Sort:  

True! Then what about defining the quality of a whale's vote recommendation like that:
Let's assume that you - being a whale - recommend to vote on a specific article. Then thousands of minnows and Dolphins plus your own bots "follow" this recommendation and upvote the mentioned article you pointed your finger at. Now your payback / reward (for having recommended the article) would be defined according to the articles result. To avoid that your own bots are taken in consideration, your reward could be given according to the article's final position on the trending page. The "trendiness" is not depending on the no. of votes (including your bots), but on the rewards given on the content itself and on comments, for instance. That last point is an indicator of the quality of social interaction and which cannot be manipulated by (your) bots.
Does that make sense?

I didn't see the difference.. A whale can still upvote and follow with sock puppets. So the upvote will be confirmed, so the reward will be high, so the post will be trending.

You are the one who started with this idea. Why do you pass the ball back to me? :) Be creative. The experiment has shown that there are ways to distribute power more equally (= more fairly), thus it´s worth to keep thinking in the same direction.
Flags are surely not the solution, they were an effective short term instrument to wake us up. But I am sure you agree on the fact that they have caused a lot of trouble, too.
Try to bundle your smart forces in a healthier way and this is going to succeed.
Peace!