Yes, we both seem to like lengthy responses, when communication is chunked it just seems to work better for me that way. I did read between the lines there a bit that I should perhaps be formulating some of my longer replies into stand-alone posts, which is a really good idea. I don't generally know when I start a reply how long it will become.
Your insight into how the blockchain here works is really useful for me. Unfortunately I never had more programming than a bit of basic and c+ way way back in high school, and most people not even that. That is why I mentioned that for most people, very simple forms of data suppression are quite effective.
I have been reading valued-customer's "Steemit and the End of the World" series, and he has made some good points. One I raised in a reply was that any random oligarch with an NGO (Soros anyone?) agenda could buy a few million worth of steemit and staff it with a cyber downvote squad to suppress alternative narratives. This touches on the downvotes for opinions you mentioned, and I see that Steemit still has some development ahead of it. Nevertheless I am happy to have taken the plunge and be on ship.
Yes, that can and likely will happen at some point.
The only HOPE there is that purchasing so much steem drives the value of all the steem those of us that already have it up. You could power down. Such activities of down voting would likely drive some people away and cause steem to drop. You can wait for it to drop and buy more with what you powered down.
Also it is easier in the blockchain to PROVE they are doing that, and if need be to group counter up against such activities.
That said it's a pretty new world here... with it will come new problems we haven't even experienced yet.