Hive SBI is an account-based curation program with a deep history. It only looks like vote buying if you give a very cursory look.
Yes, the program's curation income is paid back to the accounts that sponsor others, in the form of upvotes on their own content, but that means half of the value goes to accounts that paid nothing (were curated for upvotes by others!) and the majority of members have never paid anything at all for votes.
I appreciate the clarification, and I hope that you continue to communicate with Troy and us diplomatically to ensure we understand your concerns, so that we can change or clarify something we communicated poorly. You seem very reasonable, and I appreciate and honor that.
I hope you can appreciate that Troy does truly love the Hive community, and he works his ass off for it both online and in person at events. He's one of the most authentic and passionate people I've encountered in the community. I absolutely love the dude, and I hope you take a look at the full body of his contributions to Hive. You might just fall in love with the dude too.