Always the same problem, no one wants to read and everyone wants to earn from 'creating'. Autovoters and curation trails have caused nothing but problems and stopped us growing from day 1.
In this case, I'm not sure how you can stop this other than checking every post that's gets created and voted upon by a trail and then DVing the post AND the voters for posting on it. Voting on shit posts and then claiming you didn't know you were supporting a shitposter cos you're on a curation trail doesn't wash.
There are also too many people who have an incredible sense of self-importance and sense of entitlement here that gets in the way of their rational thinking.
Well that's not fully true, there are good autovoters (mostly spread out over many authors) and trails that follow curators who attempt to spread the votes wide and well.
But yes, people need to be more careful, I feel many will just pretend they didn't know with this case as well although it seems quite self-explanatory of what they got themselves into which is pretty sad seeing some people you've curated in the past on there now that they've grown enough for the self-votes to matter.
The thing is, people care too much about their vote size and so if they follow a curation trail and/or have an autovoter running, they are less likely to vote on someone who isn't on that list for fear of dropping their voting threshold below its autovoter cut-off point. This effects smaller and new users significantly more as they are the ones who NEED the votes more to encourage them and keep them here.
I hear complaints and moaning about the GEMS community, but whatever your thoughts on making spiders out of paperclips, they are all solid posts that get voted up. Real effort goes into most of them and they get retention. Yes, it's a bit of a closed shop in Venezuela but their model seems to work quite well.
The other big problem I see is the apathy over using a downvote. People just daren't as if a problem doesn't concern them directly, they don't care and are worried about retribution when the person they downvote has more stake than them. Again for the resource reasons above, if they do downvote, they only seem to use their free votes.
I'm not sure what the answer is except relying on the few people who try to do what they feel is right and trying not to reward users who aren't community-minded.
As for my comment on too many people having a sense of self-importance and entitlement, just to qualify this, I'd suggest that 95%+ of users here would make nothing if they were trying to be 'content creators' on any other platform, and ought to be showing some gratitude towards the people who give them votes and allow them to have a 'career' on Hive.
The other 5% need looking after and thankfully, this top-quality seems to get noticed and rewarded as such, mostly. We need these people here because apart from the social media angle, good creators attract curators and casual readers.
You take care and get outside for some fresh air once in a while! I always imagine you nailed to your chair staring intently into a screen 24/7! It worries me!
PS Did you see @ats-david's #dictatorforaday challenge? Have a look, I'd love to see your views!