First of all: I am glad you are taking that time; as mentioned before, communication has been tried repeatedly by me and many others, and if there were answers they were often pretty offhand, usually not answering the question, and if so then often with arguments that on closer inspection did not hold true. So yeah, thanks!

On the topic: I am not concerned about downvotes themselves; I actually think it is a great concept, it's only that people coming from a world full of likes and void of criticism might need to learn how to handle it.

I am concerned about the way power is being wielded by a few, and having quite an impact on the many.

In my opinion (and most probably in the opinions of quite some critics of your downvotes) censorship is suppression of information by exercising power; manipulating the flow of information to create a 'narrative' that is more in line with a certain taste, a bias or some agenda. Call it censorship or not, but that's what most of this is about. In Hive's case this is done by a few who 'staked' their way to power, and they do have a proportionally huge impact. This is not about community-based guidelines or some consensus, this is not your private feed, this are heavy handed actions by you and a few others. You kind of rule Hive, and I do like a good ruler. But some activities really surprise me, as they do not make sense to me.

You are right, RT hasn't been 'censored' yet (only suppressed to some extend), but the effort is obvious. It was quite telling when a few months ago that account was bombed into oblivion from a reputation of 70+ by what looked much like a concerted effort or at least an interesting dynamic. Whoever posts from that account is astoundingly resiliant; maybe they aren't in it for the rewards, nor the fun, but to simply share/spread information. I don't care much about RT, but it's an ok addition to the spectrum.

Many others didn't take too well to being harassed with out of proportion dvs and left, and among them were world reknown artists and journalists. If you would have appreciated Hive (like I did) as an 'alternative' platform that also provides art/culture/information... from the other side of the coin, you would have noticed that as quite a loss of potential, esp. provided that wider adoption is something being aimed at. Which I don't see, and is one of the things not making sense to me.

And in light of that I also ask myself: To what extend 'de-centralized' is still the appropriate adjective for Hive? I see it on the blockchain-level being a distributed ledger, but to what extend is it true for the distribution of influence? Obviously zero. So maybe that slogan should be changed? Actually it would suffice if with power came responsibility ;)

Curious to read your thoughts on that
thanks
k