to paraphrase (or add):
Basically self-voting and bidbots are mechanisms to get ...
interest (earn) without bothering to even look at "content" at all - what to speak of actually reading it, evaluating, deciding how good it is (what normally curation means).
so, yes - system "forces to vote" - but doesn't forces to read :)
or in fact even bother to click on the link of "content" to even as much as open it. just "vote" action (= press upvote button) is good enough for system.