I see your point. Here are the notes from the pull request:

The main argument against this change will be that users can no longer easily identify posts that have been flagged for abusive reasons. While this is true, the current implementation of the flag/downvote at a blockchain level does not provide a good means to do this without also singling out content that has been downvoted for non-abusive reasons. Users that are interested in fighting abuse can use other interfaces (such as steemd or the steemit.chat abuse channel) for this purpose, while regular users will just be presented with the "vote list" (showing the top 20 upvotes/downvotes) and pending post reward.