to keep coming back, I'm not sure how they could be 100% stopped it seems like each new account would have to be banned.

I sort of have a feeling it might end up going in the direction of a witness super majority vote, there is a LOT of pressure being put on those who run social media sites to remove this hacker group from operation.
I think this may end up being a major test for the steem blockchain claims in regards to censorship resistance.

I myself do agree with removing child porn as I think that is absolutely one of the most abhorrent things in existence, and.. As much as I believe in free speech, I don't believe others have the right to significantly harm other innocent individuals and not have to deal with some sort of free market response/consequence.
I also think that those with the most stake in the platform should be able to come together to decide to remove extremely immoral content.

If steem was a place where child molesters and snuff films and the most horrible things you could imagine could find a home and not be challenged by the community I think that would be.. A scary sort of idea.
And.. Freedom can be scary, though.. If individuals rights are infringed we should be able to do something about it in my opinion.

Sometimes people say the only free speech that needs to be protected is unpopular speech, though.. I see no reason why anyone should advocate that we protect speech that involves sexually abusing children or very extreme things of that nature.
I personally have zero tolerance for that shit, I think it's as I mentioned... One of the most atrocious things.

Anyways.. It will be interesting to see how this develops and plays out and I think there's a bit of a split in regards to what people think about this particular hacker group.
A decent amount of people seem to think they are heroes and that this "censorship"/removal of content is wrong.

Now I will share my opinion on that.
I tend to agree with what Ben Swann said who is one of my favorite journalists when he was interviewed about this on RT.

If they wanted support for what they are doing they should just release the files and then ask for compensation from those who value their service.
That is true free market in MY opinion and one reason why I so often work for free and then tell the person I work for that they can pay me however much they feel the work I did was worth.

The way they are going about this they have expressed they don't care about the morality of the situation and just wanna get paid.
And while I think you should get compensated for the work you do, I'm not really a fan of blackmail, especially when it involves the potential death of thousands if not hundreds of thousands or a million or more people in regards to the 9/11 attacks and subsequent wars around the world that spawned from it.

In my mind.. That is in a realm beyond money. I think if you have information that sheds light on the deaths/murder of thousands up to a million or more individuals that you should just release it.
We deserve to know what really happened in regards to all that, it's too important to dangle over the people for money in my mind.

If this group acted more like Wikileaks they would likely not be being banned from virtually every place they try to set up.
And.. The community would appreciate what they are doing so much that I think they would probably make more than the amount the are asking for.

That is my opinion, I could be wrong.
Though.. If you happen to read this and are up for sharing your thoughts, what do you think?

PS.. Apparently one of the "checkpoints" was reached and some of the 9/11 files have been released.
I'm wondering if we will learn anything new from any of this? I have my personal suspicions that this hacker group might be a sort of "psyop" and part of the conspiracy and I'm doubtful we will find anything super incriminating.. However I do hope that we learn something new about 9/11 from all of this.

PSPS Will include link to Ben Swann's interview below.