I see a few issues with the issues presented as a whole...
The most glaring one is that being downvoted doesn't remove your content, it just hides it from some front ends. It's still uncensored and what not, it's just hidden on the main platforms. Not that this is an argument FOR or against downvotes, just a plain fact.
This could easily be remedied by firing up a frontend (it can even be a static hosted site on any number of static site / cdn hosts for near free) similar to my project https://personal.community/ which is hosted on GitHub pages. At this point, I definitely don't recommend new users to use personal.community exclusively, it's still in MVP status and heavily under development).
The other side of the argument is rewards, which gettr doesn't have. So again, do downvotes really matter?
Not that hive as is could support millions of new signups.. I imagine a majority of the nodes would crumble under the pressure. Which is why we have "paid accounts" to let the new users trickle in slowly, giving witnesses more time to build out hived (and other full node type systems) infrastructure, to be able to handle those millions of new users down the road.
For the long term, I can't say which is better...
I'm not a big proponent of downvotes, nor paid accounts, but I do understand the need. There is a ton that could be said, but eh, I've ranted enough. ^>^
The basic infrastructure of Hive can support vastly more users, it would just be that resource credits and accounts might run out during an onslaught of signups - but that can be remedied if necessary.
I have already posted numerous articles on the topic of downvoting and censorship that address your points, but I appreciate that you may not have seen them. This has been going on for some time.
https://peakd.com/hive-150329/@ura-soul/when-is-a-censor-not-a-censor-the-wider-implication-of-downvotecancel-culture-on-hive
https://peakd.com/hive/@ura-soul/how-many-of-my-upvoters-are-actively-using-hive-addressing-downvote-cancel-culture-on-hive
https://peakd.com/covid19/@ura-soul/your-comments-on-the-cancel-culture-and-zeroing-of-viral-posts-on-hive-by-curangel
https://peakd.com/hive-150329/@ura-soul/the-dynamics-of-dpos-and-pob-pitch-money-against-freedom-in-a-constant-brawl-for-decentralisation-over-centralisation-but-we-
https://peakd.com/hive-181335/@theycallmedan/saqwofmi
I also spent two weeks building a front end just to track Downvotes, which did not exist previously:
https://peakd.com/hivealive/@ura-soul/new-hive-dapp-hive-alive-or-includes-a-1st-for-hive-the-untrending-report-to-track-downvotes