Why privacy is so important and the dangers of being on a Steemit "rich list"

Transparency on Steemit provides a risk to security rather than a benefit

As we can see with the latest scam attempt, we see the danger of a totally transparent value exchange network like Steemit. On Steemit value is stored liquid in tokens either as "Steem" or "Steem Dollars". Steem Power isn't liquid but it shows how valuable each account is on Steemit complete with a $ estimation of the account value. How is the $ estimate of account value generated and why is it displayed to the public?

At the same time we don't have estimations in $ for the SBD we receive to help with tax compliance. So in a sense we get the worst of both worlds with regard to transparency on Steemit. We get extremely difficulty in compliance because we don't have any automated way to do accounting. This difficulty in compliance opens us up to potentially under or overpaying tax authorities and I understand it's not in Steemit's best interest to favor the $ values because people pay tax authorities all around the world but if this is the case why is the $ value displayed as an estimate for our account in the wallet section?

Steemit gives us the worst of the worst from transparency

We also get the worst in terms of the risk of attracting theft, scams, and targeted attacks against specific account holders. Steemit in a sense presents attractive information for the most predatory individuals by displaying how much each account is worth to the world. This information allows for the compilation of a "rich list" which can allow hackers, scammers, con artists and others to simply target the rich list. So the rich list is horrible for the security of account holders, the USD estimates in wallets are also horrible for the security of account holders, and finally the SBD presents a confusing presentation which could not only confuse those trying to comply but also confuse tax authorities into thinking accounts are worth way more than they can actually be sold for on an exchange.

Steemit needs privacy or it likely can't scale

Privacy in the right places on Steemit would allow Steemit to scale. The problem right now is Steemit bloggers (content providers) have the least security. Indeed if a Steemit account gets hacked the Steemit team has proven itself capable and willing to reverse the wrong. There is also a sophisticated account recovery mechanism built into Steemit which is nice as a safeguard against theft. They also is a mechanism in Steemit which allows account holders to delay the rate at which an account can be emptied in case of a theft.

Problems still remain because these problems don't actually provide security. It provides security on a superficial blockchain only due to the fact that sure the account may be technically more secure but in practice it's not. If an account on Steemit for instance is worth millions of dollars and the whole world can see which unique individual is the owner of that account then this makes that unique individual owner a real world target. Just as celebrities and rich people on the Forbes list are walking targets as people know potentially everything about them and know their net worth as well.

For medium to small account holders the risk isn't as big of a deal but for large holders I would think being on a rich list of any kind is not beneficial. Privacy can be implemented over Steem and should be in my opinion. The wallet should be something that individual Steemians should be able to make private and this is possible using ZKsnarks which is the same technology behind Zcash. I don't expect this change to be implemented of course but I don't see a good argument (security argument) for why it should be left as is.