I've been on Steemit a couple of months now and one thing I've noticed is that debate seems to be more civilised than on other social media.

I often write about Israel, which can be a controversial topic that raises passions (also a wonderful place to live!).

When I was on Facebook, things would often degenerate into flame wars, even with "friends" and people I knew personally.

Yet on Steemit, there seems to be a more civilised, respectful edge to debate, even though I don't know anyone personally.

I think this arises from two things:
1) the principles of freedom of speech and freedom from censorship that Steemit and the crypto ecosystem in general is based upon
2) the Steem Power system which means that people with substantial voting power in the system also have substantial investment in it.

The effect is that minnows behave because they don't want to get flagged by whales; while whales behave because they don't want to damage the value of their investment.

I just had an experience where a dolphin flagged my article (which had been published in a major national newspaper) because he strongly disagreed with it.  But a few minutes later he realised he shouldn't have and removed it.
I think this shows that the  Steemit system works.

The system isn't perfect obviously, but it is a lot better than on Facebook.

Its a good sign for the future growth of Steemit!