I agree. A simple directory creation for upvote purchasing may also be the answer. Allot one spot over the top twenty (non-botted payments), say the 20th one, at that, and have a random pop up feature that has any paid for/bot voted on any given search or hash tag. Then you would have to define what a bot necessarily is. My definition- a group of voting delegation for the apparent overwhelming purpose of selling votes with little to no precondition of content quality or other affiliation to that group or other subgroup in benefiting blockchain growth through original creativity or original programming. I use an example.... @steemmonsters (or the re-branded name of @splinterlands may be more appropriate). They would be the golden goose as far is this is concerned. Creating alternate tokens, building an upvote pool that was created for the purpose of benefiting their players that have done some level of content creation that is original and commentary on their game with forums now that are also tokenized. Versus bidbot X, that upvotes the person with steem/sbd ready to spend, and yes does some level of quality control but cannot be expected to patrol thousands of posts a day if they are big enough as a vote service. If more whales saw the benefits in delegating portions of their steem to causes like this, and would even actively participate or even sell the assets generated due to delegating to this venture the economy would open up... beyond belief. The upvote that carried by SM also is limited, so even the most heavily promoted post is no more than like 7-$8 at the moment, so there is certainly no guarantee that that vote purchasing will guarantee that even that post is guaranteed to land in overall trending searches. If the paid for upvoting services were collected, and listed less prominently and openly displayed as "promoted posts," again, showing up every so often rather having all posts at the top, then maybe that could also show some level of integrity of voted posts. Also with the hike in curation I am also for the bigger fish curating more because they should, they are bringing the capital to the table. The people that are whales on here are not people that went to STINC HQ and said "give me your steem," then ran out the back door and rode away in getaway cars, somehow they earned it whether we agree or disagree in how they did earn it under rules for the blockchain at the time is beside the fact, it is theirs to do with it what they wish. Long story short, opening the economy up to more users and getting actual movement in steem and SP to people that are here and doing legit work and building communities is where you are going to win. People showing up need to have a reason to stay, simply getting them here is not enough. There is a lot of support and energy that goes into that. When respectable retention becomes possible over time then we will truly see changes. I think labeling any article that has any vote within the post under a clearly defined definition of bought votes and is listed as promoted will be a great start in my humble opinion to having some credibility, among also generating some diversity in thought among those that are at the top. It seems very "group-thinkish" in how resources can be spread, or the group-think is very heavily enforced because real answers for re-invigorating the steemit economy is not being allowed into the hardforks in my humble opinion, at least since I have been here.