How is it possible that Steemit does not show what the blockchain does?
here is where you get the wrong idea.
Steemit, inc is a company, they need to follow laws, DMCA and can generally decide what to show or not.
Steem, the blockchain, is decentralized. The only way to get a truly uncensored version is to download the full blockchain and run a front-end locally
We're actually going to go in that subject in the next posts -one of the reasons why Dan left Steemit and tried to change a line on the Steemit AGPL license to get a fully and "uncensored" version of the Steem blockchain-. Thing is, the common user can't visualize all this info, can't possibly know if he/she it's getting robbed or tricked by anything because of the lack of knowledge.
Is like saying that anybody can see a result from an equation if they solve it but... they don't know maths. You can give them the formulas but they won't be able to know what to do with them. I hope you get me.
and you can't run a node/download the full chain? perhaps I'm missing something here
You can, what we're trying to say is that the regular usar doesn't have the technical skills to do this (and do a query on the chain) and all the info we present goes over their heads.
Steem is basically dependent on Steem Inc. Steem isn't universal, it doesn't belong to it's users. If Steem Inc closes, others would be able to fix minor bugs, but would not have permission to do anything major (for example... a hardfork)
They’ve entirely open sourced the Steemit.com source code, but the Steem blockchain remains under the control of Steemit Inc.
this is correct!