there is no binding contract between the founders/operators of this blockchain and the individual users
You are absolutely correct. This is exactly what I am saying.
Since no such contract exits and never will. Consumers does not have any loyalty to the author/creators either. We can chose to vote what we like and how we like it.
I don't know what difference you make between authors and stakeholders
Everyone is a stakeholder. The difference is, how much stake is necessary to have a meaningful opinion in governance. Again the answer is subjective. There is no real number and its a sliding scale. I have seen people taking meaningful part in governance with 100K HP, and I have seen people taking no role in governance with 12M HP. But usually since this is a DPOS blockchain it is widely considered proportional to your powered up hive.
You can have a better understanding if you read the whitepaper.
RE: Although subjectively downvoting posts to zero is anathema to me, the Layer 1 ability to do so must remain (for now at least)