Important topic, but I can not really come up with any approach to solve the problem.
I am in favor of the different power of accounts, even tho this could be a little more balanced (wasn't a future fork supposed to do that?). It prevents a lot of shady methods like spam creating accounts. I also think people who invested more time and money on Steemit deserve to have more influence.
I also never seen an unfair downvote. Bernie downvoted a comment of mine, but I essentially called him a racist, so it was not unjustified. I have seen some justified downvotes for tag abuse and identity theft and I thought it is kind of cool, that everybody has some sort of policing power, well at least if you got Steem Power.
As a new User I can ofc see how frustrating it can be to have your account be invisible and unprofitable after you put a lot of energy into it to get going.
I can only offer the centralized approach of having some sort of Steem Police, similar to trails or even more like witnesses, but with the official power that every downvote has to be double checked by them to be effective, to make sure it is not just a bully downvote. But there are also a ton of problems with this solution, mainly the potential abuse of power and corruption. So yeah....
It's hard to say. I don't know if he is as active at it as he was. I know he was auto-flagging anything stellabelle wrote recently or so she claimed to me, though I noticed some of her stuff was not flagged. I'm not sure, and didn't really look into it. Bernie has the potential to do great good and great harm. I simply hope he comes out on the balance of doing good, and I am optimistic that he will.
As to solution... it will not be easy. I wasn't actually asking for a solution.
I was more or less just going over the situation for the benefit of all the new people.
It is probably the biggest BLEMISH/FLAW in the system at the moment. Yet, we haven't really come up with a solution.
If I see a problem I start thinking about solutions, does not matter if I am asked to or not ;)
To be fair I had a rather unpleasant convo with Stella, I like her and had some good talks with her before, but I really hate passive aggressiveness.
Yeah, I don't always agree with Stella either. She's written some things I strongly disagreed with. Yet I won't follow her around flagging her. She has also written pieces I strongly agreed with.
I actually will NEVER flag a piece because I dislike it. I'll only flag spam, plagiarism, and abuse. In such cases I'd likely negotiate with the person before flagging.
I very much dislike the flag. I prefer the market approach myself.
I know you do, but I think the fear of downvotes helps Steemit. Flagging for disagreeing or other reasons is a shameful act and I would personally never do it, but we have to live with people doing it or we need actual police, imo.
Yep, they are going to do it.
Then our job is to try to convince them to hopefully change their ways. We simply cannot expect them to say "Gee you're right" and instantly change. That likely won't happen. We however may influence them in ways that over time could lead to change.