Okay so you're saying they're not convinced by the rewards but are using 3speak for immutability, then don't shower them with rewards until they start putting in some work by bringing value to Hive.

I don't personally upvote High Impact Flix for similar reasons to yours - however, I do know that Dan and Ned's massive upvoting of Jeff Berwick led to Steem getting a lot of traction and support. It's just unfortunate that High Impact Flix hasn't been promoting Hive (I presume he hasn't), like Jeff did for Steem.

It's not rocket science that influencers should bring their following to a platform that's generating them revenue, some of these have made no attempts nor even updated their links

Using influencers only makes sense if it generates results and is cheaper than paying for paid ads, yes. Without a contractual agreement, there's no way to know if the upvotes will lead to anything beneficial, so I mostly agree with you.

If the people who brought them here really value their content they can make up for the difference in downvotes with tips or recurring payments.

Everyone has their own ideas about what might work to promote a network. It would be great to have a consensus on best practice, but I'm not sure that's so likely. While upvotes do cost us all through inflation, the cost is perceived as less than giving direct gifts - which is why upvotes are massively more common than gifts.

I don't disagree with you on information being free, I've been someone who's been interested and subscribed to r/conspiracy for a decade+

Very good! I discovered quite quickly that r/conspiracy can be just as corrupted as other silicon valley spaces and I got banned from there after not very long of just sharing info (which I had previously cleared with a previous admin who I guess had gotten replaced).

I just feel most of these content creators are fake, jump on the next trend and talk out of their asses most of the time

That is part of why I get support when I am not censored, because I recognise what you are talking about and don't go there. People are heavily conditioned since birth to value a certain kind of 'entertainment' and level of detail to things that is quite shallow.. So presenters that tune in to that tend to get more exposure a lot of the time and attention from larger audiences. I am personally more interested in putting out correct information that is backed up by evidence and data - but these are areas that many people's conditioning has them stepping away from in favour of the next shiny video intro. lol and not lol.

There's plenty of conspiracies about covid that don't encourage people to be absolute dickheads to others who are attempting to stay as safe from it or keep others around them as they can, whether masks work properly or not.

Yes, absolutely. There's no way to avoid hypocrisy when it comes to 'healthcare conspiracy' if you aren't being conscious of the real mental and emotional needs of other people. Attacking them and exploiting them makes us no better than anyone we might be pointing a finger at. Righteous anger has a role to play in ensuring our survival, but it needs to be balanced with heart in order to not add fuel to the fire!