How The Censorship Works
To the best of my ability to be able to assess the situation, there is a high level Steemit User by the name of @ TheMarkyMark who owns quite a few bots, one of which is the festering pile of abuse known as @badcontent. Now, a bot leaving comments on a post isn't a big deal. We can ignore that, just as we would from a human. However, because @badcontent has ADMINISTRATIVE LEVEL ACCESS, it alters how your posts themselves are viewed by everyone on Steemit.
The first thing people see is a massive warning about how your post allegedly is about spam, plagiarism or scams. It blocks the view of your post until or unless the person reading it clicks the option to view the content anyways. So far I've only seen this happen on any post that links to any content outside of steemit, such as an image embed, youtube video, or the like.
How someone gets on this bot's bad list has nothing to do with algorithms or violating any policies. Just as a 1% ruling elite lord it over us on this planet, Steemit itself has a 1% ruling elite of its own. If any of these members of this elite disagree with or dislike a post you've made or a comment you made somewhere on Steemit -- even if your post or comment does not actually violate any rules, you get added to this bot's naughty list, just out of spite.
I'd also imagine that if there is any sort of algorithm, it has nothing to do with terms of use violations but rather is a list of topics that this 1% ruling elite of Steemit dislike or disagree with, and thus similarly to YouTube and many other places, you're simply not allowed to disagree with our ruling overlords.
This also (in theory at least) serves to steer traffic and demographic away from you and through this discouragement, minimizes the amount of STEEM Rewards you are able to collect on.
Simultaneously, these bots by default of their activities, are EARNING STEEM REWARDS by default of their active harassment.
The Glorious Work-Around
Thankfully, the STEEMIT Website itself is just its own front end to the STEEMIT Back-end. This back end allows alternative IPFS-based Front-Ends to be created. These front ends do not seem obligated to use or not use any particular features of STEEMIT, and are also able to have their own features that the STEEMIT Website Front-end does not have.
One such frontend is called "BUSY" [dot org]. You can use STEEM CONNECT to create an account there. Basically, it IS Steemit. Just being accessed through a different front end. As far as I can tell, it does not censor your content. You still get the annoying comment on the post from offending bots, but you do not get your comment censored.
If this post, I am going to use the tag #busy and through exploring this tag, you should be able to make your way to the Busy website. That and a Google Search should do it for you in about 5 seconds.
So encourage your followers to create an account on Busy and to use Busy as their primary means through which they post to Steemit. Then TheMarkyMark, BadContent and Build-a-FAIL-WHALE can all go get bent :)
RESTEEM THIS POST IF YOU CARE ABOUT FREEDOM OF SPEECH
RESOURCE LINK ADDITIONS:
@ran-a-banana provides this very useful bit of extended info: @ran-a-banana/the-bid-bot-blacklist-racket
@michaellamden68 poses some abuse / cyberbullying concerns on this matter: @michaellamden68/blacklist-is-the-steemit-platform-becoming-a-muppet-show
@bullybuster discord server: https://discord.gg/2JMJcFA
Do you feel as if you've been the victim of an online scam or fraud? You might want to consider reporting it to the FBI using their convenient online form: @psecdocumentary/think-something-might-be-an-online-racket-report-it-to-the-fbi-online
OTHER REFERENCES:
"War On Crypto" by @bitbrain: @bitbrain/money-understanding-it-and-cryptocurrencies-part-1-how-fiat-works
"Tools Are Neither Good Nor Bad": @psecdocumentary/tools-are-neither-good-nor-bad
OTHER REFERENCES:
"War On Crypto" by @bitbrain: @bitbrain/money-understanding-it-and-cryptocurrencies-part-1-how-fiat-works
"Tools Are Neither Good Nor Bad": @psecdocumentary/tools-are-neither-good-nor-bad
OTHER REFERENCES:
"War On Crypto" by @bitbrain: @bitbrain/money-understanding-it-and-cryptocurrencies-part-1-how-fiat-works
"Tools Are Neither Good Nor Bad": @psecdocumentary/tools-are-neither-good-nor-bad