I've seen a few people flag whale posts when they are plagiarised and the whale essentially laughs in their face and tells them to 'grow up'. On top of that, the minnow that flags them barely makes a dent in their overall payout, and have left themselves open to a revenge flag from someone with far more power. Despite this I think it is less to do with fear and more to do with the 'whats the point?' feeling you get afterwards when you feel like all your effort was for nothing, even though it was the right thing to do to keep the platform pure.

I used to get really disheartened with people playing the system to their advantage, but doesn't that happen in life as well? As long as it doesn't directly affect me then there's no point in stressing about it because we can't change it unless everyone gets involved, and as someone has already commented most people live in fear of getting revenge flags and are unlikely to take on someone with that high a rating...