Like/Downvote/Upvote and the hazards of Hivemind Censorship
It's a common belief that censorship is a dangerous thing, and for good reason. The internet, which is seen by some to be a resource of open, free knowledge and a place to voice your opinions, could in fact be more confined than most would think. While maybe a flaw in the mechanic, the 'vote' system allows for users to censor each other. Those with the most resources (methods for multiple votes), can have their opinion displayed on the 'front page'. With enough persistence readers can be swayed, either with humorous comics, baseless rumors, or opinions masquerading as fact.
I first encountered this type of censorship while playing World of Warcraft. I was browsing a fansite, where every item, quest, spell, etc, in game has a comment section. The comments have an option to be upvoted, or downvoted providing you are logged in. This created some issues with quests involving pop culture references but also obscure mechanics which may need explaining to friends, guild members, or just passers by who needed help. The most 'humorous' comments, often just a quote from the pop culture reference(usually a movie) followed by the same quote being rehashed with more meme. Finding useful information, rather than a cheap laugh which was already thought, chuckled at, and discarded, was difficult. It became even more difficult when relevant information was being downvoted if it contained a slight inconsistency with the current game patch, the usable content of the post would be 'purged' then marked for deletion, and there would be no guide in the comment section.
Recently, I've been browsing a number of different websites for gaming information, commentary, and laughs. I'm not the kind of person that takes lightly to negative vibes in a forum thread, or community. I pick up on them easily, and either find the source, or when realizing the source is invalid, cut my lost time and find something else to do.
Browsing Reddit isn't something I do often, due to my beliefs of upvoting and downvoting, and the like. I've heard of user censorship happening on Reddit, but haven't seen it myself. So, when reading a gaming subreddit, I saw some gaming news, some nostalgia, and something else that piqued my curiosity. A comic I clicked on, which went on far too long to keep my interest, was based off of a fighting scene from one of the 'newer' Star Wars movies. It was intended to lambaste BioWare, and their handling of Star Wars: The Old Republic, and MMO which they recently released. When reading the comments, it seemed as though anything that was expressed negatively towards the comic, or the opinion the comic was downvoted severely. There were tremendous amounts of these comments, and it had me worrying my fears were justified. In the end, with the few agreeing comments being upvoted, and the swath of disagreeing comments being downvoted, I dismissed the opinions portrayed in the comic, and took it for what it was: a comic.
As an aware person, I'm capable of developing my own opinion on something without the need for others to cloud it. I do wonder how many others aren't, though, and how much of a trend this form of censorship really is. Perhaps, the websites that are 'free and open', aren't as free as previously thought.
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