What I like about Steemit is its decentralisation. It can be built on and extended by anyone with the ability to do so. There is a new bot, @transparencybot, that puts a little comment on posts that have benefited from paid bidbot upvotes.
It's quite easy to find out whether a post has benefited from bidbot votes, even without Transparency Bot. Just click on the number of votes, or check the comments, as bidbots generally leave a comment. Or check the author's activity at steemd.com/@authorname or steemdb.com/@authorname.
Votes are listed in order of value under the number-of-votes link on the post, so it's easy to find out whether a whale has voted. The value of whale votes encourages people to invest in the platform, which should ultimately be good for all Steemians, as it incentivises the value of STEEM.
Autovoting is the thing I like least, as I like my upvotes to mean something - a tiny encouragement for people to produce quality, and I think this generally works on Steemit. There is a lot of good quality work (and a lot of dross too). I don't autovote, as I don't want to risk upvoting an opinion or a piece of work that I really dislike. But maybe that's just me being a control freak.
In general, I see Steemit as a game - a game I like to play, as the way it's been set up means that there is little incentive to troll, and people are generally polite and friendly. There is a certain amount of luck involved, and you can improve your situation by using your wits - eg, founding your own curation trail. That's what I love about it. It's fun. It's not a platform with lots of rules and regulations. As Steemians, it's up to us to work out how to improve the platform.
Having said all that, I do think the Trending page should be based on number of votes received rather than value.