I personally think there are two things happening here:
- As you also said, Steemit is still in its infancy. Sadly, people don't yet fully believe in Steemit and that it's going to be a long term thing so they're looking for a way to make a quick buck and either get out (payout) or power up and then lean back in their seat, waiting to see what goes out of it. In this case their choice is to vote on posts that are much likely to get traction irrespective of their validity. Yes, there are still posts with a person's photo and Steemit written on a piece of paper. I only vote on people I can also find on other Social media and that I clearly see it's them.
- Scared of downvoting. There have been a few posts around with people saying they've upset the wrong guy who then incited others to down vote all of their posts (@masteryoda for ex.), killing all recognition rewards, killing their confidence in Steemit. Whales can do as much in curating, the rest is in the hands of the thousands of minnows that barely get a few cents off of their own posts. Those posts would have zero revenue if any John Doe would downvote upset that his con post has been spotted by that individual.
I was thinking about proposing a way to make this process safer. If it were for all of us to use a certain tag like #exposed or something, post our findings under this tag with the reason why we think certain posts are fake. Then whales would have it easier for them to spot such fake attempts and kill those theft attempts.
The thing here is that the whales have to agree with this and officially say they will follow a certain tag to find and penalize fake posts. Otherwise the impact is a drop in the sea. I am noting here the attempts at curation by @positive, who was doing at one point a reward system for people that found fake posts and catfishes and helped curate them. There was also an initiative to do this by mentioning the tag #moderation, but I think that died also.
Keep in mind that the devs, Dan, Ned, are now 99% focused on security and stability. Once those processes are matured enough, they will also start getting involved in other things like moderation guidance. Until then, it's up to individuals like you and like me.
@anyx: superb job with @cheetah, don't stop, keep making it better. I also applaud you following the #doyourpart initiative!