I'm not a whale (yet!) and i'm a very inconsequential witness at the moment, but I very much agree with your post and the problems you've identified. I'm not sure how we go about fixing it though.
If there is a HF to change Steem's content discovery rules, what would the changes be specifically? Are there potentially other ways to address the issues without a hard fork?
I think a lot of these issues can be "fixed" by organized downvoting, but as you mentioned it will take time and effort from the existing whales which may not be possible.
Interested to see what the other whales and top witnesses think!
I would say the ones actively participating on here trying to spread the wealth and make this place better concur with what @transisto wrote. On the other hand, the ones he called out and those like them, probably will be silent.