I actually went through a few of your post to check whether you are getting flagged and I may have found none on those posts.
I also clicked on the highlighted post you included up there and read, sorry I haven't really checked on that, I guess I got conditioned that most of your posts are purposed to challenge the creativity of the community to create stories out of your images.
If you are getting flagged I'm sorry to hear that. It's good that you have asked those people who are flagging you (only the ones flagging you pls) why. They may or may not answer though.
Am not a fan of that flag, it kind'a have that "whip that slave" appeal. Unfortunately, everything is allowed here and it seems that the ones using the flags are either hitting what they call a "circle" or balancing the rewards. I wonder why the rewards need to be balanced? Is the reward pool almost empty? Do we have a standard of how much a reward one may have? If we do now, since when?
For as long as I remember, when I first came here I've been told by the person who invited me and the many others who were already here that it's up to people whether they would cast an up on your vote or not and since it's up to the voters how much of a %age of a vote they want to cast on your post, I thought it was alright to get as much as you can perhaps, many people are happy with you or your post or you so they decided to cast more on you. I don't think it's your fault that you earned as much up as you do. After all, you can only cast as much as you want for yourself, the only reason your post would earn much is because some casted their votes for you - perhaps not necessarily your post and most probably it's because you reciprocate while others act with some entitlement mentality - going around with attitudes that kind'a exude that "my post is so dern great I deserve to get to trending" (rolling eyes).
If we are to want to appeal to the masses then perhaps we should live and let live. Too much flagging is going to (surely) kill the system. It would even scare any newbie to join, nowadays. That flag has been there three years ago and was heavily used but it was used to combat abuse. It wasn't used to lower any author's rewards. This has a very negative appeal to it and a screaming negativity on its purpose alone, Odd that it has that function nowadays but I also question the amount of rewards an author may have. Are we allowed a certain amount per day now? I don't remember reading anything like that but I haven't been around much so I may have missed it. Since when did we have a standard of that?
I understand that it would pain an investor getting flagged whilst some like I did earned our SPs from curating and posting and it's alright (am being flagged, too but they seem to be weird accounts probably just tripping or so bored of their lives - idk) ..if those who did not even buy a single cent of Steem are allowed to earn that, why aren't the investors?
Just keep going, remember, this, too, shall pass ;).
Hang on in there! Sending you the warmest cyber hugs!
The reward pool is limited and shared between all users. When someone assigns a reward to himself or his friends, that part isn't available for others. There needs to be a balancing to be able to really reward the best content instead of the biggest wallets.
Downvotes have been a part of steem from the beginning mainly to achieve that balance, it's the reason that's given for them in the whitepaper. They have been mainly used for serious abuse like plagiarism or spamming because they cost something for the one giving them, so there were only a few people willing to do this in the most serious cases. That's why we got a free budget now - to have them be used for their original purpose, the balancing and to get closer to the goal of giving higher rewards to better content.