It only hurts an author financially if that author's job is Steemit. Which wouldn't be a very smart career as you may get a payout, not you will get a pay out.
The thing that causes censorship here is the community being greedy. Everyone follows the highest paid posts instead of looking for good content that they genuinely enjoy. Whales on the other hand mostly vote posts with the intention of making steemit look better. This vesting / curation system is a double edge sword.
I'm glad you mentioned someone buying in because once that starts to happen there will be even less opportunity for new users to grow.
This excerpt from whitepaper may explain behavior of the members of community.
"The value each currency achieves depends upon the demand for influence within a
particular community and how large the market believes each community can get. Unlike
prior systems, subjective proof of work enables a community to collectively fund the
development of whatever it finds valuable and enables the monetization of previously non
monetizable time."
Flagging hurts the author financially. Maybe we will see interesting things in the future as somebody buys in the platform with just this intention.
It only hurts an author financially if that author's job is Steemit. Which wouldn't be a very smart career as you may get a payout, not you will get a pay out.
The thing that causes censorship here is the community being greedy. Everyone follows the highest paid posts instead of looking for good content that they genuinely enjoy. Whales on the other hand mostly vote posts with the intention of making steemit look better. This vesting / curation system is a double edge sword.
I'm glad you mentioned someone buying in because once that starts to happen there will be even less opportunity for new users to grow.
This excerpt from whitepaper may explain behavior of the members of community.
"The value each currency achieves depends upon the demand for influence within a
particular community and how large the market believes each community can get. Unlike
prior systems, subjective proof of work enables a community to collectively fund the
development of whatever it finds valuable and enables the monetization of previously non
monetizable time."