I just noticed the addition that included curation trails to your reply.

Not all curation trails are like that. Some are just a group trying to do what they can with their newbie accounts to make it on Steemit. Some initiatives here that help newbies may be effected by this such as #upvotebank I believe its called.

Don't hate the player .. hate the game !

To be clear I am all for stopping the use of all bots or possibly moving promoted content to the promoted section.