Fortunately for you friend, this ongoing Steemit issue is much bigger than this single photo poster, and has little to do with him or whom he knows.
Your content deserves more than this post.
Not resolving the problems that hold Steemit back from widespread adoption hurts everyone who uses the platform.
As a professional photographer myself, the issue drives me nuts. So much so, I actually wrote a lengthy paragraph about it yesterday in a post I made about the problems and issues I've found with steemit.
Yea, It's great that I can post a photo and hopefully down the road make some good money off of it, however, written articles, ones that take up a ton of time, never get seen and get lost in the shuffle. Steemit wants to be a site that creates/contains good content. Good content = posts that stand the test of time. Steemits platform only praises viral posts. Viral posts and good content are two totally separate things. see the issue?
You are perfectly right !