It's always been true - it's how the central bank of steem works.

All this 1 minute window is doing is mitigating the mixture of increasing curation rewards plus a decrease in payouts for most posts. If the 15 mins was kept, then it would add some curation-reward losses for some upvoters.

It is giving with one hand and taking away with the other - while algorithmic-curation-rewards-mining will be done by the fastest bots.