Small downvotes of powerless accounts and retaliation downvotes are a side effect. But those don't matter in the big picture. The small ones don't have an effect

Are you aware what decentralization really means? In a decentralized network is anyone able to run a node at any time and no one has more power than anyone else. Both is not true for Steem. You are just emotionally involved in this system and therefore praise it and put it like it would be decentralized while it is clearly not. You even state it that "smaller" accounts have nothing to say.

The last hardfork even improved the power in the hands of the whales by giving them higher curation and free downvotes. Now the necessary trust towards them is even higher than ever before. Though there is no room for trust in a decentralized network.

Posts like this work on this platform for praising the platform. But outside this filter bubble you would not get any agreements like here. Make a post inside the ethereum subreddit about decentralization and see what you will get there.

If Steem would be decentralized anyone would be able to run a node and all votes would have exactly the same weight. There were no 21 witnesses and of course there would be a problem with people having several accounts but you can not replace this unsolved technical problem with such weird workarounds.

I personally know of >1M STEEM that has been bought since the EIP exactly for the reason that we now have a chance to getting closer to doing so.

This example does not work. Even if you try to look for indications, the question is, how many NEW people bought Steem to become a whale since the hardfork? Whales buying more does not indicate anything since they decided to go this way of improving their situation.

Any related to your image. Getting a big downvote from one group does not represent any kind of majority. It is just a powerful group deciding independently on their own. You just follow the argumentation of someone powerful instead of having a discussion before where the majority made a decision afterwards. This is no decentralization, this is leading and following.

These are just some reasons proven why DPoS is never going to work on the long distance. What do you think why people decide to post on Medium without getting any reward instead of using Steem? They have bigger trust in the centralized administration than in anonymous private persons here.