Hmm, good and thought provoking post.
My first thought when I read posts like this is that the key problem lies in the lack of numbers of users here (right now). As, if there was a load of quality content then many of the "siphoners' would be drowned out. The cream would rise to the top.
In the meantime, I can't expect the folk that I follow to churn out top notch A grade quality posts every time they post - that's not how the world works. They'll be the odd gem amongst a sea of mildly amusing updates. That's life. I'm okay with that.
In the same way that Instagram, FB etc feeds are generally filled with fairly mundane life stuff. I think that rolling out the QC police is the last thing we need, as we'd just scare away the few that we have here.
None of this is to say that I think colluding on circle voting is okay - it just needs to get washed away over time by the volume of (new) users. Hopefully they'll come...eventually!
I don't think it's something that can be drowned out by the crowd, though. Some people may choose to ignore the masses and how they use curation and build a bubble between a few people they'll constantly upvote, this can continue even if we have millions of users. With that amount it'll be easier to notice this kind of activity though and I'm sure by then a lot more people will want to counter it knowing why it's not great for the ecosystem.
True, I suppose.
Just hate the prospect of having to police all the time, but good that folk like you are looking out for the platform.
As I said the issue is really for extreme cases where the activity itself causes a lot of more negative effects such as the example above where accounts look dead and farmy with no effort whatsoever to socialize and use this place the way it's meant to all while taking rewards from those using it better.
Most accounts are unaffected but people can always change.