they can dismiss everyone elses input on the basis of them not being poll approved.

If you want to have real input, volunteer for the position & get vote approval.

furthermore its inappropriate to use steemit instead of reddit or cryptocurrencytalk for a discussion url, since signing up on steemit requires paying them money.

You don't need to invest to get an account, fair enough if you want an account today you would need to pay like $5-10 for an account from a 3rd party service, but Steem has been out for coming on 3 years now, take 5 mins to make an account.

Both reddit and cryptocointalk are not free from potential censorship.