You are right, but more often than not curators/whales/orcas are friends with those who get their biggest upvote or they get upvoted back by those users (vote trading), so I always had the feeling that saying something would have caused me troubles while changing nothing about that situation.
And I'm not saying this because I think that one isn't entitled to upvote whoever he/she likes: I'm saying this because I sincerely believe that by doing so we will very hardly see Hive become mainstream and we will always struggle with user retention... if new users see low quality content getting a lot of upvotes, why should they put effort in their posts? If some users power down all their HP and still receive a ton of upvotes, why should new users aim to increare their HP? It's pointless to tell a new user to engage, power up and write good content if some of the biggest, oldest and more active user are doing exactly the contrary.
Effort put in the creation of a post and quality of the post itself should always be the two top main criteria to upvote a post: reward those who work hard and bring value to Hive and you will see them staying here, powering up and engage with others; gift upvotes to those who post low-quality content, do not engage and always try to make the most from Hive... and, well, then do not be surprised if Hive struggle so much in getting the attention it deserves.
Sorry for this long reply, but it's rare to find a big user which is interested in listening (and answering) on such topics 😅