I really think the idea of someone putting together a third-party subscription-based (Steem powered) DRO (Dispute Resolution Organization) could solve this problem. The one major concern with this idea however is that there's no provision for it in the network. The only recourse anyone has right now is downvoting. Downvoting by a collective agency (voluntarily participated in mind you) could be very powerful in certain cases, but if someone just sets up an anonymous troll account and uses it only for attacks, there's no way to fight whatever Steem Power they've funded it with. A dispute resolution function needs to be built in, and needs to function in such a way that bad actors with lots of Steem Power can be nullified in their clout.
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Meeting down votes with down votes tends to just escalate. I've seen this tried. It goes from an incident of problem and can flame out into a big war.
Dispute Resolution is great as long as it is decentralized and is not biased. I don't know of a way to prevent bias.
People also say you cannot censor the blockchain. This is technically true. The payouts of the blockchain can be censored though.
Someone with power can do everything they can to try to make certain that certain people, or topics receive no reward.
So financial censorship is possible. I believe this is a problem. It is also a problem to which I have no clear solution.
I think the decentralized nature of a DRO could come from two qualities. The first would be the voluntary nature of participation. It would essentially be an insurance policy to protect people who are making their living posting in the Steemit environment. The second would come from the DRO's financial structure. A portion of the subscription fees could be used to pay the officers of the organization, and another portion would then be used to power the entity up and give it clout. The provision for DRO's would require that instant divestment would be possible.
For example, if your DRO was abusive, once exposed people could just withdraw their vested interest in the entity, stripping it of some of its power and income, and transfer it to a competitor. The incentive for the DRO to avoid this circumstance would be huge. This would be the self-regulating aspect. While not completely decentralized, it wouldn't be concentrated into a single entity, especially if abuses were apparent. Competitors would have an incentive to pop up to take advantage of the vulnerability.
The last part of the formula that is glaringly absent, is that there is no recourse for anyone on the platform to counter powerful troll accounts (or even non-powerful ones) that abuse their financial authority. There has to be a way to destroy a troll's reputation points (only in just circumstances of course), not just in their ability to receive payouts for posts, but also in their ability to have clout flagging or even upvoting others. It's obvious that we've already got some pretty heavy hitters on here that are just going around flagging people arbitrarily and they don't care about payouts for their posts.