The consumer pays to have a vote worth something, not the producers....
A bunch of self voting rich folks with nothing good to say does not attract millions of consumers. Talent does. One should be able to build up a following of thousands of consumers willing to vote and those votes should be worth something because the consumer paid. When the consumer is done, they can have their money back, plus whatever else their earned in rewards, or they can spend a month enjoying content and use the rewards to pay their internet bill.
What you're saying is backwards. One million content producers all self voting means nobody is reading or watching.
Sorry, my point was unclear. I was thinking the consumers would pay to get their opinion on their content noticed or to reward the content producer via curation. Not to uovote their own stuff. For example sort comments by size of upvote.
A lot of youtubers produce content specifically for their patreon supporters and amswer super chat questions first.
Ideally I try to answer everyone who leaves genuine feedback, but if I had millions of followers I would want to prioritize those who pay the piper to a certain degree.