I really feel steemit should handle abuse, separately to down votes. Plenty of innocent people fell victim to misguided justice and plenty of criminals got away with in the Wild West 😉

The problem with leaving it to users is that isn't possible for people to successfully flag some abusers out of action, the persistent ones create more and more accounts and it becomes and endless game. Others are too big to be stopped. 

It didn't occur to me it might grow, that is scarier. I hope not, fixed is definitely at least better than not. 

I don't downvote either. Woo yeah. But people do and I don't like seeing it promoted. Cutting the author rewards does risk pushing authors off, I'm not here for the money so much, and would say at this point quite a lot aren't, so I don't know how much that aspect will kill creators, but it is a big cut to give up. Thank you, I am going to hope you are right ☺️

That is really well put. I totally support a free market, and the madness that comes with it. Steemit isn't quite a free market, although it is very comparable to what we also call a free market out in the wider world, complete with corruption to boot. 

Thank you, kind of had a sleepless night after I saw I had a response and couldn't delete this comment and dreading what might show up. But thank you, very much appreciated ❤️

Spoken with great wisdom, especially the part when you said, "Oatmeal." It was deeply touching... 

Even commercials can be awesome when designed to be hilarious. The problem with content is often that people don't care enough to do something well. The problem with making it difficult for Steemians to earn without a huge following is that they won't have the incentive. 

Wouldn't it be cool if Steem could reward authors well enough that they wrote their books on here? But they can't, because the 7 day reward system does not make it profitable. Steem wants to be a long-form content machine, but it is not capable of paying people long-form rewards. On Youtube, a good video can earn you money for years. 

I think we are making a big mistake by allowing for a culture on Steem that says what can and can't be on Steem. We should let everything legal be on Steem and let the curation decide the reward.

>Free Market...

Yup. That's what it's all about.  And if the reward bar is set too high for new users, the new users will simply not be here.

What's the point in posting on Steemit for $0.02 a week (maybe... if one is friends with a large wallet...) when someone can post of Facebook and have a **much larger** audience?

From what I've seen so far, most of the top payouts are handed over to plagiarists who have purchased most of the votes and the rewards on the post as well.  This particular practice is mystifying to me, as it seems like chasing a tiny profit margin using a ton of cash... but whatever.

There should really be a Gaussian voting power curve... with the highest vote power set at a few thousand SP.  That would ensure the best quality content over all... because the mid level users are the ones most likely to be engaged in actively reading content and making the platform better.  This would also fix the problem noted in other threads regarding the VP of the bidbots.

But... maybe someday there will suddenly appear a BAT tip jar next to Steemit postings.  And the whole discussion of platform generated rewards will slide into oblivion.