I feel like we still need to find the sweet spot. Like you said before it was just a bunch of whales getting to the trending page(sometimes they did vote for others, I was one of them from time to time). Now we moved in the other direction where people pay their way up.
I hope eventually we will move to something more balanced. I kind of still miss the feeling of it is the "community" that chooses who should be successful on the website(aka: getting the payouts), and not just who got the most vote power or as it is now, the author that decides for himself by paying some vote bots.