This sounds like Digg all over again. Digg was a website just like Steemit, where users contributed stories and stories that got a lot of "diggs" (upvotes) rose to the top. Anyways, there were powerusers of Digg that controlled all of the content. Their stories would always make it to the top and the rest of us little guys without followings struggled to ever make it to the front page.

This is a real big concern for Steemit because this is a community driven by monetary gain. You can't just shrug it off as "no big deal" because money is at stake. It's possible that you could be the first to post some hot piece of news happening in the world and your story gets buried because the powerusers of Steemit with huge following decide to write the same story as you. You won't have a chance.