Aside from your big assumptions about me...
"the people whose vote counts most also have the most to lose if they are wrong."
What do whales lose if they're wrong? Is there a penalty for upvoting something that no one else does? And aren't people incentivized to upvote a post simply because a whale did so, thus removing the chance of him being "wrong?"
Let's make another comparison that's perhaps more appropriate (given that post-it's have largely business use, while Steem is closer to an entertainment/information service.)
Look at YouTube. Anything and everything can be posted there, and it's led to new forms of entertainment that I doubt could have ever gotten through Hollywood. Unboxing videos? Let's Play? That sound thing I can't remember the name of?
Right now Steemit is more like Hollywood. Impress a big producer/whale and your project gets made, and you make millions. Youtube, however, which is essentially 1 follower = 1 vote, means lots of little guys finding little niches and making money.
And as long as there's a work of fiction in your list, think about that. What if none of the whales like mystery, or horror, or fantasy or romance? Any one of those genres could fail to get real traction on this site based on the tastes of a few people at the top.
Again, I'm not naysaying the site, merely talking through my early observations. I'd kind of expect that over time the whales will become less important... but I'm also thinking some tweaks to the system might facilitate that. (Maybe, again, still new and learning the system.)
Steem doesn't lose value if a whale up votes a single "bad" post. But if whales consistently up vote crap content (which everyone seems to be worried will happen for some unexplainable reason), and posters of quality content are not sufficiently recognized, the posters of quality content will stop posting. Without the opportunity to read or post quality content and have it recognized, users won't come to the platform. Fewer users equals less demand for Steem. Less demand for Steem means a lower Steem price.
Consistently upvoting crap has nothing to do with anything I've said. I'm more worried that good stuff will be missed because it doesn't fit the whales' tastes. So you're deliberately promoting LGBT, but would you deliberately promote content that was fundamentally opposed to your philosphies? Can you be sure other whales feel the same?
It becomes a non-issue if everyone can promote things based only on their taste. People who like LGBT will upvote LGBT, and those authors will see money trickle in slowly. Without that... they are dependent on you. It's not much different than the Patrons of old really...
LOL... trying to figure out how to use the Steem API to look through my transaction history and I found this!
Not to dredge up the argument again, but it doesn't seem like much has changed... there's still a limited variety, minnows still struggle to get noticed, and now a couple whales have pissing contests on the trending page.
If whales are wrong, the value of Steem declines. Whales own the most Steem. Hence whales lose more if they are wrong.
No, if they understand the system, people are not incentivized to vote after whales. Rather, they are incentivized to vote BEFORE them. It's the early voters who get most of the curation rewards on a given post. Many people make this mistake.
What empirical evidence do you have that pandering to whales is resulting in different, and presumably inferior, content being posted here compared to other social media sites? From what I can tell, it's mostly the same stuff (though perhaps far more crypto focused)--travel blogging, philosophical and political debates, pretty girls (though less than on, say, Reddit), persuasive writing, fiction, photos, etc. There's no evidence that I can see that Steemit content is materially different than, and certainly not lessor than, content on other platforms.
I do share your concerns to some degree. For instance, I've invited several notable authors to join Steemit who write primarily for the LGBT community. To date their posts here have gotten little to no attention. But, I'm convinced that will change over time, both because the currency will be more widely distributed, and because whales are not stupid--ultimately they will support posts that don't interest them personally simply because it's in their economic interests to do so. For instance, I have little personal interest in reading LGBT oriented material (its just not my thing, not that there's anything wrong with that), but I consciously invited two different LGBT-focused authors to join and post here, and I've made every effort to up vote and promote them whenever I can.
How does steem "lose value" if a whale upvotes a bad post?