Auto curation is the killer. No one bothers to read very much. Everyone wants to be heard and not enough people want to hear because they want to be heard too.
I understand the principals of auto curation, Ive discussed it often but at the end of the day, curation is about reading, making a decision whether you like or agree and then upvote and comment accordingly. Its human, its organic, its a true connection.
If you miss someones normally excellent post, its up to you to make the effort to read, not just leave an autovote.
People here make almost zero effort to break oit of their normal circles to find new and interesting stuff, theyre too busy writing their own Steem opinion pieces which are the most rewarded posts here.
Bidbots just merely recirculate reward with very minor profit but eventual their use gets the user more followers, albeit often poor quality ones as people naturally flock towards big numbers to see what the fuss is about hence they can create more engagement.
This is not the case with autocuration, it just looks like circle jerking and is a hark back to the small close knit community right back at the beginning and discourages new users who know they will never be part of the in crowd and get similar rewards themselves.
Dump the auto curation is and always has been my philosophy to improve quality curation and better distribution of the people who actually read stuff.
Great post :-)