Oh please....
"No capital investment is required."
Sure there is! Without an investment in Steem, there is virtually nothing you can do on Steemit.
"No other significant public forum offers free permanent web hosting and 100%transparency (blockchain FTW!!)."
Neither does Steemit! "free permanent web hosting" is totally useless if you have zero reputation, and your posts and comments keep getting downvoted and hidden. That is not free web hosting! As for 100% transparency...So what? Knowing something is not a solution, nor is there any mechanism at Steemit to find and carry out a solution once the problem is known.
"Sure you can get downvoted, but you know who did it."
Knowing who did it makes little if any difference, as long as nothing is done about it, and they are allowed to continue downvoting, hiding posts, and ruining reputations.
"If you get flagged (insta-banned) on yo.tube or fa.cebuk or pa.ypal, you have ZERO recourse. ZERO. You don't know who did it, you have no way of asking them, and you have nobody to request help from."
And what recourse do the vast majority of members have on Steemit? ZERO!
Have all those members I listed who are engaged in little more than downvoting other members been removed from the Steemit platform? I didn't think so! So where is the recourse? There isn't any!
You can easily identify users with high-rep and post thoughtful comments to get their attention.
I've actually been very impressed with high-rep users responsiveness.
I've received several non-boilerplate replies from ura-soul, crypto.piotr, themarkymark, and even gooddream.
Socky and me-tarzan even gave me MASSIVE upvotes!
Ok, maybe "easily" was a bit of an overstatement.
It's a roll-of-the-dice, but your odds are way better than any casino.
That's the beauty of the blockchain. Nobody can be banned. Nobody can stop you from sending or receiving direct transfers or delegations of steem.
Your bank can flag you and freeze your account (real cash-money-dollars) at any time and for any reason, they don't have to explain it to you and they don't even have to charge you with a crime.
Pa.ypal can also kick you off their platform (permanently, they have your ID) and freeze your funds for 6 months and nobody can even ask why.
"Your bank can flag you and freeze your account (real cash-money-dollars) at any time and for any reason, they don't have to explain it to you and they don't even have to charge you with a crime."
It is 100% true, I've seen it with my own eyes. And it was a "reputable bank" (if there even is such a thing) one of the "too-big-to-fail" banks. They cited the Bank Secrecy Act.
I couldn't pay rent or buy groceries or gas for two full weeks.
Put that on your list of things you'll never see in the MSM.
"Pa.ypal can also kick you off their platform (permanently, they have your ID) and freeze your funds for 6 months and nobody can even ask why."
They permanently ban people for no reason.
Pa.ypal is one of the biggest ponzi-schemes on the planet earth.
If you are currently using pa.ypal, I'd recommend exploring a backup-plan in case you get insta-banned with zero notice.