It has gotten to that point where minnows have to start looking for some sort of backdoor/hack to getting more exposure and better payouts.
Most people are not being encouraged to write good content anymore, it's already almost completely established that good content does not equal a fair amount of upvotes, only the big keep getting bigger and the little to share crumbs.
Even the bots that belong to the big find a way to rip us off our small earnings. Not that any of us are being forced to use them though