Interesting. My guess would be the repercussions of getting flagged. Here you are accountable for your comments and they last forever on the blockchain. But maybe it can also be the fact we are a smaller niche community and it is like a small town where everyone knows everyone kinda. As Steem gets bigger maybe people will loosen up because it won’t echo so loudly if they make a very controversial comment.
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I agree when it comes to flagging --I try not to flag just because I dont like the arguments or a point of view, for example, I would say flagging should be just used when someone is rude, racist, hate speech or heavily spam the blockchain or abuse the reward pool. there are not that many users and it feels like when you press the downvote button its a personal insult and mostly it ends with a counter flag for no reason. there is a lot of crap content on steem which I would like get rid off but If big players or even witnesses dont care than small accounts will usually just stay still, get some reward and leave steem.
Perhaps it would be beneficial for someone to build a UI that cares less about the (non-consensus) rep score, or replaces it entirely. This may be an issue with steemit.com rather than Steem.