illusion of their exclusivity
I like this expression, but to me it seems like it's not really an illusion, but rather the true state of things at the moment.
A lot of the same authors are pushed to the trending page every day by whale bots, and even if their content is of acceptable quality, I'd much rather see 30 unknown authors' quality posts recieve $100 and some visibility each than the same whale-backed author receive $3000 every day.