I think the problem is the really unequal SP distribution. The biggest SP holders simply follow some people and automatically upvote anything they produce with hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of voting power.
Meanwhile, I see a lot of people with dozens/hundreds of legit upvote from the small fish, producing quality content, initiation great discussions, replying to every comment and they barely hit $1.
Let's be honest, none of the trending posts autoupvoted by whales are worth thousands of times more than these gems. No single upvote should carry hundreds of dollars of rewards when most users' votes are worth like $0.0001.