@roland.haynes Good post. Thank you for sharing
First of all, you are right. A true meritocracy is impossible to create, especially when rewarding users for subjective content. The thing is, many users might just like the content on the trending list, the same content that other users thinks is rubbish.
With regards to your point;
We have "human" curators who mean well and are devoting time and great effort to address the content issue but they are no match for well programmed bots.
I believe that these bot's are not so clever, and they will begin to find it difficult to compete with a coordinated human effort. It's too easy to set a bot up, and copy or front run other successful bots. This race to the bottom will only hurt bots. Humans can adapt quicker, and they can READ. I don't believe that we will have a AI Bot that will be able to deduce the quality of a post anytime soon.
I agree with you on your point about coordinated human efforts. If we can get enough people coordinated reading, curating, and creating content we could offset the bots. The sooner the better.
Your posts are helping to raise awareness and I find that to be encouraging.