As far as the hardfork, all I know is that the witnesses say they have been given zero code to review, which isn't a good sign in my opinion. As far as your concern goes, I'll show you this, which is the same thing I showed mindtrap. We can even look at Medium too, there are amazing content creators out there willing to write for free or $5-10 per post and put out better quality stuff than most everything on STEEM these days. Even if you or I don't find it worthwhile, that doesn't mean that others don't. The current situation on the platform is that most authors don't earn anywhere near $1 per post and we're just overflowing with junk. Hopefully things are going to get better though.