As an investor this doesn't sound bad to me.
...until it starts to effect (affect?) you directly.
Having a whale "follow-flag" (I love to coin terms) you, as a dolphin (or less) is analogous to a strongman competitor, or professional MMA fighter, bullying your average man, of average build/ fighting ability. True, these "victims" have the choice to train and/or hit the weight rooms to place themselves closer to par, but everyone and their mothers know that there's less than a snowball's chance in hell that equality (of competition) will ever be achieved, regardless of his/her motivations or efforts.
But we're missing something here on Steemit, which the "real-world" analogy has - the victim can call the police to handle the bullying. Follow-flag dolphin, on the other hand, is shit out of luck.
Apparently this precedent exists and has led to high demand in some MMOGs. So I simply do not rule out the possibility it could lead to high demand and large price increases here, and if so that is definitely something that investors would like. Remember investors are not necessarily posting on the site at all, so need not be combatants in the flag fight you describe. The role of investing is distinct from the role of social platform user (though of course there is overlap as well). I'm not claiming necessarily that it would happen.
Hmm.
Well, if most of the social platform users tag out from Steemit, due to these (hypothetical) malicious flaggings, then there's nothing to invest in other than what essentially amounts to "vaporware" (no real value).
I think it's clearly a key to keep the majority of the social user-base happy, no?
EDIT addition:
Also, I'm not convinced that what works in MMOGs will correspond one to one with what people will support when they have thousands of dollars at stake and real flesh to protect.
I'm not even claiming that it works in MMOGs (consistently at least). It was pointed out to me that it does happen in some cases, so I commented that if it did happen here it would be good for investors.
I'd also note that it is very speculative at this point what will build a user base that is significantly above zero (on the scale of successful online social platforms) as well as what would keep such a user base happy. This has not been demonstrated at all.
Competing with established platforms that are more specialized to the task of focusing strictly on user experience is not an easy task. Steem/it needs to focus on and somehow exploit its unique advantages. In a big way.