Nice post; here are a couple of ideas.

I can easily see a scenario where 'popular and well-respected, valuable content creators and influencers' are not rewarded for their content on the Synereo platform. Particularly if their content is consumed by those that cannot afford to amplify it.

Since people are getting paid pretty much whenever things come up on their feed (depending on their settings, I suppose), most people will almost certainly have some AMPs to boost content, thereby paying the creators.

I can however see Whale and Advertisers ampifying content they have a vested interest in.

I don't really see anything wrong with that, but if they promote shit, then it's going to be harder for it to propagate through the network. The better the content, the more smoothly it will move. Why bake a shitcake and force people to smile when they eat it, when you can bake a cupcake and get people to smile because they like it?

I can even see people choosing to join their network to get a trickle of the amp rewards.

Fine by me; people probably join Steemit to get a little curation rewards, rather than consuming with nothing to show for it.

It could be a platform where people are paid to watch ads, with consuming quality content being a secondary concern.

I think that's pretty unlikely. Even ads have to arouse some interest, and be targeted towards the right audience. If you show ads to people who are not your target audience, you are plain wasting money. Even ads have to have quality, if they are to be effective.

Synereo has yet to prove any of what it can do, and I'm curious to find out.