I can see some benefits of it, specifically for preventing abuse and hiding content many consider abusive or offensive. Without them people spam the system with junk and that has a negative impact on user growth. Prior to @anyx's bots, things were pretty nasty around here (you may remember some women were getting abused pretty badly).

Many argue it's just a downvote, no different than an upvote. A way to express preference about payout. If it was just a downvote, I wouldn't mind so much, but the steemit web interface treats it like an abuse flag and hides comments/posts which can be frustrating (as well impacts reputation if the person flagging has a higher reputation). It bothers a lot of people, but I try not to lose sleep over it. What annoys me more is when it's personally vindictive and the "justifications" for it are inconsistent. The neat thing for me is to see community members show their support for posts and comments which get unfairly flagged. There can always be a counter balance.