With Great Power....

With great Power comes great Responsibility

The brilliant concept of Steemit is that Steemians themselves are the moderators on the platform. The concept is to get as much quality content on the Steemint as possible. When users try to abuse the reward pool by posting low quality content or plagiarized articles they will be moderated by their peers who can use the flag to downvote these posts or comments.
The pending rewards of the downvoted post is then returned to the reward pool so that real contributors can reap the benefits.

If we all follow the simple rules than we all benefit. High quality content ups the value of the platform which will lead to higher rewards for everyone.

The flag is a powerful tool in fighting abuse and unwanted content (like plagiarism). However the flag is also used as a weapon by some to settle arguments something I like to call opinion flagging.
In this case it isn’t about the quality of the post but rather about the message the author is trying to convey.

Someone might write about a topic others have strong feelings about and express a different opinion on the subject than yours. You might disagree with the author but that is not a reason for a downvote.
This is not facebook or Youtube...If you want to "dislike" a post because you don’t agree with the topic or don't like the authors ideas then my suggestion is stick with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. An author can write (or vlog) a brilliant piece about something you might not agree with but that doesn’t mean that the post isn’t good. You have to be objective and if you want have a discussion with the author, guess what?.....That is what the comment section is for, here you can engage with the author in healthy discussion about his post. Who knows? This might give you some new insights into the matter.

Another misuse of the flag when the downvote is used for “alleged” misconduct. Now in some cases the misconduct may be justified but it becomes a problem when someone tries to enforce his own rules and tell others what to do and what not to do on the platform.
Steemit has a lot of mechanics that can be used to your own advantage, for example......you can selfvote, you can buy votes from voting bots. It is debatable whether this is right or wrong but it is my opinion that Steemit intentionally created a non-restricting environment because they believed that the community would make sure that everyone would play by the rules and that anything frowned upon would be struck down by the multitude.

The problem however is that not everyone on Steemit is equal, one’s power and influence is decided by his or her Steem Power. The more Steem Power you have, the more you are able influence those around you.
People look up to whales, because of their success but also for the power that they can wield.
With this power however also comes responsibility. As far as I am concerned whales have the responsibility to right the wrongs committed on the platform. Most whales have been on Steemit for a long time and know exactly what is good for the platform and what is not.

So when a whale starts acting out and tries to enforce his/her own rules upon minnows, I would expect that the "Big Guns" do something about it. Steemit will not attract users if bullies are left running the place, this will only scare people away. Steemit needs positive stories and not negative ones if we want to continue to grow.

As I said in the beginning of my post: With great (Steem) Power comes great Responsibility

Now with that in mind read this story by @thedamus