I don't see a lot of motivation in the ecosystem to even try.

Given that it’s some of the top witnesses that have created this problem and “profit” from it… some of which doing so with delegations from Steemit Inc… I can’t see a future where this improves.

Presumably the steemcleaners motivation was protecting their own position of dominance. I’ve seen nothing but narcissism in any of my interactions with them.

My reference to performance capability was as much to do with the authors as the technology. There’s so little ensuring that the performance of authors is maintained and with auto votes, I’d even argue that the opposite is true. Auto votes lead to complacency and a reduction in quality.