There is a big difference between someone who can censor and an entire company that can censor. There is a fine line between decentralized and censorship. Some people think that a decentralized platform means do whatever the heck you want, which includes plagiarism, posting a porn picture with no content, and the inevitable one liners with bidbot abuse. This is where flags come in.
Sure a whale can simply disagree with you and censor your posts by downvoting, but that is still a needed mechanic of the platform. Reason being that anarchy, or decentralization, typically doesn't work due to human greed. Aside from the potential that Steem/Steemit has, it is also a social experiment that I for one, have never seen before. The big question is...
Can we govern ourselves?
In my opinion, if and when the higher ups take notice of this platform and want to get involved, we as a community should have safeguards already in place to combat any kind of abuse or plagiarism that would be deemed unworthy of rewards.
There are too many people more focused on upvoting than downvoting for various reasons, but that doesn't mean that the downvoting system is wrong. It might have a few flaws but censorship will always be needed, whether something is decentralized or not.
If there were no flags, for example, there would no doubt be child porn floating around on this site (which I have seen in the past), and surely that post is still lurking somewhere, whether it was flagged or not. If authorities caught wind of this, goodbye steem.
So it's not completely censorship free, but how much money is Steemit Inc. making off of content creators?
I think that there is a common misconception of what decentralization means.
"A decentralized system is one which requires multiple parties to make their own independent decisions" In such a decentralized system, there is no single centralized authority that makes decisions on behalf of all the parties.
We each make independent decisions every day on how we want to experience our decentralized utopia here using the Steem blockchain. The rules are stated very clearly in the welcome page, yet people choose to abuse instead. So censorship is inevitable. We as a community have taken a decentralized approach to censorship. Unfortunately censorship occurs even when there is a mere difference of opinion, and there is a fine line as to whether or not some of these censorship occurrences are justified. Is it new content, or is it the same conspiracy that's been on youtube for the last 10 years? Is there something new to add to the topic, or is the author just bringing the same news/facts/ideas to the platform that already exist everywhere else? It's a fine line but some people are willing to cross it.
Without flags, I can't imagine that my content would reach many people because it would get buried a lot faster. At least in this case, the people, the community, those who care about the future of the platform are working together to help fight abuse on the blockchain. In my opinion, this and other platforms like it are the most censorship-free platforms I can find. Not one central entity, government agency or company runs the entirety of the platform. Steemit Inc can go out of business tomorrow and Steem will still be there. It is up to us to govern ourselves on this platform. To govern eachother. This would be the only way to prove that it can be done without a government having to step in and take over, and tell us what we can or can't read, or censor our posts.
Those on the platform who are getting censored could just be going about it the wrong way and they should try a different approach. I have blogged about a controversial topic before and I didn't get flagged, so the censorship isn't always there. However; I did experience a bit of fear that I might get flagged since it was regarding a conspiracy theory, but reality is when it comes to conspiracy theories, those blogging about it don't know the truth any more than those who don't believe in said conspiracy theory. Otherwise, it wouldn't be called a theory.
So is it a decentralized platform? Of course it is! Does decentralized mean censorship free? Of course not! Anyone with enough invested in the platform will surely do whatever they can to protect their investment, but for the most part -- keep it original, and you should be okay.
Dear @bitfiend
One of the best comment's I've read today. Thank you for taking the time to write it all.
I can only appreciate that you shared your view with me and others.RESPECT
I just think that noone could "buy" that much power.
We're all choosing witnesses. But we cannot have any impact on those who "keep order with flags". That doesnt seem to be right.
Yours
Piotr