I feel like at your level, a manual curation should be like when they have the manager or brand ambassador sign the label of the product.
I also feel missing out on upvotes should not stop people from posting. Anytime I see people stop posting here, they slowly start posting somewhere else where they earn nothing. There is this mentality that if you post on hive, you lose some respect because the monetary value of your post is out for the world to see. Might be a me thing but I'm trying to lose that mentality.
More power to your backend developer. Developers are the real problem solvers. I wish I had passion for the field or time...