The payout is descentralized. You can rank the content based on that or any other metric. In the end all user interfaces are just fancy block explorers. So what if steeve uses a custom algorithm to display recommended content? You can still search for everything else. Again, that is not the point. My point of contention was that Dtube will use another blockchain to rank content and I was using an example to show that the same effect can be acomplished by other means.
RE: DTube 0.9: Doubling up your rewards