So are upvoting and flagging currently not anonymous? On Hacker News, they certainly are. And there's both downvoting (for posts that don't contribute) and flagging (for spam and other posts that violate community standards). That makes the most sense to me. I'm new on Steem, but I've adopted the policy of flagging all "upvote/follow" spam. Especially when it appears multiple times in a thread.
RE: A question for the Steemit community about the mechanism of downvoting and the dangers of charlatans