RE: Steem Budget Proposals Whitepaper!
The way the site is designed it does not really need advertising money, I mean it would certainly help if they did it.... But look at the economics of this site, basically money talks. So lets say Apple wants to promote their new IPhone on Steemit all they have to do is create an account buy steem power create a post, vote on their post and depending on how much steem power they purchased the post would be on top of trending list, which is basically the same thing as buying an advertisement... I mean if this site ever gets to reddit level I would not be surprised if the trending tab is nothing but posts created by corporate funded accounts... I am not against additional advertising which would have to be purchased with steem, but the only way to attract advertisers is with user growth....
Steem is ripe for direct advertising in memos, at least while ever the price of steem is cheap. You can send out 100,000 directed adverts for $100.
People could down vote such posts couldnt they?
yes, but downvoting just like upvoting depends on steem power, so if a user with not much steem power tries to downvote someone with lots of steem power it wont make much difference, but yes you are correct if lots of people decided to downvote a post like i described above it would eventually be hidden if the downvotes surpass the steem power of the upvotes