Steem on Graphene is a public ledger, that means all data stored on it's blockchain is available to anyone, anywhere in the world. In effect SteemIt, therefore, is publicly available, uncensored and transparant. And it is good to be aware of this before you even start posting. But it seems there is one thing missing. And that is you being able to lock out roque accounts, or the ones that intend to cause havoc through the use of verbal abuse. That can be concluded as an act of aggression and it seems that 'flagging' or downvoting has a certain limit to it's use.
Personaly I do dislike the 'flag' function, as I noticed a lot of abuse lately, too many times. And I do refuse to use it myself. Either you upvote, reply and/ or resteem or you just ignore. But as it has been pointed out before that not having a BLOCK function is too optimistic, even in an open and transparant system like Steem(It). So, I have been thinking about how a BLOCK function could work and also be safe from over use. There is a risk that it will get used as a machine gun, a knife can be used as a weapon too, right? But it also seems important that accounts are able to BLOCK accounts that attack them, so they can defend themselves from being harmed. In effect that is what it is about.
Verbal abuse is still abuse, and therefore an act of aggression
Let's assume that account 'Bob' is known to verbal attack account 'Alice', that is a deed of aggression. Freedom of speech is sometimes confused with verbal abuse, mostly by fellow humans who do act that way. But verbal actions are an act, in fact. Therefore verbal abuse is still abuse, no matter if it gets hidden by a false claim of 'freedom of speech'. Just to make it clear where the line can actually be drawn. Now, this is something different than people feeling offended, these things can happen when there is talk about religion, for example. No offense could be intended, but most of the time it will become obvious where mutual respect gets lost.
Now 'Bob' and 'Alice' first started off on the good foot. But after a while things heated up, discussions that went from 'agree to disagree' to aggressive rants, curses and threats. Or to summerize it: verbal abuse. And no matter what 'Alice' does to ignore 'Bob', that account keeps stalking with aggressive replies, flagging everthing posted by the 'Alice' account. This is going on in such a bad way that account 'Alice' decides to stop posting and warn the world to stay away from SteemIt.
Account 'Alice' can be roque too, of course
Another situation could be that account 'Alice' really dislikes everything that account 'Bob' resembles. No matter what 'Bob' posts, account 'Alice' puts on the boxing gloves and flags it down. Ranting about in replies, trying to get others in to do the same, creating a dark atmosphere, trying to destroy the reputation of the account 'Bob'. And even though account 'Alice' might come up with arguments why account 'Bob' should be 'brought down', it is still ment to do harm. Verbal abuse by account 'Alice' is still abuse, no matter what the arguments behind that behavior are. It can be proven to be an attack on purpose to cause as much havoc to account 'Bob' as possible. And also this scenario is quite realistic.
Why accounts 'Alice' and 'Bob' might have a fight is maybe even understandable, but the verbal abuse, the attacks, they cause a lot of harm, to them and to the community. So that is why I think it is best to solve this with a BLOCK function.
No overall censorship, only an account BLOCK function
Because Steem(It) is ment to be publicly open and available there should be no censorship. It has no use either, because it is available for everyone to see on the blockchain. So, what can be done about those hypothetical verbal abuse cases? The answer is to exchange the MUTE function for a BLOCK one.
That means that your account will be able to BLOCK another account. But what would that do?
Well, the account that got a BLOCK would still be able to see everything that is publicly available on the blockchain. And that should be kept that way. But, the account that got a BLOCK will be unable to FOLLOW, UPVOTE, DOWNVOTE(aka flag), REPLY and/ or RESTEEM the blocking account. Also at the SteemIt website, or the ones that support the included MUTE function, caused by a BLOCK, every data of the account that got a BLOCK will be left out. This will only work when logged in, of course.
A choice to BLOCK does come with consequences though. A blocking account can also not FOLLOW, UPVOTE, DOWNVOTE, REPLY and/ or RESTEEM the account that it gave a BLOCK. Also blocking more then 4 accounts per four weeks will cause a severe hit on the reputation of the blocking account. Every extra BLOCK will cause a 0.1 loss in reputation value and a 10% drop in voting power. Doubling every 4th BLOCK after that. Also, to be able to BLOCK, the reputation of an account should at least have a value of 26.0, also with at least one post made, not being a reply.
Why these measures? Well, to make sure the BLOCK version is used for defence only, in a worst case scenario, because that is what it is intended for. But it needs to be made sure that the possible use of attack is minimalized. And that is why there needs to be a limit set to this function.
To summerize it
A BLOCK function for defensive use could replace the apparant useless MUTE function. Over active use should be discouraged, through build in limits. Where trying to use it as a kind of attack method is discouraged. Either way it should have severe consequences when used. So when an account decides to use the BLOCK function it also does lose some advantages. No curating possible on accounts that they have blocked. They can not REPLY to accounts they have blocked. No RESTEEM of posts from accounts they blocked. And they will be automaticly unfollowed if they were followed by the account they have blocked. So, trigger happy blocking accounts will damage themselves severly when they over do it.
When an account would decide to BLOCK another account, for whatever reason, the negative effects will be gone, but also a lot advantages will be lost. Now some things in this proposal could be hard to implement. The effect should be at least benefit the defence of the account that decides to BLOCK another account. To put an end to verbal abuse, reply stalking, hate flagging and so on. But it should be carefully limited too.
Have a nice one!