I hope I don't sound like a dick for saying this but to me it looks like you're getting between $200-$500 dollars consistently for the same post. I don't think anybody was trying to censor you. I didn't like to see the whales voting this way either (flagging based on rewards too high) but those whales who've been (in my opinion) overvaluing your work are the same whales who flag the content of the developers for the same reason; content which (in my opinion) needs to be trending in order to reach enough members of the community. We connect better when we're all on the same page.
I would hope you would take it on the chin and either keep doing these posts accepting that a more accurate value is $10 (in my opinion) or add value to the content to make it worth what it's been getting. Try not to take a flag personally. I'm surprised to see the whales upvote together on a post like this when they do often flag things claiming they "don't add value"... This declaration of ending your series is far less valuable than the daily statistics you were doing.
Remember when @berniesanders flagged @dollarvigillante? He said he did it because he knew he could do better than that and Jeff Berwick took it in good humour and wrote a satirical post on it (probably because of those who protested) which was taken way too seriously I might add. But my point is take it as a gentle nudge to improve on your work. Thus far, it has clearly been appreciated perhaps ned just thinks it's time to do better for that kind of reward.
The beauty of the system is that the system decides the value. If people don't think it's worth it, let them stop voting for it, singling out these posts is nonsense.
The flag is as much a part of that system as the upvote is. I used to be annoyed by this use of the flag too but after when you consider that there is a budget to the rewards, and that this flag comes at an opportunity cost to the flagger who could have used the vote to gain a curation reward and the rewards just get redistributed to everyone else who was maybe only making a couple of cents for their work. Rather than repeat myself I'm going to copy and paste something from this post I wrote a month ago.
or
I call bullshit on this whole idea that steemit rewards are limited. The number of steem coins each day is set, but the price of steem drives the number of steem dollars, which is what most of this is about. So, instead of being jealous, or judging whether the community has done the right thing with their votes, let's focus instead on spreading the idea of steem and get the price up. That's first, second, the same thing could be accomplished by moving the vote in a positive direction instead of shutting someone down whose work was seen as valuable by nearly all of the hundreds of comments on this post.
Nobody has the right to decide what the overall value of a post is worth here, that would be centralized BS which does not belong in the decentralized world. @ned needs to re-think what "decentralized" really represents to the majority of blockchain users / investors, before he shoots his latest project in the foot.
This is the first time I've seen @ned vote this way. On the other hand I've seen flags come from @smooth, @berniesanders & @steemed all claiming to be redistributing the rewards more evenly by flagging the post because it wasn't worth what it was valued at. I had your frame of mind before but after realising that a flag is at a cost to the curator who could have used that vote to seek curation rewards, it's just a natural part of the system. You feel like your vote isn't counted but the fact is, your vote is just much smaller so the opinion of those with a bigger vote than yours wins. That is still decentralised because they paid for that power and everyone can just as easily pay for or earn the power to manipulate what makes the front page.
Refer to my other response above.
A founder having the HUGE voting power @ned has should not be flagging because they think all the other voters over-valued a post. That's a dictatorship, not a decentralized system where every user's vote counts. I agree if it was a whale not associated with the founders it is a natural occurrence. When a founding team member does this though, it's a dictatorship, plain and simple.
So lets say dan and ned and any of their employees stop voting. You think it would be decentralised then? The budget stays the same so in fact if they stopped voting the power would just move down to the next in line. Which would mean blocktrades (according to steemwhales) would become the new dictator. Because his vote would now be the most powerful. (That is, if this were a dictatorship as you call it)
My concern isn't with anything other than a whale founding member's account not voting "with" the majority of the community on average (per-user voted upon...in this case @masteryoda). The HUNDREDS of upvotes @masteryoda received from the community were continually wiped out per-post by ONE founding member whale. That is centralization because they founded the system. I actually am fine with a non-founder whale doing whatever they want, but it makes me concerned when a founding member wipes out hundreds of community member's votes with one click more than once on the same community member.