RE: How to fix downvoting: a set of proposals for a solution
Put another way, do you know anyone who is willing to put ~1 billion dollars into steem just to moderate it? The truth is great powers don't really cancel each other out. They are like two big waves coming together - maybe the sea is calm afterwards but anything in between just got blown to splinters.
People and institutions are semi-rational actors. They will work together and oppose each other depending on their goals. The USA, China, Russia, and many, many other governments have shown they are all interested in suppressing speech of different kinds.
Basically: There is NO ONE on earth who can oppose that level of force financially and they would be assassinated if they tried.
Again: you cannot depend on the existence of "good" or "neutral" parties (if such a thing truly exists) but only on things that are contractually enforced by the algorithm. The moment people and power are involved, everything goes out the window.
Furthermore, the system would likely aid these forces for rational reasons. If all these powers were to "buy in" in order to manipulate/suppress news, then the value of steem would rise as these huge buy orders came in. It would be a massive cash cow. The vast majority of users would benefit in the short term, but in the long term the system would now be held ransom by the very forces many are here to avoid.
But just like the stock market, current shareholders would LOVE a massive (and ongoing) spike from such markets because they would get wealthy off of it - just like bitcoin holders have seen the value skyrocket due to capital fleeing China.