Excellent post. I like your perspective on things here. I myself have decided to make radical changes on my account but some of the changes just moved me to dlease.io and moving Steem into other projects. I agree there are problems, I agree we need some changes, I want what’s best for Steem. I also believe if a person buys a stake in anything or somehow earns a stake they should Be free to vote what  ever content they want and as ofter as the want. The system limits us to our own power. Manual curation is ideal in a perfect world but most people enjoy the help of bots, I know I sure do. I want my SP working for me as hard as possible BUT still share with others. I felt like my overall “system” to earn Steem was fair for me and the risk I took, fair for others who did he same, fair for the minnows and new comers that I voted for EVERYDAY with a large part of my voting power and only posted once a day to limit myself to 7-8% selfvotes a week. I loved every persons content I have voted for for the last two years and that’s real talk facts! I don’t vote for those people anymore. Hell im terrified to give my own mom who has a drumming blog a 100% vote because I know she’s already voted my post. I have brought SEVERAL  friends here who invested over 10k....I can’t support them every single day for one post? They are supporting me. I really don’t feel if I was even a top 100 problem on this blockchain. I did however decide to change the way I do things just due to the simple fact that how will I even know if it can’t work as well if I don’t give It a solid test for 90 days? So I now will not vote anyone that was ever on my voting bot ( about 30 accounts and most were not everyday posters) and I find myself voting for content I really don’t love BUT, I know the post won’t get downvoted by these centralized services and flag trails. Is this really good for Steem? I don’t want to make it easy to get Steem for people who only post activfit results or Steem monster or drug war battle results.  I personally think that is a form of abuse. I didn’t downvote it because everyone has their own little way of trying to earn Steem. Relationships get forged, new Steemians meet and want to support each other, friends invest, family needs help, etc, etc. I see no way to stop this especially as it gets bigger. I want people to be incentivized to BUY Steem and power it up when they realize how much they can earn from owning it and using its power how they see fit. A well rounded market needs all of this.....it needs to be stretched in many directions. I understand curtation DEFINITELY helps stretch the pool but in a bear market we also need investors and they want ROI. Steem is awesome because there are lots of ways to get ROI but every way has its own set of consequences or limitations. That I love...what I don’t love is how groups of flaggers OR curators are formed to decide what goes and what stays when people like pharesim or acidyo hold the most massive part of the stake in the group. It’s like fanboy groupies letting a handful of people regulate what they think Steemit should be. I know one thing for sure, my long term goals have changed because of them and as soon as Steem hits a nice little rise.....I am moving money out and some other sucker will come in and conform to thier totalitarian rules. Jus my 2 cents....

<div class="pull-left">https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmVHt1f2jqCViLk6dX2SZsajYRWBpmdQA7sQDEbuQBxFB3/c2100.png</div><br>This post was shared in the <a href="https://discord.gg/B8JFmJ4">Curation Collective Discord community</a> for curators, and upvoted and resteemed by the @c-squared community account.<br/> If you are a community leader and/or contest organizer, please <a href="https://discord.gg/B8JFmJ4">join the Discord</a> and let us know you if you would like to promote the posting of your community or contest.<br/>@c-squared runs a <a href="https://steemit.com/witness/@c-cubed/announcing-the-launch-of-the-new-c-squared-witness">community witness</a>. Please consider using one of your witness votes on us <a href="https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=c-squared&approve=true">here</a>

This is indeed an alarming trend. The main stumbling block for manual curation is discovery. We don't know what we don't know and it is very tedious to dive through all the new posts to look for gems. 

Yikes ... those little 15 Steem Power downvoters are not a glitch ... that is purposeful ... yikes ... a lot of good info here that people need to know ... I vote on pre-curated stuff through auto-vote, so that is a good move ... but it has got to be hard for the new people who can't get up to the point yet that they are producing so that they can get curated ... yikes ...

It's sad about @axeman, I've always supported him and he expressed his disappointment in dm a couple days ago. It's something I warned about concerning EIP and how it was going to negatively impact author rewards.

Excellent report that gives a portrait of how steem's health is. Hopefully soon it will improve. Happy and blessed day.

Interesting stuff. I'm not surprised. I have huge doubts about this whole approach. And I think in the long term the curation thing will drive the price of steem down not up. Why? Because as you point out curation is hard work. If you are going to do it properly you need to dedicate time to it. So you need to get paid. Which means taking money from the steem ecosystem. I also think that the people they curate (artists, etc) will take money out of the system because, hey they need to eat too. We have been sold a lie by these people. What I do notice is the people promoting the New Steem and running the big curation projects get high payout posts.  What a surprise. Not.

never mind about the small content creator, even the big one feel very unfair about the newsteem system .
First, the Ads revenue is not share with content creator.
It make no sense for content creator to do a long term value post.

If we really want to fix it, i suggest we do it like youtube partnership program.
steem side take 45% while content creator take 55% of the revenue ads . ads revenue will base on how much view the post manage to get. You need view to serve the ads.

I'm not going anywhere. I'm a tiny plankton and I'll continue to do what I've always done... consume some of my alternative news and random topics here on Steemit infrequently... upvoting stuff because I "like" it... not for any economic model or ROI. That's just me.

It could be ages before STEEM actually rises in price... it might be due to onboarding or "communities" or whatever... none of it will change my behavior on this platform.

It is frustrating - that is for sure. The payout is one thing. It sucks. And people think that it is just the same post...  But the time is spend on reading and commenting on the freewrites. 

What really sucks is that we still have haters that put down the whole freewrite efforts. Oh well. 
We shall see what I will do in the future...

I understand @axeman's decision. I have a long running contest that is often my lowest paying post of the week. There was a time it had nearly 50 entries and now we are lucky to see 10. It seems silly for me to do the work and pay out 5 Steem every week and then it pays me back far less. I struggle each week with the decision to keep it going. 

While I partly agree with your concerns, I think we need to put a bit of a perspective on that. 
The bull market brought a lot of people, and ever since the bears have taken over it goes down. A lot of people jumping in back then lost money, and faith in crypto in general. The graph shows a steep drop with the last HF, as does the price chart. Engagement in generall seems to follow price more than anything. 

Manual curation actually has gone up. How many people struggled to get over a dollar before the fork? Most who stuck around are better off now. Maybe not with recurring content like contests or automated statistics - except they have autovoters piling up on them, which I ranted about a few weeks ago getting a lot of backlash - but artists and writers and travelers generally have improved.
Even axeman isn't doing too bad. He can't expect to post a single photo 5+ times a day and make $10+ on each. Expectations have to be managed - $10 are 70 STEEM! 

Also, not everyone busy with downvotes doesn't have time for curation any more. Look at @curangel - with its trail it seems to be responsible for 1% of the total votes (which I just realized looking at those charts, and it frightens me quite a bit...). We're far from having 1% of the active stake :D But with that project as an example I also can't confirm your issue with the curation rewards. We're doing pretty well, voting consistently on small posts. 

I actually hoped that more people would use curation services like curangel with newsteem to spread their votes, but obviously that didn't happen to the extent that might have been desirable. The good thing about less votes being cast is that each one is worth more ;)

So yes - whales piling up on a few people are a huge problem, as that lowers rewards of everyone else. But it's never been much different. Rewards are lower than people are used to across the board. But were not seeing payouts in the hundreds for the top any more, as it was before (with similar or even lower prices). It's spreading slowly, but it's spreading.

@pifc has the same issues. There just isn't a lot of support from the top for things that don't directly benefit those with large accounts. Sometimes it's hard to see the indirect benefit from gaining more loyal steemians even if they aren't coming in with large sums of cash buying steem. 

With each new account we have the opportunity to either create someone who will be talking to their friends in a Positive way about Steem or in a Negative way. It's not about that single account holder, but their entire network of friends and family. 

Do we as a community want a positive or a negative conversation happening about Steem as our users small or large are talking to their friends and family? This really is the only question those with large accounts (ie large financial stake) should be asking themselves with each action they take.

Excellent post,

NEWSTEEM can be a great movement but as is its gone overboard.  I know many don't like to call Steem(it) a social media site but like it or not that is what its being used as.

 Social media sites need one key ingredient to succeed ....... members and most of those members will be small fish. This #newsteem movement is scaring the large bulk of people away from Steem(it) and while some may point out we can recruit more that will not always be the case. Scare enough away and leave enough with a bad user experience and they will never join again and likely advise there friends to stay away as well.

See you in Bangkok - can then discuss this off-chain.
$trendotoken

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Hi @fitinfun

I agree with your concerns and hope that you will have the opportunity to address the issues you describe at Steemfest as it seems that everything is now about the downvote in the newsteem. I believe that the downvote agenda will now damage the platform