Just to also clarify, it's not just a matter of trending as money going through votes that are being bought are by definition not going towards rewarding content creators whose content alone are deserving of attention.

Imagine if widespread vote buying of $5-$35, just shy of making it on trending, goes completely unchallenged. On the other end vote sellers are getting far more money than they would on average than if they curated honestly. Over time what if 90% of all stakeholders decide to sell votes instead? That means good non vote buying content creators are only getting 1/10th of what they should and their content quality will reflect that lower incentive over time.

Additionally, even smaller vote buys can mess with curation in the Hot category and make it considerably more difficult for users to find good content and curators to do a good job platform wide.

Like other forms of content indifferent voting (eg, vote swapping rings, post/comment farming) vote selling just fundamentally undermines honest voting which is central to our value proposition.