Steem is touted as this democratic free speech platform and as we've seen with Facebook deciding what content is deemed to conform to their guidelines is this not the exact same thing?

These blacklists do not prevent anyone from posting anything they like. That's why it's not the same thing, and it's certainly not the exact same thing. It's not even the same ballpark. It's a lot closer to me making a post on my own website saying "The following facebook pages are crap and you shouldn't use them".

Nobody owns their reputation.