upvoted

>The sizeable buy-in gives Whales so much voting power, they can totally kill your blog by not voting it through. No matter how many Minnow votes you get, one Whale can destroy your earnings with the push of a button.

I don't think this is true, just cause "whales" right now have a lot of voting power, it has shown that it is balancing out over time. With more people, I am sure a big amount of minnows could overtake a whales vote weight.

Not to mention there isn't often an incentive for whales to downvote and as you say "crush" their rewards. But if they feel that a certain amount of posts that are in the same style as others they've seen on the "hot or trending" page, they might unvote so it doesn't get as much visibility on that certain section.

>This unfair use of force recently happened to Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick, who lost a pile of cash.

I don't like the term "lose a bunch of cash" here. What's up with all these posts lately, people? Be thankful for this new technology and what it is doing, instead of saying this person "lost" money by someone downvoting it. Makes it sound childish in my opinion.

Simply Great Information and Presentation

Hi.  This article is fitting to the topic. Not same subject but same principle. ( Forms of manipulation without whales) http://www.inquisitr.com/3398783/how-to-spot-a-shill-in-eight-easy-steps/

"This unfair use of force recently happened to Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick, who lost a pile of cash. As you may know, Berwick has been crushing everybody on Steem. Apparently, a certain Whale forgot he wasn’t a fish, and forgot to come up for air. He didn’t surface, but his jealousy did. The killer Whale pompously used his $100,000 elite position to penalize Berwick’s success by down-voting one of his blogs to the loss of $2,000."
*************
 But a lot of Steemians actually thought @dollarvigilante was being favoured by whales on his first posts by just upvoting any post he made. So the "loss" was just a once in a time downvote after several whale upvotes.

We "normal" Steemians just promote Steemit in "remote" places like Buenos Aires, get ussually unnoticed by whales, don't get thousands of SMD of rewards, but don't complain about losses or censorship. It's just how the platform works and still is a trillion times better than FB or Twitter.

https://img1.steemit.com/0x0/https://www.steemimg.com/images/2016/08/08/20160807_153404836ec.jpg
•♥•☆ @alitas •☆•♥•
https://steemit.com/travel/@alitas/new-steemit-ambassador-invites-you-to-a-city-tour-through-buenos-aires-argentina

You have addressed my primary concern for Steemit; the potential for abuse is there. If I post false information, or plagiarize,  then I would expect to do poorly. But I am at the mercy of those that may disagree with my opinion and use this to sap away whatever I might earn, which so far is nothing. One whale should not have the power to diminish a hoard of minnows, this is placing too much power in the hands of the few and this is something I am very much against.

Good post Barry. Thanks for sharing.
Like many others, I've not made the nice splash you did. Kinda stinks, because my content is good. But it's just not getting any recognition. 
I love to see folks making some bucks from this. But it is discouraging when you know you've put out something really good and it gets nada, while someone makes a smartass comment and gains a couple of g's overnight.
I'm really happy for them, but what gives? I just posted an article asking that question. No complaints here. But I really want to be a part of the solution, so that good content is getting rewarded and noise is being muffled. Stick it out and make it better, right?

I couldn't agree more with your general idea that steemit seems to favor whales over small players, and the same as you, I'm not going to lose faith on this "experiment" this early on.

I hope that the people in charge of steemit read your post and take a stand on this issue.

In the current situation, there isn't a  balance between SP and voting power. of course people with more SP should have more voting power, but this power shouldn't be concentrated among the top whales.

¨This unfair use of force ¨ The way steem works currently is that it redistributes 5% of the stack-holders money to content providers. Currently the main stack-holders are the so called steem whales. So its currently mainly their money that is redistributed. Therefore why it shouldn't be their decision for what they want to spent their money and for what not?  Even if one whale is starting to behave bad, still other whales could overpower him.

With 5% redistribution per year sooner or later more and more people will get a fair share in steemit. With time whales will become less powerful. Soon with @dan suggestion of vote delegation, a lot more can take part in the voting process with a lot more voting power.
All what i said doesn't mean that I like what @Berniesanders did with his flagging.  Currently there no such thing called down-vote implemented. Flagging somebody should not be equal to: ¨oh I think this post is not worth this much money¨. Fagging should be used very carefully and not end in an like and dislike war.

Nothing was taken from @dollarvigilante. It was an estimate of the value that his post was going to produce. It turned out to be a lot less than the original estimate... Nothing that was in his possession was ever taken from him. Now, he might have gotten his hopes up, because of the potential earnings. But that didn't materialize.

Though I do agree with some of your larger points. 

>Steem has a disturbing problem in its platform that demolishes the claim that all members’ content has an equal chance of rising to the top. If you really want to do well on Steem, you must please its board of directors, known as “Steem Whales.”

This is unfortunately very accurate.

I don't think you're seeing the full picture here, and it was actually multiple "whales" who downvoted that post.  I'll give you a vote because I do agree with what you're saying, but again, you're not seeing the full picture.

Want another point of view?  Find me in the chat.

If I had it would have spread...and looked into the ones that want attention...why the big whales get bigger....I think at times we all are unsecured of somethings.

Mr Cooper, a laser light in the dark.

>  I don’t have much faith in Steemit because all it takes is one “Cop Whale” to keep me from earning money and reaching my audience.

Even if a "Cop Whale" had all the power in the world on Steemit. He/she still could not remove your content from the blockchain... once it's there, it's there for good. Also, if you were to say, build up your following to a very high level, even a multitude of Whale DownVotes couldn't stop your followers from reading your content. You are also lowering the potential power of the steemit bottom percentile. If, for sake of argument, Steemit grows to 1 million users by then, the sheer numbers would create a balance.