I am very unhappy I missed your comments here, somehow unnotified of them. I only found them on a random search for something else.
"...fighting spam, plagiarism..."
I talked to Marky about this because he is extremely dedicated to such things, and he told me DV's do almost nothing to discourage them. Upon reflection, scams and spam don't make money on author rewards, so flagging them away doesn't exert any pressure on them. Plagiarism perhaps is more impacted by DV's, but that's a feeble justification for a mechanism that has been wreaking havoc on the platform before Hive existed.
I no longer believe there is any good purpose for flags. I don't think my argument matters, that all of our arguments against flags matter, because flags serve a very bad purpose very well. They concentrate stake. When Steem advented ~36 whales have mined up massive stakes and today ~36 whales control Hive governance.
That's what DV's do.
Blurt sought to fork Hive, but I have other issues with it. I'm not even sure where it went wrong, but I'm sure it did from interactions I've had with certain principals there. At this point I don't think forking off a new platform is what to do. Despite it is mathematically impossible, my gut tells me to continue to oppose DV's on Hive.
People get old, get sick, die, marry, and find other things to do. I don't think the 36 whales that control Hive are all the same 36 ninjaminers that forced @ned to take the money and run from Steemit. Maybe it's hallucination, but my gut tells me to keep making rational arguments to right Hive on Hive. You, @thatgermandude, and @xplosive all have the right moral, ethical, and rational views and abilities to coherently express them to do that and I wish you would more often. I am glad to find you still putting up with the crap to do so here.