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I don't think those posts are "censored" from new/created, but they easily get lost. For example, this post was lost in the new/created section within 60 seconds of my post. I couldn't find it when I was scrolling down the list.

Adding an attention-grabbing picture is definitely a helpful method of getting people to view your post.

Thanks for your comment!

I think that it is not a matter of attention, at least not of upvotes, because randowhale and its likes do not help at solving this issue.
It is a matter of steemit's own code not displaying them regardless of votes, unless searched for in such a complicated manner, that is as if the searcher knew all of the author's tags and title in advance.

Randowhale doesn't make your post more or less likely to be seen. It's not a magic account.

If you have content that other people like, and you're interacting in the community, you will get more exposure. There's no secret trick to getting popular or rich here.

Randowhale knocks your post's worth up, and this increases visibility, unless your post got omitted by Steemit's display mechanism due to not having a link to a pic or a vid.
If Steemit omitted your content from searches, people will not be exposed to it, and obviously will not get to like it, so exposure comes before liking.
Likes do increase exposure, but likes can not happen without exposure, while exposure can happen without likes.