>"Many of the posts being downvoted are done so days after being posted, in which the majority of rewards coming in were cast within hours of posting and they had time to be viewed on the hot and trending tabs."

The fact that Yegor Prosvirnin's text output wasn't altered or prevented from being published (AFAIK) before he died didn't mean he wasn't censored.  Killing him utterly and completely stopped him from posting ever again. He was completely and utterly censored by being killed, presumably exactly for that reason.  

People care about their rewards.  They care about their engagement.  They post on Hive for two main reasons.  The first is they earn valuable money, and the second is they engage in valuable discussions.  Flagging has been shown to be able to all but eliminate both.  This suppresses their speech by preventing them from achieving the goals that prompted them to post.

Yegor Prosvirnin was censored to death by tossing him out a window.  @skeptic was censored to pretty significant frustration of his enjoyment of the platform by quite persistent flagging.  Both are equally suppression of speech, despite being quite different means of suppression of speech, and vastly different in the quality and quantity of that suppression.  

It's a logical fallacy to claim that such suppression isn't censorship, and I know you are forthright enough to say what you think is true and are competent to grasp these facts.  

I have a reason for bringing this up.

I think you have come up with a mechanism by which whales can gain ROI in a way that does not derange curation on Hive and also obviates censorship as a byproduct, the savings accounts I have long supported since I first grasped some of their potential.

I think you're underpromoting that plan, and I'd like to see it happen because I think it would make Hive orders of magnitude more valuable, both in terms of censorship resistance, and financially.

>"If I make a frontend that puts downvoted posts at the top of trending, then what are you gonna say?"

It is quite conceivable to make a currency which has negative value.  In such a monetary system the less you have of it, the more wealthy you are, so a currency which rewards you for being deprived of it is a de facto negative value currency.

>"It's also very easy to defeat all downvotes by promoting the post with a small burn to @null."

I don't think that prevents reputation damage, and folks post here at least in part to gain rewards.  Self censorship to avoid other censorship isn't a novel thing, and lots of people do it IRL to keep their jobs, for example.  That's just another route to show that flags are censorship.  After all, by your argument being fired for calling the boss names wouldn't be censorship.  They'd just be out of a job, and still be able to say mean things off the premises while looking for another job.

>"The issue of downvoting has nothing to do with censorship."

Then it wouldn't prevent spam, scams, or plagiarism, which is the purpose originally stated for it's existence.  That's why there's a bot called @spaminator that flags people.

>"Downvotes do not suppress content from being viewed."

They do when persistent enough to destroy reputation, because then your posts and comments aren't visible without being clicked on to reveal them.  While that can be clicked away, people could also just buy more Hive instead of earning rewards by posting, or submit proposals and get HBD from the fund which can't be flagged away once the proposal is nominally supported.  

There's a reason @logiczombie isn't posting regularly anymore, and it's because their reputation takes a hit every time they get flagged, but that hit is much reduced when their comments are flagged instead of posts (at least I think that's why they're doing what they're doing).

Flagging people for their opinions isn't what flags are for, and the claim that flags are flown to reduce rewards is just false justification for opinion flags.  If that's not true, then Hive is not intended to be censorship resistant.  Because flags can be flown for opinion, and are, Hive is not any more censorship resistant than Twatter.  It's just being censored by different actors.

Dozens of people have left Hive because of censorship that I know of, and flagging away their rewards is censorship, just as much as getting someone fired, or killing them, is.  It's just a matter of degree.

You mentioned lying, but I am confident you don't think I'm lying, so I won't further address it.  I know that you know more than most that I am not talking about my money.