As one of those people who have spent a lot of time on what I feel are quality posts, I agree very much. It seems very difficult to get visibility to any reasonable number of users or without paying for bot resteems/upvotes.

I'm too new to have any answers, but would certainly like to see perhaps higher upvote power, percentage or something for "real" curation by live people. It certainly seems counterproductive to see the popularity of posts misrepresented by bot votes.

Here's hoping for improvements as we keep Steeming along!