I have the results of the test. You were right, disabled curation rewards returns them into the reward pool.
I created 2 test comments and upvoted them right after. The first one had disabled curation rewards, the second one allowed. There is no difference between their author rewards (except the few satoshis due to the decreased voting power on second comment).
curation | author rewards | curation rewards | link |
---|---|---|---|
disabled | 0.098 STEEM and 0.098 SP | 0 | https://steemd.com/b/28565512 |
allowed | 0.094 STEEM and 0.095 SP | 0 | https://steemd.com/b/28566233 |
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface