I don't think Steem is trying to copy facebook, or twiter or reddit, or shut down youtube, and I don't know if it wants to even. Those bastards did it to themselves, they are whores and cheats, fakes, frauds, utter failures in Integrity 101.

For the love of money they have sold their soul fellow man. All that is to come to them is rightly so, they could always mend their ways and stop censorship, stop ghosting, stop denying access, stop deleting comments/posts/accounts/pages/forums/communities.

Steem is a public forum, akin to the concept of Public Forums from antiquity, and it uses a token to rate/rank content. It's function is simply in providing a place free of Admins where anyone can publish their thoughts, experience, stories while rewarding users with Tokens for curating the published content and publishing content as well.

Even with that in mind, Steem is a step back in time in some very Sensible, Sane, Sense, a "turn" of re to an internet which wasn't dominated by Ads and the corporate profits over everything mode, to a web where people would host the websites on their own Home PC, and gather resources through direct donations in order to create servers and pay the bills.

Steem is compared with the others because essentially they all do the same AgeOld Function of providing a Public Forum but none of the others can compare in the intricacy of this simplicity through which the Service is Delivered, which is largely Lost on those who say Curation is Censorship or gripe about "Beavis and butthead memes make $60, and I spend half a week on a POS post and make 3 whole views, this place sucks, even if I'm not in it for the money ya know I'm gonna steem from now on mostly out of spite for the Meme and all who voted for it" who form the Fray.

Transparency provides for Censorship Proof One, and Decentralization provides for Censorship Proof Two, yet while Transparency and Decentralization are what give this place an intrinsic value and that in turn powers and motivates people to share even more in a collaborative, constructive manner and in turn adding value directly into the system, and even one MEME and surprisingly also one POS half week long "Article" at a time create value in Attention Currency, and it's the totality of users, the interactions, the unspoken agreements and Trust, along with the System Integrity of Decentralized and Transparent ledger and the content that make Steem look both like Internet Before Ads, and Fuck You Very Much Cancersip Corpotocracy and Copyright to the Creator of Content that continue to be unsurpassed and each day we only get closer to when a contender will take up the challenge and help collaborate what we know with what they want to do.

I think that the precipice was passed back in March when Dan Left and I doubt that had much to do with it but what had happened was not Hype and cannot be hype anymore, it's a testament that this Ecosystem, this world we are part of right now, here, as you said is Positive and Pragmatic, and each challenge is taken and flipped on it's head, boom Consensus, bottom Up, we are the ones in charge and even those with Zilch to their accounts, the very words they add onto the blockchain give it Value.

Steem is invaluable as it is because this unprecedented wedding of Decentralized Transparent Ledger with Token Rewards for Creating and Curating Content, which is why when you read people whinnying about Beavis and Buthead memes making $60 and their precious work meticulously cobbled together to form the mosaic ultra weave which gets an insulting 3 views (from people that probably don't even read the thing as they rush to close out of it) and which they conclude with ".. but the money is nice." right after they say that "I'm not even here for the money".

Instead of focusing on what they can Create The Fray are focusing on how this place it's not up to their standard (this place sucks, it's not even facebook killer wtf))and how they are going to drop their phenomenal posting because of a freaking MEME making $60, as if they had a scintilla of say over what people chose to post, whilesome other unGreatFOOLS, who aren't screaming WHERE'S-MY-GOD-DAMN-PROMISED-AUDIENCE (as if they didn't earn all those 3 views for their Week Long Grueling Turd Polishing-as if that makes sense at all: I will stop doing my best because others are doing a lot less then me and get much rewards so I will settle for doing shit to match the shit rewards I've been getting because I'm not even here for the rewards anyway) have gripes over the distinctions of the terms Curation and Censorship and in turn whine in effort to sway people that curation is a lesser form of Censorship as if their efforts could amount to any regard from the community or consensus, and usually this whining is also directly because their self esteem comes from what other people think of their work and not what they think of their own work (which usually is that they are Michelangelo with the keybord or truth warrior Beethoven) and depend entirely on people lining up behind their idiocy, and these bunch hardly will grasp all the Benefits of the system and will chose not to adapt (adapt to being shit because people say I'm shit, and where is my private band that is supposed to be in the background on all my engagements enchanting the audience as I recite my prose) to new modes of doing the same things (but facebook doesn't have unlikes!).

Steemulate includes the real life Idiots who won't obdurate, and Ungrateful and Entitled along the visionary and sagacious and while the ecocisteem is in a state of growth, it's in this uncertainty that there is a choice over intriguing curiosity for what tomorrow brings or fear and doubt, giving up or not being grateful and rubbed the wrong way for the 3 views you got or an even poorer choice as to blur the line between censorship and curation and curtail your sense to such bluntness that obtuse is the only word left to describe whatever sense remains and you'll never gather consensus when you cannot distinguish the two but good luck on your epic battle trying to convince people that apples are really not apples and not apples are bad, because Flagging is Censorship is a worthy cause lol!