yea, i think its probably a sign of how power corrupts over time, my guess is they're a cartel from the early days of steemit who grew too much in their own mirror and has this funny idea that they are the holy content crusaders or something, the bots are even worse lol. The least they could do is check manually but to me it feels they're just waving money around like a protection racket : if you're part of the club you wont be targeted. But there's new winds rising i think some of the elders will have to "move dat ass" after two years of complacence or simply lose their seat ...
i never downvoted myself in revenge really. I thought i did one but after parsing through my history i found out it was an accidental downvote on myself somehow ... back when that thing was still on the UI (great idea to remove that)
yea definitely, any witness to prove they put it up on more exchanges clearly deserves a seat lol , they just need a whoopin' every now and then to make sure they don't turn to stone in their throne :)