then taken away in real life that I've heard of

Nor here either. Until payout, you haven't received the rewards. You can't spend them or transfer them or do anything else with them because you haven't received them yet.

Part of the issue seems to be that the UI displays an ESTIMATE of what you might receive, which is subject to change for various reasons (upvotes, downvotes, exchange rate, size of the reward pool, and possibly others I'm forgetting). But it is just an estimate. Upvotes don't "give" and downvotes don't "take away". The payment is made at the end, after all the votes are in.

curation

Here's the defintion I get from google:

"the action or process of selecting, organizing, and looking after the items in a collection or exhibition"

That's what we're doing with voting. Selecting and organizing the items that will get payouts (looking after isn't applicable). We vote for seven days, during which stakeholders get to collaborate via the voting process to select and organize the pending payouts. Estimated payouts move up and down, and, at the end, the votes are added up, and only THEN is the payout, if any, made.