@klye I agree with you on all of this except one thing. There is no way to send SP to other people. So if people are featuring it for someone they should at the very least give the person they featured ALL of the SBD because they will get to keep the SP (can't give that away - not liquid).
People featuring multiple people would likely need to divide all of the SBD equally among those they featured.
Yes they would be making a ton of steem power off of it, but they'd also be making those people a lot of SBD which they could convert to steem and power up their accounts with if they want.
Just my opinion. I am not a huge fan of at least one of these people. I've seen them seem to be milking people other ways, but not in dicey ways like you found... just the same way their analogs in the non-internet world do.
EDIT: I see @gavvet post quite a bit of religious stuff that people like to hear. As with non-internet religious talk he gets a lot of up votes. Yet he does not really answer challenges when he puts them out there. Just milks the religious teat so to speak. I think he is brilliant in that he does that. I noticed it awhile back. I learned it was a waste of time to take any post where he is asking a controversial question seriously though. He'll respond to the people that are his "echo-chamber" but not those that actually answer the challenge he posed. I tried it multiple times... even called him on it... he said "time zone was the issue" yet I watched him casually replying to people that agreed with him. I kind of see him as a smart con. It is not really as bad here on steemit. At least he is not literally dipping into your pocket. Still uncool, but could be worse.
There is. You must power it down to STEEM. Then you can actually power up anybodies account you want believe it or not. :)
Since that is 1% power down per week it may or may not work too well. I am actually fine with anyone keeping the steem power if they are posting someones work with their blessing (like stellabelle) as she is doing extra work and she is more like a publisher getting a work to a larger audience. If she then gave the people SBD that's cool. However, since people come to her everything is up front and that truly is between her and the people she is publishing.
These other people though don't ask. They just take other people's work and repost it. They don't ask if you want to be in their HIDDEN GEMS, and tell you what kind of deal they are willing to make with you. This is more parasite than publisher.