"Wealthy individuals/organizations can silence anything on the platform and remove monetary rewards from anyone."
"They have to buy steem and lock it for 3 month to be able to do so, so that's what I'd call a feature."
@berniesanders, @dan, and others, didn't have to buy any Steem. They mined their stakes. Did you mine yours?
The truth is that the early miners (I'll not use the term preminers, even though the mining occurred before Steemit existed), have the bulk of Steem in existence, and do have the ability to control the content, at will. Bizarre things like @ned slamming @officialfuzzy with 100% downvotes, and @dan downvoting @sweetsssj with low-powered downvotes happening recently, indicate that nefarious things are being done with those mined stakes, and they cost other people money.
"Mark Zuckerberg buys 99% of the steem supply with the intend to disrupt and hurt the platform.
"A. Not going to happen even with 25% of supply.
B. That would make us all filthy rich"
I, oddly enough, am not here to get filthy rich, at least not in money. Steemit was formed with a 'golden parachute' mechanism, whereby a Sybil attack is potentiated by exactly the method @snowflake proposes, where simply buying Steem enables control of the witnesses. Since the witnesses control the code, they control the platform.
However, those with substantial holdings of SP will profit from the attack. It will be their Steem that is used to control the platform by the Sybillian(s), and they will haply be filthy rich, and won't care (at least, your comment regarding filthy riches indicates that's all you'll care about. Please do not assume that I am saying I know this. I used the word 'indicate', and really that's what I mean. You appear to have undertaken initiatives to help Steemit, so I could be completely off the rails regarding your personal interest.)
I view Steemit as an opening salvo in the evolution of civilization towards a post market economy and Autarchy. There are forks of Steemit ongoing development as we speak, and if the lure of lucre isn't resisted by Steemit, it will be by another platform, sooner or later.
I like Steemit, and want it to grow into the many possibilities it presents to replace Fakebook, Gargle, and Youtool, just like Myspace was replaced. They are killing themselves by censoring their users, and Steemit can do the same thing. It can make the world a better place in ways we can't even imagine, if only the lure of easy money doesn't get in the way.
I appreciate your candid and substantive answer to @snowflake's post. Despite my insubstantial holdings of SP, I still will vote my appreciation.
RE: The last missing piece of the steem puzzle