There's nothing wrong with Steem being discussed on the Steem blockchain, but there is something seriously messed up with it swamping the Trending page.

It is just a problem existing in crypto in general really. Way too much moon-boy trash everywhere. And the minute anyone is even slightly critical about anything they get attacked like crazy. Honesty and rational thinking is not the name of the game in crypto, just overly enthusiastic hyping.

I remember making a comment on Youtube where I explained clearly why the Bitcoin moon-boys claiming that Bitcoin can't be stopped are wrong. I was attacked relentlessly and accused of being a fiat-loving mole. I'm not against crypto, I am completely for it, but I'm not for playing along with delusions of grandeur. So I explained the step by step process that any sizeable government could easily do to destroy any of our POW blockchains. Nothing but ragequits ensued...

So, the trending page being filled by emotion-driven investors trying to pump their crypto is a real problem given that this is a social network. It is expected to be a real product, not just a place for investors to keep each other's stack above the masses. But in reality, that is exactly what is happening.

On the circle jerk thing, you are somewhat right on that. The facts of life are that circles form and they do usually just keep supporting their circle. This is a flaw of Steem's design though, because the idea of Steem is for complete strangers to get rewarded based on quality of work. I think it would be cool if upvoting the same people within a certain span of time would result in less rewards, in order to encourage spreading out your votes.

Ultimately, I do believe that people should have the right to use their votes however they wish, including bots though. I believe vote power is property and what one does with it is their business. That is also why I was opposed to free downvotes, because I think that if you want to hinder someone's rewards you should be willing to lose as well. But no, after HF21 hugs cost mana but dick-slaps are free...

That said, I wish there was a cap on how powerful an account could get. A fork of EOS did that, putting a cap on account influence. I am a big believer in the idea that social networks need to be an even playing field with less hierarchical structure.

Sure there is the duplicate account issue. But Minds.com requires a phone number, which they don't know about because your phone number just gets turned into a hash by Ethereum and ties your account to a wallet. It would be cool if Steem did that, so that it was more difficult to have 100 accounts.