As far as I recall we already have that downvote or flag button when I first joined Steemit. And to be honest, I may have used that button once or twice through out my whole Steemit experience. It's not that I don't care about abuse in the reward pool; it's just that I don't have massive SP to make a difference. For me, downvote are only for Whales who have enough power to make a difference and most likely they want to protect their investments by safeguarding the reward pool.
On the other side, downvote button has been used by the flagged account to show retaliation and then it becomes a flag war and then the drama begins. This kind of scenario is very unpleasant for other users especially the new ones who just learned about Steemit. Personally, it seemed like a deal breaker to see posts in the trending that talked about their feelings about getting flagged. I feel that nobody is interested about this kind of stuff anymore.
Blurt's clear cut approach
Then came Blurt social platform. When I first learn about its successful launch I immediately checked on the interface. It really has no option to downvote or flag a post. I felt surreal since I was used to having that button in every Steem frontend.
The Blurt World has clearly define itself from Steemit or Hive Blog which I think is a clever move by the developers. They also clear all of our data for us to start over since many disagree on what happened on Hive Blog which carried all of our data to the Hive network to clear all traces of any downvotes in the past.
A glimpse into the future of Blurt
Since it's a new release and it wasn't listed on big Exchanges yet, it might struggle with its userbase. However, I'm seeing a good potential to their new token system which was simplified; "SBD" was removes from circulation which left Blurt as the liquid token and Blurt Power as the staked token. This clever move has eliminated the confusion on the token system.
Blurt World is downvote free and censorship free which means that any post is a good post. No user can block or hide anyone's post even if they want to. Users will learn other ways to fight abuse but still this platform will turn into a free range of every kind of posters. It could turn into an exciting and buzzing platform. It could even be a playground by spammers in the future.
It could be a social platform without inhibitions and could attract more users since it's a social platform where they can be relax.
We might even see a single word post and a single word comment that will up to the Trending page but nobody will care.
These kind of intriguing thoughts is making me curious about the future of Blurt. As it progress, I will be participating to it and observe how things go from here. I might stay permanently or might leave sooner. I can't really tell more about my expectations this early.
It'll be interesting to see what happens here, to be sure. I expect they will solve some of Steem's issues... and in the process discover a whole new set of problems.
That's something to expect, can't really think of a perfect solution to every issues of Steem without creating new ones.
It will be interesting to see how other users react to this new environment.
I'm looking forward to a great experience using this platform. Hoping to build more friends here. Thanks for the information you shared.