Yea, I have also noticed that the view count feature is removed from Steemit. I am not sure why.

And you are right, the view count feature can be easily abused. What I hope for is a reward algorithm that really reward valuable content. And by valuable, I mean valuable to the general public and not to Steem users only. So the idea is to continue giving out rewards (can be of very small amount) if the post remains useful and viewed for as long as there are views.

As a programmer myself, I understand it is not easy to be able to track the actual unique views. But the point I am driving towards is that the incentives drive behaviors. If the system rewards are only based on post performance for past 7 days and participation of Steem users, then this platform will only see more of short-term posts that try to draw attention of Steem users. To me, those posts are generally low quality and unlikely to show up on Google searches. We will see less quality posts like, https://steemit.com/qtum/@cryptominder/qtum-staking-tutorial-using-qtumd-on-a-raspberry-pi-3

Which in my opinion is going to hinder the progress of the platform in the long run.