Components
Reputation calculation in Steem.
Proposal
Currently, if I use a vote bot to pay for votes on my own post, my own reputation in the system will increase - since reputation is relative to the amount of votes I have received. Flagging/downvoting of posts results in the reputation of the recipient of the flag going DOWN, but ONLY if the flagger has a higher reputation than that of the person being flagged.
This means that I can literally shut down other people's accounts just by paying for votes for my own posts, getting a higher reputation and then flagging my targets repeatedly. In short, Steem fully supports the suppression of free speech by those with the most money by providing a barrier that protects those with the higher reputations, preventing them from being counter flagged by those in the community who have lower reputations and thus possibly lower wallets.
This is akin to having a free speech rule in society where only those in the higher pay grades can have free speech and where they are relied upon to police the speech of those in the lower pay grades. Pretty ugly.
At the very least we need to remove the rule that says that lower reputation users cannot effect the reputation of higher rep users when they flag them. This will ensure that we do not have an artificial elite that controls the flow of information on Steemit for their own purposes. If 90% of the community disagree with a user but his/her reputation is much higher than most users, then the voice of most of the community counts for nothing in attempting to have that user demoted.
This actually represents a potential existential threat to Steemit of the kind that the whitepaper points when it speaks about making sure that abuse does not get so bad that people leave in droves. While this has not occurred yet, it might be inevitable as the platform grows - given the tendency for wealthy vested interests to seek to control the narrative in society on life/death topics.
Another feature to tackle this could be that votes from known vote bots do not count towards increases in reputation, however, this is not ideal and does not address private sales of votes or services like @smartmarket which sells votes from users rather than votes from votebot accounts.
Benefits
An appropriate solution here will create an atmosphere of increased respect for Steem among most of the users who have lower reputations in the system, whether that be due to them having less money or simply being new to the system as compared to more experienced users who have amassed a higher reputation over time. Additionally, the increased equality and balance will effect the free flow of information, which may increase the quality of posts.
This in turn will potentially increase the value of Steem and ensure Steem's promise of being an uncensored technology is allowed to come fully to fruition.
Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors