Well some of the whales have already said they auto-upvote a certain list of authors, no matter what they write. Though occasionally the community protesting about it leads them to change their author lists - I think one whale who controlled three accounts decided not to upvote posts that simply talk about steem anymore. But yeah, little cliques and cartels will form, but that is the case on all social media (it's estimated that most of the activity on twitter is down to bots).

I guess the answer is to form your own cliques - some minnows formed minnows unite (https://steemit.com/minnowsunite/@endgame/minnows-unite-proposal-manifesto-strength-in-numbers-the-steemit-foodchain). It's a giant game...