Automated non-human voting that works to maximize curation rewards is something to be expected keeping in mind how steem has been set up. I personally see it as more of a weakness and a door wide open for abuse, spam and a certain type of investors reaping rewards without providing value back to the community.

It's a free market and people are warranted to be looking out for their own interests and to exploit opportunities, but this situation and the severity of the practice keeping in mind what you have reported, are certainly not an asset for the platform and its premise as a social network. Bots redistributing the reward pool in this way is by no means a very social way of handling things.