I made a longer reply to your link elsewhere, but this is still the crux of the matter that I don't "get." Imagine 10 of us vote on whether or not to remove flags, (Steemit has agreed to implement our ruling we'll say), myself and 3 other people say we want to keep them, thereby losing 6 to 4. Has my vote been removed? Have I been censored?
You may be looking at it from the standpoint that everyone got a positive (+) vote, so no! But it's the exact same consensus mechanism we achieve with flagging.
This vote could be structured as two different posts.
Post #1: "I want to remove flagging!" Gets 6 up votes (+6) and 4 flags (-4) giving it a score of 2 (+2). 6-4=2
Post #2: "I want to keep flags!" Gets 4 up votes (+4) and 6 flags (-6) giving it a score of negative 2 (-2). 4-6=-2
No matter how you frame the process, the result is that I voted and my vote was removed, censored, and didn't count if I follow your thesis.
I don't ascribe to that though. Voting for one alternative is the same as down voting the other option. The idea that only positive voting is valid is flawed. For example, if you have done no voting today, and then proceed to use 20 full power votes on content you find to be good, the amount of value you contribute to their rewards is pulled away from all the other posts on the platform. You have weakened tens of thousands of votes and decreased rewards on thousands of posts through your upvoting actions. You are removing rewards from far more people then you are giving them to!
Alternatively, if you go find 20 posts of plagiarism and spam and flag them, the value you remove is distributed elsewhere. With 20 clicks you have done the same as going around and giving small up votes to every other piece of content on Steemit.
It's mathematically the same. Period. Arguably flagging is far more effective at distributing rewards more widely to deserving users. 20 * 100% flags are a lot easier to manage then 10,000 * 0.2% upvotes.... but they do the same thing.
Perception is entirely different, people may take flags personally, but that speaks to a need for rebranding and educating, not removing.