Maybe they could implement a voting system, where on one place it shows the current voting system which is dependent on how the voters steem power (big players decide), THEN have a system like on reddit whre 1 person = 1 vote (the majority decides).

This way you have 2 different voting systems having to collide with each other, either agreeing or disagreeing:

• 1st situation. Majority agreed that a post is valuable, but big players did not. (Could be mass manipulation or hype)
• 2nd situation. Big players agreed that a post is valuable, but majority did not. (Could be big players trying to push a post up to the top)
• 3rd situation. Nobody likes the post.
• 4th situation. Everybody agrees, the majority and the big players agree that the post is valuable.

You could then create a system that taken into consideration both the votes of the majority and the big players. If the 1st, situation the majority say a post is valuable, it goes up, but not as much because the lack of big player votes. This applies to the 2nd situation the same way.

Ex: Let's say there was a system shilling Bitconnect and i see the post has value, but only by the majority, the big players aren't voting.

• MajVote = 1000 votes by people, 95% positive (like on Reddit)
• BigPlayrVote = 0 big people with a lot of steem power voted. (like now on Steem)
• Formula: MajVote * 0.5 + BigPlayerVote * 0.5 = Overall value.

So we show at each post:

• overall value,
• majority vote,
• big player vote.

We make assumptions on those votes ourselves.

I can make assumptions and ask questions: Why big players don't participate? Is it mass hype? Is it mass manipulation? Why big players dislike the project? What do they know???

This is an experimental vote system, but if you are looking for solutions, trying some strange ones might help.

Manipulating this of course is possible, but you have to manipulate the voting in 2 ways instead of one.