While it doesn't take his money, since it's not his yet, having not been paid out, it does render silent those who upvoted him, by conteracting their VP. It basically eliminates their voice.
As you point out, rather than engaging in debate, it is censoring of the voices of those who spoke by upvoting. Flagging is also censorship when it blanks out a post. Censorship isn't only completely rendering information unavailable. It is also suppressing information, and making it harder to get to.
@bloom calls himself a 'professional flagger'. He claims to receive funds from off platform to fund his operations. He rarely comments or posts, so remains unflaggable, and remains funded despite the lack of support from the Steemit community. @blacklist-a is a bot management tool. When you receive a flag from @blacklist-a various updoot bots no longer updoot your posts.
I have seen discussions of folks trying to figger out exactly why there might be a bot army upvoting posts that take their orders from @blacklist-a, and it's an interesting question. Can promoting certain kinds of speech be the goal? That seems fairly obvious, and it's perhaps not sinister in intent. Since the only gauge we have to judge intent is what @blacklist-a flags, and it's flagging those that are aren't financially supported enough to counter @sneak and @bloom's flags, I reckon that is a clue.
These are aspects of censorship that, like shadowbanning, demonetizing, and the like, are having enormous impacts on free speech elsewhere. Have a look at how China is oppressing folks it considers to be expressing opinions the government disapproves.
They cause the ring on your phone to be different when you're calling someone on it's blacklist, or they're calling you. Blacklisted folks can't buy certain things, like plane tickets. According to @sneak those things aren't censorship.
But they are.
We should think very carefully about how the rise of things like the updoot bots that @blacklist-a controls can influence speech. More alarming is the introduction of professional flaggers paid by outside sources. Are these things going to further the growth of society, to allow the personal variability of opinion so essential to debate, and thus learning, on Steemit?
Or are they a presage of things to come, like China is undertaking now?
If that's where Steemit goes, I reckon it's going to lose users like a sinking ship loses rats. When the ship goes down, the rats are shown to be the smart voyageurs, cuz they're not trapped belowdecks.
Some folks haven't the skills, or the interest, to enter into debate. Like Papists that give the inquisited a choice between conversion or burning at the stake, they use their stake to force compliance.
Fortunately, besides rep, all they burn on Steemit is cash. It's still censorship, but it's an improvement over medieval censorship.
Yay! =p
Thanks!
RE: Steemit Developer @sneak Hides Two Highly Revealing Posts Related To Verifiable Student Actors Involved in Florida School Shooting