I don't mind if they do this. But I am glad you found it. I think this illustrates problems of voting for something you think will trend or you think others will like. It creates weird results and incentives.

Perhaps the goal was create account, make it looks good to bots with strong history of high reward post, then let trend followers take over.

I think the problem of rewards brig too high for certain kind of content is the main issue here, not sick puppets. Fortunately it sounds like hey are working on this.