The "5 figure account" you refer to @klye has been here since mid 2016. You have been here since early 2017. Your moderately successful 300 followers pales in comparison to @klye 3000 followers.

You refer to him and another user as a whale account but they have less than $500k collectively. A "whale" is larger than both of their accounts combined.

Your reputation is 52 compared to @klye reputation of 71.

In a social system, I think it makes a lot of sense that @klye carries more power and influence than you do. I choose not to get involved in drama and bullshit that isn't adding to my skills or abilities, but apparently you were given an out but your pride was too much to just apologize for promoting your post on a "whale" post. You likely realize @klye has a large following and influence and tried to use that to increase exposure of your content.

This is fine if your content is related or you are allowed (or even asked) the original post author. On ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM you can often delete another users content ON YOUR OWN content. Here on Steem, inherently censorship-proof, this is not possible. Therefore, downvotes or flags exist. This can demote a post/comment to a less visible status BUT IT CAN NEVER HIDE IT PERMANENTLY.

If you think hiding flagged posts is an issue, I suggest you take that up with SteemIt inc. They pull the data from the blockchain and their frontend hides posts that go below $0.00. A whale vote will always be worth more in both directions, up or down, than a lower user.

You also can't actually expect to have as much voting power as a user that has more than 10x your investment in his account currently, can you? Do you think stock holders with 1 share have the same level vote as those with 1000? How about those on the board?

Btw, @klye blows you out of the water with what he offers back to this community. He is a developer that provides open source to the community. Actual tangible products that can benefit other users.

(I am not taking sides on the drama debate. You are both petty for pursuing it. I am, however, taking sides on who is the more valuable user to the community at this point in time based off each of your current offerings)