Good and truthful post.
I started out on steemit with hopeful eyes and a dreamy heart. Was excited about free speech , decentralized power, and all the other bullshit they claim this platform is.
I was quickly put in my place.
I then tried to find a community to be a part of, But I am not into just one thing or one Idea. So that left me lacking.

Then I got a spammer on my page and remembered someone tagging @steemflagrewards.
I looked for it and joined.

Now I am an admin for steemflagrewards and spend most of my time fighting abuse. We have bigger problems than circle jerking. Most of the problems stem from a few issues.

Plagiarism, comment farms with 100s of steemit faucet delegations, Flaggers with 100s of steemit faucet delegation accounts. Large stake holders that have a few alt accounts and only vote and comment to themselves. Accounts buying delegations and voting themselves and alt accounts.

It sad to say but it is impossible with the human condition to have a decentralized power on an open platform. There is greed and more greed and even the witnesses mostly only care about ROI.
There are a few that have a long term perspective and they don't run bid bots. But they will quickly be run over if the current way things are done here stay in place.

The trending page is not trending at all. It should be called the promoted by bid bot page. I think maybe most of the people don't understand the definition of trending? But the trending on steemit is not trending any where but on that page.

If you care you should join us at @steemflagrewards and start fighting the abuse. The only way we will win is if more of us are flagging the abusers and reform them or make them leave.

Thanks for this post, use and look at the #abuse tag for posts like this it will be an eye opener.