I still think it works against the platform when a good poster has money taken away for reasons that have nothing to do with spam or other criminal activity.
I agree and that is why the money on the post is not your money. It is potential reward. So basically there is a weeks’ time span when investors can evaluate, either positively or negatively, the work you have done for the Blockchain. Your money can’t be taken by anyone of course. When wealthy investor upvotes, no one really cares. It’s “normal” right? It makes people happy so why would anyone care. But when wealthy investor downvotes, people care because it makes them mad. They see “supposedly” their money taken away.
About Bernie. I was puzzled too when he downvoted the Vaxx article. He’s one of the biggest investors here. One of the reason we all can earn money. He is the one who destroyed the scammer who upvoted himself as I described in my previous comment too. Not only was he partly the reason that Steem is a prosperous place, but he is daily returning over 400 bucks in rewards back to the reward pool. Sometimes he is blunt, that’s just the way it is. From some peoples perspective his “directed wrath” is off. One always flags something when he strongly disagrees with what is happening in the particular article right? It can be plagiarism, it can be reward pool rape, it can be promoting of stuff that you’re strongly against. Censorship is when you CAN’T say what you will. If anyone finds enough support, he can be visible again. Also what you write can never be removed from the Blockchain. It partly is censureship yes. Everyone on Steemit starts “censured”. No reputation, no stake, no potential reward on posts, no visibility. Upvotes “remove” this state, and downvotes bring you back to that state.
Lastly, you mentioned that he should have discussed it with Michelle so that she makes whatever adjustments are necessary - to do what? if I may ask? To earn less?
Well…both ways are possible. From the downvoters perspective, there was problem in the work itself (that should be discussed with author). Also the problem never was the valuable upvote, but the amount of them on the amount of posts daily (my assumption). That can be discussed with both. Author can either start posting less and still have the valuable up vote ready, just not that often, or he could have contacted blocktrades. Well I think we will agree that morally it would be right to contact someone right?:D
You sure have strange wishes:D I hope that you will not be downvoted…