I mean... you kind of have to prepare for this kind of thing to happen with a platform like this. This is something that you can make a living off of so of course people will do their best to get theirs.
The "problem" is that people are not very liberal with their upvotes. We come from a facebook and instagram world where likes are given pretty freely but around here that isn't really the case. This is causing people, for a variety of reasons, to do what they can to turn the tides in their favor.
I feel like people should be a little more giving with their upvotes but we definitely need to do some policing of the poor content and plagiarized content and users who make it a point to only contribute this type of content. Its all part of the evolution of this platform and i think as long as the community cares and is willing to put in the work the platform will be fine.