Can distributed content aggregation limit site censorship?

Hello Steemit,

Like many, I'm new here. It's my first post. My first time logging in even. So please forgive any misunderstanding I might have. It seems the same as most any other site. But the underlying structure of distributed storage is different. And that interests me. Because I've seen censorship and gaming of centralized web sites. And it's clear - to me - something must change.

Long ago there was a massive decentralized BBS style system in widespread use: USENET. It worked remarkably well. Decades ago, I set up a small uucp leaf node and news server. Later, in the 1990s, I wound up managing a much larger news site. But the system ran into trouble.

There was no viable economy around the system, ISPs ran netnews as a loss leader. And the storage requirements for running a large netnews server grew rapidly as it became primarily used for exchanging pirated binary content. This is as users migrated away from text messaging to centralized web discussion forums, leaving a wasteland of empty news discussion forums in their wake. And there was no means for rating contributions, so no way to determine what message or contribution was worth reading. Reading netnews became a vast timesink.

Slashdot was among the first web sites that siphoned technical users away from netnews and to the web. In the late 1990s it gained a huge following. But not only was it centrally managed, it was centrally edited. And soon users complained that editors either weren't competent or were bought off and promoting stories for profit.

Whether true or not, this spawned kuro5hin. A site where users could submit and vote on which content would get promoted to the front page. It siphoned a huge userbase off of Slashdot. And soon found itself gamed by groups colluding to control the front page. Whether for trolling purposes, or to promote their political values, it soon became impossible to submit material without first the tacit support of one or another controlling group. And so a site that was started in opposition to the centralized editorial control at Slashdot fell victim to a type of centralization by proxy.

Some may remember Digg. A site that promised to resolve the problem with centralized story aggregation through community voting. It was like Slashdot only without the focus on tech news. There, any kind of story would be organized by categories. Users could track their interests, and it would display a tailored front page. But soon it too was gamed. With groups colluding to take over editorial control. Ultimately, squelching anyone who wasn't a member. And thereby destroying the site when everyone figured out the effort of their contributions had become meaningless.

The userbase mass migrated to Reddit. Who promised non-intervention. Opposition to censorship. And the values of free expression. Anyone who was on Reddit from 2005-2012 would remember this as a golden era for the site. But that era is now over. It is overtly censored, gamed and controlled by cliques of moderators. Many of whom moderate tens or hundreds of the largest audience subreddits. Creating webs of conflicting rules that give them total freedom to delete anything for any reason whatsoever. And in the process destroy the community input of hundreds or thousands of comments and votes. All on a whim.

And let's not forget how Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Google, et all collect users' data for the purposes of marketing and God knows what else. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm certainly fed up with the abuses those who own and run centralized systems have foisted upon the communities that initially grew and popularized their products.

So there is pent up demand for a new decentralized approach. Something that resembles the free-for-all that was once Netnews. But like Kuro5hin, Digg, and Reddit also includes a voting system to measure the value of submissions, so most readers don't waste their time sifting through muck. While simultaneously resisting editorial control by site owners and organized PR cliques to control the queue for disseminating managed advertainment. Because that's all we've got right now. It's become WebTV.

The situation on the web right now is dire for genuine free speech. It's being squelched. Smothered. Snuffed out. People speaking their minds certainly is an annoyance to those who'd much rather we just sit back, shut up, and consume. Stop creating! Go suck another bong hit and distract yourself with cat videos, memes, and meaningless drama.

And yet wasn't free expression, free virtual assembly, and free collaboration the promise of the Internet way back when? To provide an open platform for creators to work and seek audience without the intervention and control of middle-men. What's happened over the last decade is a violation of everything the innovators of this technology hoped to achieve.

I hope the Steemit blockchain approach is that solution. It's time for something new. Because civilization desperately needs this. It's genuinely important.