i just checked you are following 1600 users, your feed must be sooo long, it must take agest to go through all of this
the vote trading is quite easy to understand, im not sure i understood the HP leasing thing... one rents a big amount of HP, then upvotes someone bigger or as big and the vote trading starts? so basically vote trade with rented HP instead of own HP?
about your second part, yes
Then it's still the same abuse, but downvotes there might be even more effective to "persuade" to act better... if it's owned hp, the user loses curation reward, if it's rented however, loses curation rewards AND the money for the rent, so double damage
naah many of them are inactive but it's nice when you see some come back