I don't know if this will work overall but I am also willing to give it a try and since the platform is still in experimentation mode, where is the long-term harm? It can be rolled back or another option tried. The long-term harm of doing nothing is ultimate however.
As a content creator here, I personally stand behind my work and try to provide value for the curator by providing decent content for the platform. The vote bots are destroying the community aspect associated with these symbiotic relationships by being insensitive to the content it votes upon.
The curation teams out there lose revenue (compared to vote selling) and ability to pay their manual curators, as well as the pool being smaller due to the high votes on nothing content.
About a month ago I wrote a post about introducing a secondary slider for curators to shift more or less rewards their way up to the 50% mark. It is a closed post so will post it here in case anyone is interested as I think it is relevant to the discussion.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@tarazkp/curator-s-slider-steemit-development
The idea you've proposed has been discussed by others as well and I know several proponents. It's one proposal for avoiding too much disagreement on the subject of changing the rewards back to 50/50. I see it as a reasonable possibility, although it does add some extra complexity to the user interface. That could be good or bad, hard to say without experimentation.
A little complexity but if introduced like the normal voting slider after a user has earned x amount in Curation Returns, it shouldn't be too much hassle or take very long to get the hang of it.
Perhaps before one gets the slider, their CR is the same as now (or lower) to deter abuse from alt accounts.
Edit: It could also be tied to REP so that way they also need to maintain a high enough rep to get full Curation.
It may be middle ground to lower the barriers for some on the fence to try different.