If he, on the other hand, was only to generate posts, only reply to comments on his own posts consistently, not curate, not engage with other posts, not use any dapps, start receiving less genuine engagement, etc, then yes at that point I'd also think that he could use some downvotes or less upvotes eventually, no matter how great of an author he is.

We (a couple other old timers) were talking about this the other day too. We could start posting crap and getting those autos for some time, but pretty soon, the reputations we have built over the space of half a decade or more, would be gone. Reputation matters (not the number), because it is an understanding of trust between me as a content creator and my audience. Broken trust is very, very hard to rebuild.

So many of those posts in trending often with no real engagement from an audience or from the author. Crappy ubiquitous comments to fake interest on some of them - the same large voters all of the time, voting blindly, unreading... I wish it wasn't like that.

If I acted like a spammy, maximizing ass, I suspect I would quickly be treated as one.

I am glad that @galenkp does the engagement posts, as through there I am able to spread some of my own stake to authors who are often quite new and building, and quite diverse in content and region.

At the end of the day though, it still has a long way to go, but is much better than it was. I like that people who care about the ecosystem are building their stake, but it shouldn't be "build stake at all costs" and distribution is needed too. But, distribution at the expense of not supporting those who are here long-term is also going to lead down a bad path, so finding a balance is important on all fronts.