So it all comes down to rewards then, you'd post if the autovotes continue to land but if they're removed you wouldn't. Somehow you think that's the same as your content/account/ideas being deleted and blocked from the platform completely which is an actual real problem on web2.
It's weird cause when I was being downvoted by 50m+ korean steempower for months for standing up to downvoting overrewarded garbage the first thing that came to mind wasn't that I was being censored. People could still see my posts, interact with them, etc. Of course some weren't as loud due to fear of also being targeted but I wouldn't say that's censorship either way, at least not the kind that's haunting web2 right now where it's a real problem. We might have to find another word for it cause this one doesn't do it justice imo.
I posted for years with zero autovotes or even upvotes for quite a while. When it comes to life and ddeath level of important topics I will post whether I get upvoted or not, but when I only have so much time available, the knowledge that I will likely get regular upvote support helps me feel comfortable in setting significant time aside to make posts. I can literally sit and build my own business, that benefits me mostly or I can share what I know in posts so as to help potentially many people. After many years of helping others for free and having very little to show for it, Hive/Steem is a welcome change that makes info sharing much more practical economically for me/us. I take the upvotes as appreciation from others who want me to carry on doing it. I don't rely on it but I do respond to it. If I were posting about cat memes or recipes I wouldn't be that bothered, but I am often sharing heavily censored information that can save lives. The downvotes seem to come from people who disagree and claim that the posts are actually harmful - yet they have provided zero evidence of this.
No, it's not as much of a problem as Web2.0's censorship - but at the same time there are so many more users on Web2.0 that getting followers and discovered can be a lot easier than Hive at times. Ultimately, both systems are a particularly convoluted way of communicating with people you haven't met before. There are probably much better ways of doing this that neither web2 or web3 provide.
I have been very actively and deliberately censored on Web2.0 sites for around 15 years. The first social network I used, Tribe.net, was literally bought out by Cisco and turned into a shithole of weird gay porn and random shite because the messages being shared there were too effective at disrupting the societal domination of large corporations. This was Web1.0, not even 2.0. Trust me, I know what full censorship is.
I understand that what takes place in Hive can seem to be less like censorship of that kind and in a sense it is. However, Hive is a decentralised space where anyone who does the 'obscuring' of posts via downvoting has the opportunity to engage publicly to discuss the issue. Facebook is hated partially because of their ridiculous control of posts/accounts without even providing a legitimate reason most of the time. Downvoting without attempt to engage feels very close to that kind of approach, but things don't need to be that way. For some reason, people seem to think that completely removing social interaction from social networks is a rational approach, when clearly it isn't and will not yield sustainable growth.
This is so not true. There's way more content creators trying to make it and consumers only consuming content from the top 0.01% than actively going out and being incentivized to find new content creators. As a curator with a project focusing on newcomers I can attest that.
Not sure why you compare it to facebook, they don't have downvotes/dislikes as far as I know. A better comparison would be Reddit, where I agree that it's way worse being downvoted or having bots downvoted you for months and you never find out who or why.
Who is saying this? Just because some prefer not to comment on their downvotes it's not always necessary or hard to figure out knowing who the downvoter was, what they usually downvote and given the content you're providing or your own history with downvotes. It's way better than the example I gave above and as we all know, me personally at least, is that not saying anything saves everyone a lot more time as trying to explain your downvotes only causes endless discussions.