You're right it's different, but tolerating blatant votetrading (which just means you're selfvoting 10x per day if you trade votes with 9 other people on 1 daily post) will quickly lead us to become like Steem. There has to be more to curation than just looking out to receive the highest return cause without proof of brain curation this place is going downhill and you're going to end up getting lower return in the end since no one will want to buy into a nonworking curation platform. I'm sure you're aware of the flaws of a platform where having stake is everything and selling votes is the majority of curation that happens, taking a look at Steem's trending daily tells you easily what the flaws are and why that's not a platform you want to be on where no one new has a chance to get curated for putting in work.

People who are trading votes and maximizing returns in post rewards this way are not helping the platform move forward, they are instead riding on the backs of others who are curating properly but still getting a higher ROI % than them. I'm sure you understand what's wrong with that.