The concept of a "reward" needs to be reexamined. Rewards aren't given and then taken away in real life that I've heard of, so the naming nomenclature for what is called "reward" is the wrong word to begin with.
An upvote isn't a reward, it's someone assigning someone else system resources(though why that is done at all still doesn't make sense either). Taking away that assignment of resources via downvoting is taking away someone's potential for earning that system resource. Whether or not it is built into the protocol isn't relevant.
The definition of censorship I provided above.
The definition of Curation is to put on display, to discern and create a list/public work that is on display, or to prominently put on display for others to see. Downvoting removes that to a certain %, so it is the opposite of curating and that means downvoting is suppressing something(censorship).
I'm disagreeing with the incorrect use of terminology that is being used across Hive, I am using historical definitions. Hive has censorship built into the protocol and it's called downvoting, to the degree that happens depends on if a post is lessened somewhat, a lot, a little, or zeroed out. For some reason people equate censorship = deleted, and that's just simply not the case.
Nor here either. Until payout, you haven't received the rewards. You can't spend them or transfer them or do anything else with them because you haven't received them yet.
Part of the issue seems to be that the UI displays an ESTIMATE of what you might receive, which is subject to change for various reasons (upvotes, downvotes, exchange rate, size of the reward pool, and possibly others I'm forgetting). But it is just an estimate. Upvotes don't "give" and downvotes don't "take away". The payment is made at the end, after all the votes are in.
Here's the defintion I get from google:
"the action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection or exhibition"
That's what we're doing with voting. Selecting and organizing the items that will get payouts (looking after isn't applicable). We vote for seven days, during which stakeholders get to collaborate via the voting process to select and organize the pending payouts. Estimated payouts move up and down, and, at the end, the votes are added up, and only THEN is the payout, if any, made.
Sure, but i've never heard of such a thing in real life where a guy who has 1,000 USD in his wallet curates a selection of items/books and puts them on public display somewhere where there's lots of people, and a millionaire walks by and cancels the display. Then the millionaire says "have more money in your wallet if you want to have your display here".
That entire interaction and system is nonsensical.
This is real life. Everything is real life unless you're imagining it or dreaming it.
Is Hive different from many other systems? Yes! Differentiation is important. Is everything about Hive great or perfect? Certainly not. We do the best we can with what we have and also work to improve it.
In any case, you can think of it as somewhat like a business where the shareholders vote on how the business is run (usually indirectly, by hiring a board or manager, but on some occasions directly). Those with a larger share of the business have more votes. That's not completely new, but applying it to a dynamic content rewarding environment is new (or at least was new when Steem invented it)
The money isn't in your wallet then taken away. It's in limbo fluctuating as the market corrects to decide the value. Think if this period as a secondary market. Round and round it goes, where it stops nobody knows.
I don't agree that one person should be able to wipe out what 100 others users thought was quality, but it's a tricky issue to tackle. We must have a balance to ensure free speech. What's a more balanced system? Certainly not one without downvotes.
Above I've mentioned one improvement to better decentralize Hive. Unfortunately it doesn't address this particular one. I'd say this one should be dealt with one on one between the parties involved.
I bet with the right wording, one side can bring the other to the table. It takes the defeated side to be more humble though. I don't think that affects anyone's free speech, just ego...