Do you have actual evidence that whale votes 'created the popularity'
Yes. Within the first 3 minutes of posting, @msgiving's very first post received three whale votes. After 23 minutes, it picked up another two. It snowballed from there and repeated on each of her follow-up posts. If you look at the main whale votes on her posts, there is a voting correlation around 98% - over the course of 16 posts. I'd say that's a pretty obvious sign that her popularity and payouts were whale-driven. Either that, or she just had some spectacular luck. But don't just take my word for it - see the votes for yourself:
https://steemd.com/love/@msgivings/my-ideal-proposal
and that the account was a 'sock puppet' because I strongly suspect you are making unsupportable claims based on your own bias (and more than likely a bit of jealousy).
Well, it's convenient to dismiss actual concerns about the credibility of the platform as "jealousy," but no - my claims are not unsupportable. The great thing about this platform is that everything is visible. You just have to know what to look for. And I not only know what to look for - I have found what I'm looking for. Those findings will likely be known to everyone soon enough...that is, if certain involved whales don't flag it into oblivion.
'Multiple accounts' is completely irrelevant.
No, it really isn't. Not when these accounts are being created to purposely manipulate the daily rewards payouts and not when those payouts are being determined by the same whales who created the multiple puppet accounts. It is completely relevant to how the system is gamed by those who actually have the influence to game it with impunity. It's also completely relevant when the platform already has a credibility issue.
If others disagree about the content adding value they should downvote the posts and this results in the original voter having wasted their vote power.
Sure. We'll just have a group of minnows downvote a post that has been upvoted by a group of whales. That will certainly even things out. Maybe you're not understanding that this is a problem with whales. Only other whales can actually do anything about it. So, if I see a sock puppet account making $1000 on their posts, I can downvote all I want. But then my vote isn't going to do anything except maybe draw attention from the whales that are profiting from the account and the rewards. I can risk my reputation by doing this, but I'd rather see other highly-influential investors/users actually care that it's happening.
If people holding SP disagree strongly about the value of a post, it doesn't get paid.
See my previous response. It's the same situation. Only whales can counteract whales. If a group of them are behaving badly, then only another group of them can counteract it. Instead of calling everyone jealous, why not address the issue?
Okay that is interesting and I wasn't aware of it. Yesterday someone made the same claim to me about @mrron and I looked and there was no early whale voting (nor much early voting at all) on his first post. So forgive me for being skeptical about these sorts of accusations.
As for the rest of your post, you still aren't getting that 'SP holders' make the decisions in this system, and that may include voting in ways that you don't agree with. Whether that happens to be split up into different accounts or not makes no real difference. That is largely whales, yes. 95% of the SP is very concentrated with a few owners, and with that degree of concentration absolutely nothing you say or do is going to make a difference, except make this a less pleasant environment due to constant complaining. Maybe this system can succeed given that reality, maybe it can't. I'm not really decided on that point. But if you think that is unacceptable, you should just leave. Whining about it won't change anything. It is changing over time, due to selling in the market, but slowly.
Because there is no "addressing the issue" when 95% of the SP is owned by a few people. You either make the best of it, try to improve things around the edges given that reality, or you whine and complain and accuse all day long, making the platform worse and reducing whatever chance it has to succeed (constant bitterness and jealousy does not attract new users). I suggest their former, but I can't control what you do. I indeed would not blame anyone who started flagging you though, because voting is about what is bringing value to the platform, and your approach is not doing that.