Delegation of steem power is also largely to blame for the same accounts receiving massive votes. Huge amounts of steem power are concentrated in a few accounts, to which a lot is delegated. In turn, these sell there votes, and pay returns to the delegates, which are hard to obtain when voting for yourself.
On top of that, deciding for yourself what to vote on, is a losing proposition, since the algorithm favours voting on content which will acquire a lot of (valuable) votes, so even when I vote myself, it is best to vote on one of the accounts which will receive a vote from one of these massive accounts.
End delegation, and votes will be much more spread around the many different content creators on this platform, rather than sucked up into some of the most meaningless repetitive low effort posts which we see reaching 100$+ valuations every day...
No, I will not start curating again and leave everything as it is. I used to be very active on Steem and have my own curation account behind which people stood and not a bot. But the way Steem has developed - also because of Stinc I will no longer be active here and as soon as the course has recovered I will leave the platform.
One could have easily prevented this, that one can delegate a lot to a single account or also prevent any bot. This was not wanted and is now no longer possible, since the owners themselves work as witnesses in the top 20. There is no majority of 17 votes that would allow a corresponding update.
Downvoting a post can decrease pending rewards and make it less visible. Common reasons:
Submit