RE: Don't "Vote for Witnesses", your vote does not matter.
There is transparency and you've shown it in your post. The blockchain is open. Not sure if we can force transparency over individual actions (e.g. voting, downvoting etc. as everyone has their opinion and they have the right to have it).
Still, there is one thing that comes to mind. Right now the power on Steem(it) is unbalanced. This has been talked about over and over. This lack of balance, unfortunately, renders the community choices useless (in terms of curation, witness voting etc.). A witness can have all the support of the community (hundreds of minnow and dolphin votes) yet one whale can ditch them out of the top 19 which decide the blockchain's road-map. Our faith basically.
Until a balance is achieved, I can only propose a rather drastic measure: No witness votes from accounts over a certain Vested amount.
It's the same that's been proposed on the #whalesdayoff initiative: Hand over the power to the community. Truly.
I also think that official Steemit Inc. personnel should stay out the witness voting business in order to keep the promise the company has made: leave the blockchain decentralized. Is this our community or not?
What if val-a gets fired one day ? Crazy I know, but impossible? I think not. He can get us in a real pickle, and many Steemians will suffer in the end.
I'm not debating the validity of Steemit Inc.'s actions so far. I'm actually one that believes appropriate actions have been taken for the good health and functionality of Steem and Steemit. Progress is seen often and we've come a long way since April. Yet, we still have a long way to go...
Re-reading the Whitepaper I see the following which might be an answer to this post and even my comment:
The only issue I see with the logic above is that the ones owning enough computational power have earned it way easier than anyone can earn it now.
That whole passage frankly makes little sense to me, but it dosn't refer to distribution, decentralization or power-balance issues, but to getting a transaction (for example a post) into a block at all, if the top 19 don't want to include it
I hope that since I took the passage out of the context, it didn't change its message. It's from the WhitePaper, page 22, 4th paragraph. Chapter is entitled Consensus in Steemit.
It's true that the chapter talks about how the blockchain is mined (blocks are produced) but it touches the top 19 witness part and how to become part of the top team and break their censorship.
What I'm saying is that atm, if I want to have the same voting weight like you for example I'd need 1 million bucks, which I doubt it's what you put in when you initially invested. I'm not blaming you because of that. I congratulate you for steeming before me etc. and you've earned your wallet fair and square, but the difference is simply too big between you and me and I think and until that gap closes (in at least 1 year), I know it's much to ask, but can you all whales stop voting for witnesses? Because when you do that, in a way, you're blinding 99% of the community.
That was kind of my statement...let's have the blockchain only allow witness voting from the lower 80% of the vest holders for the top 20 witnesses (I adapted the sentence to sound more metaphoric).
Again, by censorship what is meant is refusing to include a transaction in a block.
Ok, nuance understanding but that doesn't change the statement that right now, 99% of the community doesn't get to decide who can refuse a transaction.