That´s what I try to do, no one talks about it because they need the votes and the best way to have a decent reward is playing the game.
This happens all the time and everywhere, even in the steempress bot they use their power to censorship people and reward their inner circle. You see, steempress asked to this "leaders" to approve a white list and assign percentages of voting power according to quality (I guess) but when I checked steempress upvotes for spanish community noted the same, "inners" circles and leaders get an high percentage upvote (5%, 7%, 9% or more) and the others 1.75% or a bit more. Even if they have a better content and more influence on the community, again, too much power in to few hands.
IMHO is clearly a abuse of power and a disrespect to fredrikaa and howo, but i have no power instead of speaking my mind and hope that people open their eyes.