Actually it is quite the opposite you think :)

Many whales have created bots or second accounts they boost with their steem power, so that these bots vote your posts that you gain income. This was created in the beginning, when many whales did not vote any posts and the small user voted each other but got by 50 votes still 0.00 SBD.

So some created bots which vote good content in special topics/tags... they are connected to whales that vote a post and by their reputation it is marked as good content, so they create a steemtrail the bots vote and gain much curation cause many voter vote and the pool gets big and they gain their cut based on their steempower.

Have a look here :)

https://steemit.com/steem-help/@sykochica/answering-common-questions-what-is-steemtrail