This misunderstanding actually proves my point. What you just said is what their design communicates, but no, they ARE opposite actions, and are NOT meant to show abuse. That's the whole reason this is being brought up.
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No, you're re-writing history. That's not true at all.
Flags are to show abuse of the blockchain/website/users. Now they're being morphed into "disagree" or "I feel this post/comment is overvalued".
The term flag is indeed as you defined it, which is why this conversation has been a recurring one in the community, but the technical application on Steem of a flag is LITERALLY the opposite of an upvote. As in it, consumes voting power, and removes a stake weighted amount of Steem, based on voting weight and power.
Typically a flag is a tool to alert site moderators of some sort of abuse so that they can take action. This functionality doesn't exist on Steem as there are no site moderators, and no person has the power to take any action against another user other than a downvote. This change would at least clear up this confusion.
I still doubt people will use them as this is a fundamentally different system, and the things that work on centralized, no money involved systems, just won't work the same here, but it at least make things clearer.
And here I was thinking that flags in Steem just meant: "I hate you."