Even if you can demonstrate that hidden posts get less views than unhidden posts on average, the factors that are responsible for that includes where, when, the subject, the author and the audience and that data would be inconclusive at best because of those factors. I guarantee that you will find that posts hidden get less views, as it's completely to reason, but at the same time I bet that certain responses and posts get more views because they were initially hidden.
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i have no problem with not calling it 'censorship', but if something is hidden it is by definition now not fully available in a published format alongside the other posts. obviously, i don't make posts to steemit for them to be hidden. i personally feel that what i am posting usually will draw enough attention without me needing to add 'mystery' to it by having it hidden. i do though think it is justified to say that hidden posts are 'semi censored' - since they do result in some of the people who would have potentially encountered the material from not encountering it, just as if it was fully censored.
this though, is not the end of the issue, since the author also loses money and reputation due to the downvotes - which is a whole other dimension to the equation.
'published' implies full access alongside other published items. If I publish a book via a publisher, I am not going to accept it being put behind a hidden door in the shop's bookshelf just because someone else decides it should be because they have more money than me.
That's all well and good in theory, but it's not 'the community' as some kind of perfect, altruistic and balanced entity. What is actually occurring is that those with the most money have the capacity to limit the reach of specific posts and publishers with impunity. The decision is currently not based on merit, but rather on wallet size. If 40+ people in the community decide that something should not be hidden, it may make no difference because one single voter with more wallet size disagrees. Democracy doesn't work that way, oligarchy does. Your position here smacks, ironically, of a communist dictator who decrees that 'the people have spoken' when in truth it was actually just one individual speaking who holds an unbalanced amount of power in the system. Yes, it is possible for the rest of the community to rally around those who are unfairly treated, but the system itself contains no specific facility or that and that is why I suggested to include one in my post on the topic.
I am aware that Dan has specifically included some kind of conflict resolution system into EOS, so it is obviously not just me that has a concern - though I don't yet know the details of that.
As already stated, marketing theory and practise makes clear that visibility is king in many cases. Information system theory shows the same in terms of human- computer interaction. The human visual cortex is virtually hardwired in many people to be drawn to shiny things - sad but true.
They do literally lose money since payouts are directly reduced due to downvotes, as I understand - they also get less payout due to less visibility and thus less downvotes. That's fine for validly downvoted posts, but that is not what I am highlighting.