We try to regulate it a bit, but the basis of the system is that it's decentralized, so no Big Brother to remove the spam and such.

When we see spam, we've got several options, like downvoting, calling one of the community-based spam cleaners (who basically mass-downvote those who are judged to truly be spamming).

there's a bunch of things to fix, for sure, but mostly we can keep it relatively clean.

It's very recent that a new phishing site (the one linked to here) has sprung up, and there's several proposals going on in various groups as to how best to deal with it without compromising the freedom of speech and decentralization that are essential tenets of the platform.

Mostly, you're safe on the platform as long as you never give any of your keys to others or use them to login directly on other sides that claim to need them (the only safe way to log in to other websites using your steem credentials is through Steem Connect, a service created by the website founders themselves).

It's all about balancing how much policing there needs to be done, with the freedom of authors :)

Oh, and welcome to Steemit :)