I've had a look at the white paper, it is fundamentally sound. Take most professional sports. Only the cream of the crop earn the high pay. This becomes more apparent as the number of participants increases. Take golf and tennis, we hear about the few that make millions but there are millions of players that make barely a living and some play just for fun. The key is, the cream of the crop get the high pay. They get the high pay because they win, play great tennis or great golf. They don't get high pay because they are friends with the commissioner of tennis. They don't win because they cut their opponents arms off. Roger Federer did not become great because a very rich person thinks he is great.

I believe the problem is not necessarily the shape of the distribution of awards (Zipf's law) but how that shape is achieved. People will be more understanding of the shape if those at the top produce the best content. Dissatisfaction occurs when they are not. The white paper also talks about fairness. A perception of lack of fairness will result in people leaving the platform.

The paper identifies that heavly upvoted posts will be subject to greater scrutiny because of the exposure they receive. This is not true for comments or posts that receive last minute upvotes.