I will answer... I do never re-steem posts just because I don't like it. I suppose people do the same. Re-steeming will increase your curation reward once someone of your feeds will up vote the post too. I mean I am sure it is more complicate of how I describe it but if u check posts... there are people just re-steeming posts and others just writing posts. I do write a lot.
Regarding the voting trails and bots I am afraid steemit is plenty of them and before I use to be followed having good rewards... now with the HF19 several of them are not following me not because I am writing shitty posts but because they can use the VP in other way, such as self-voting and I can do a list of nomes or voting just their friends/other account they created etc etc.
Steemit evolves day by day and will evolve soon again once (I hope will not happen) Steem will fall down again to 10 cents.
Just to clarify I have nothing to deal with steemvoter and I am not earning any % with it (I wish I could) but because I have used and being nominated 2-3 times I feel I have to give you an explication
I hope about the prise of steem also , i resteem posts because i think they are worth and maybe some of my followers will be intrested to chek them .
I know you and I know you do re-steem a lot. Others like me... doesn't.
fingers crossed for steem value