Im a little late to the party, but i wanted to make a few observations.
The "post a picture holding a sign" thing was stupid from the getgo.
Here's how it happened. Whales started upvoting introduce yourself posts by hawt girls that had very little content and just a picture of a 20-something with perky boobs.
Now it turned out that some of the hot girls with perky boobs were't real. Well, they were real, but they weren't really the people posting.
Now here's what the community should have said:
"Its absurd that posts are getting upvoted just because they have a picture of a hot girl on them. If the hot girl has something relevant to say besides "hi, look at my bewbs", then let her say it and upvote that. But don't upvote someone just for their looks, that's shallow and creepy"
Instead, we said:
"OMG, what if shes not real. We have to make sure that we're being legitimately shallow and voting for real people based on their real looks, rather than illegitimately shallow and voting for fake people based on their fake looks"
My point here is who cares if Msgivings is a bot, or this mibenkito, or anyone else is really a bot. What should really matter is if they are producing quality content. If the answer to that is no, their overvalued content ought to b e flagged. If its yes, then who cares who writes it?
It was a bit more than that. The pictures being posted were in many cases literally lifted from other social media profiles or web sites belonging to someone who did not consent or even know their picture was being used here. Occasionally that involved celebrities or semi-celebrities, but mostly just attractive young women, as you said. The "take a picture with a sign" thing was, originally, more about identity theft than anything else. After all, if there were no picture at all, there would be no hawt boobs to attract votes.
Later, it was latched on to by some trolls and control freaks to start to demand pictures as a sort of sad power dominance game. That game was allowed to go on too long.
Agree with your conclusion of course.