Among other things, this research brings to light an interesting question for Steemit. If Steemit has both downvotes and upvotes like Reddit does, should they make votes less transparent? Particularly downvotes? Perhaps you'd be able to see how many downvotes a post received, but be unable to see who downvoted you without the use of a third-party tool.
If downvotes are highly-visible, like flags are now, I believe Steemit users will be far less likely than Reddit users to use the downvote. It's much easier to use a downvote when hiding behind the veil of anonymity.
Bonus question: Is it possible to build in anonymity for downvotes at a blockchain level?
The site could not show it, but the blockchain see all ;) So anyone could go get it if they wanted, like we do with steemd in a URL instead of steemit and we can see who flagged. Hiding it would alleviate the aversion to openly objecting to something, but that doesn't resolve the issue of the psychology in ourselves of others that creates this apprehension to go against the flow. Thanks for the feedback.