There's really not a big difference in practice. If every post of mine gets hidden and downvoted, that's effectively the same as being shut down. The technicalities of it all are irrelevant in practice, even if that's not the case in theory.

Steem is way more arbitrary than YouTube right now. YouTube will ban me if I break the terms of service, otherwise I can make as much money as I like without fear of one person influencing that. While as with Steem, somebody can have a huge impact just because they don't like me or the colour of my shirt or whatever. It could be for literally any reason, and nothing stops them.

I'm fine with whales being able to upvote whatever content they like. But psychologically, there's a gigantic difference between not getting upvoted, and being actively downvoted. It's a really crappy feeling for a content creator who might have spent 10+ hours on an individual video. It leads to a lot of anger and frustration, which I don't think is welcome or helpful for this platform.

I'm just sharing the perspective of a fairly large content creator in the crypto space. And I'm telling you that I think the way this plays out is disastrous for the morale of content creators on this platform. And I'm saying that as someone who hopes it succeeds.