Thanks for bringing up an important issue, @blakemiles84! We wrote an article on censorship today too. We were drawn to Steemit because it purports to be a censorship-free platform, which is far superior to our experience with FB.

While our experience on Steemit has been waaaay better than that on FB, we do find that users try to censor one another through the downvote (or by threats of reporting to authorities). On one hand it's not a big deal, but on the other hand it is a big deal because the underlying intent of the downvote is to silence another user. It causes injury as it affects reputation, author rewards, and limits the audience reach (in which case, the entire community suffers when valuable content is restricted).

The levels of censorship that @sigmajin alleges are far more serious.

Censorship absolutely has to be addressed even on the smallest scale. There is no place for censorship in a free, fair, just, and logical society, from whales or minnows or the government or hippies. If it is tolerated to any degree, it will grow and grow and grow. Steemit is not at the level of censorship of Fascistbook now, but continued conversation and debate are necessary to keep it so.