Well the reward is not designed to make u read content. It's about finding out what others will vote for. Reading content is likely not a good way to find that out unless you like exactly what the majority likes.
It is more effective to just follow trends and analyse post from a technical perspective.
A big part of the problem is that curators aren't paid enough. The system was originally envisioned/created with a 50 50 split between curators and authors, now its gotta be close to 90-10 in favor of authors.
It shouldn't be more profitable for a whale to create a sock puppet account and upvote it than it is for them to curate honestly (which, ultimately, i think thats where these accusations are going).
The system allows people to be either professional/strategic curators (trying to predict what others will like) or consumer/revealing curators. The former are doing it to make money. The latter are doing it in order to "buy" more of what they like by revealing preferences and adjusting incentives for both content creators and professional curators. Regardless of which role you choose to play (and it needn't be entirely one or the other), there is value to reading (or at least skimming/reviewing) content. That is only my view, though, you may reasonably disagree.
It is clear though, that relatively late curators do not make significant (if any) money from curation rewards, and according to the system design should either be consumer curators or not vote at all. Whether people actually behave in that manner I can't say for sure, but to the extent they don't, the system design is not at fault.
This is reply to smooth reply:
The thing is that voting for things that one likes is like being a nice guy. It's good for everyone but bad for the curator.
If I understand the mechanics correctly we are creating a tragedy of comments, instead of preventing it. It is profitable to abuse the public resource for ones benefit. If that is the goal then it's a good design.
The question is what is the purpose of the curation system? If the purpose is for people to reward content they like, then I think the design works against this purpose.