I am quite opinionated, particularly about politics. Yet, I have not been forthcoming with any such opinions in my blog posts. I have expressed some opinions in comments. There is so much going on in the world worth discussing. Yet, I stop myself from putting fingers to keyboard on such matters. I have self-censored despite having moved my blogging to the Hive blockchain, which is censorship resistant. What gives?
Backstory
This all began back around 2007. I got a job working for an elected official, particularly because of my blogging. However, it does not look well for a staffer to express certain opinions, particularly those that differ from the boss's own opinion. Ironically, the job prevented me from writing about controversial topics. Even then, there were some a couple of non-political posts that got me in trouble as they reflected on the office.
After that job ended, we were really getting into the world of social media. At first it was a bit Wild West. But slowly platforms such as Twitter and Facebook started to censor. I was aware of it and avoided being controversial. That is until around when 2017 I posted a simple suggestion that people go out to vote at the local election on Facebook. The post was flagged and removed. That's when I started looking for censorship-free platforms.
Minds.com and Steemit
Fortunately, I found a couple of places. One was Steemit, which eventually hard forked to Hive. The other was Minds. Minds is still a centralized platform. But they have a high tolerance for opinionated people, so long as the post is within legal limits. I liked Minds as there are no limits on how often you can post.
Hive is decentralized and immutable. However, there are still limits that are enforced by the Hive police, who will perpetually downvote your account into oblivion for plagiarism and non-attribution. This is simple to remedy by posting original content and attributing images to the creator. They'll supposedly downvote you if you criticize certain people, but I have not seen that. And they will occasionally downvote posts that they deem are "over rewarded", which is a one-off downvote.
Even so, if your Hive account gets nuked with downvotes, then you can still post. But you probably won't be earning any rewards. And, if you are particularly nasty, then the Hive front ends will censor your account.
I'm not particularly worried about being "censored" on Hive. I write that in quotes as you don't get truly censored. You are just not rewarded for your blog and community posts, which is not the same thing. Even then, you can still earn rewards on comments and curation.
Self-Censoring Today
So, why do I still self-censor? It is possible that it is just habit from having done it for so many years. But perhaps there is more to it.
Avoiding Alienation
It is evident that a large number of creators on Hive are quite progressive. Although, this isn't entirely the case. There are a number of conservative bloggers on Hive as well. But even without a political leaning, it is rather easy to offend anybody who wants to be offended. It is so easy to alienate readers. With the alienation comes a loss of readers. Perhaps this has something to do with self-censorship.
Lack of Importance
Another possibility for self-censoring may be that the topics lack importance to me. Of course, some topics are worth discussing, some vigorously. But at this stage of my life, much of what is happening in the world has little effect on my day to day concerns. I can't say the topics aren't important. I still keep up with current evens. But they don't rise to the level of wanting to have heated discussions about them.
Time Allocation
It is more likely that I simply cannot commit the time to writing an opinionated blog post knowing that it will trigger somebody. As it is, writing takes me a long time. Then to have to deal with wrongheaded (clearly) comments for another long period, it would eat up my day. It may not be worthwhile to dedicate much time to debating with commenters. Why poke the bear when I have no intent to stick around to watch it get angry?
Transience
Then there is the transient nature of current events. I don't know if you have noticed that first reports are generally off the mark. It's not until much later that the truth often comes out and the news turns out to be media propaganda. We all knew, for example, that President Biden was starting to lose his marbles; but the media kept telling us he was sharp as a tack. Months later they are forced to admit that Biden really was starting to show signs of Old Timer's.
Suffice it to say, I've learned to defer having strong opinions until all that facts come out, which often happens long after people stopped caring about the matter. And by that time, I don't really care much either.
The best time to have an opinion is when the matter is still fresh on people's minds. But that's also the time when information is incomplete or altogether false. News is so transient.
I couldn't say whether any one of these reasons, or a combination of them, are the main factor(s) driving my self-censorship. But, I can't help wondering if it's something I should strive to change. Perhaps my attitude should be, "Dash it! I'm going to let people know what's what!" There's certainly a bunch of people who don't know how wrong they are because nobody has told them.
From the evidence, it is quite clear that there is an audience for opinions on social media. We'll see. I'll try to resurrect my doxatron to start pumping out opinions. It could be fun.