This will be an interesting experiment not so much from the side of what will the minnows vote for, but rather from the type of content authors who choose to continue to produce content make? Consider content has been long influenced by what whales upvote.
That being said, I don't see how this experiment does not cause more authors to withhold creating content. Authors who have implicit or explicit whale support will (undoubtedly) refuse to release any content for fear of the flag and the rep damage. That leaves the whales with no "default" options, so by that very fact, they will begin selecting other content from authors they would not normally consider. I'd be curious to see when these authors get hit with a full power flag, if they continue to produce content. I would suggest the answer would be they will not, and authors will either withhold or leave.
What would be something interesting to change the nature of the experiment would be to not touch authors whales have not upvoted before. Something like that could change the flavor of content produced in Steemit, the type of content which hits the trending page and the authors who will be there regularly.
I have radically scaled back how much content I produce and increased my comments and interaction, so I've no dog in the fight.