Like most users here, I have to agree that recently Steemit is going downhill. Before you go down to the comments and disgree please hear me out, this post isn't to complain but rather to provide feedback from my personal experiences.

The Decline of Steemit

Everything written here is my personal opinion and I don't mean this personally towards anyone. However, I think if Steemit is to continue and be successful there are some very obvious things that have to be changed.

I've had a break from Steemit recently, or rather a series of short breaks. However, in this time I wasn't checking my feed very often and was quite ignorant to what was happening on the platform. After making the decision to start using the site again though... I can't avoid it. I'm even considering completely giving up on Steemit considering what it seems to have become.

I don't really know much about the dramas that have been happening in Steemit (whether they are true or not), and those are irrelevent to what I want to say anyway.

Catagorisation

Steemit is an open platform for free speech and I understand that (my suggestion to combat this comes in the form of better catagorisation), but when I view my feed these days it is filled with pointless things I don't want to look at. Single images without even a title (what am I looking at?), posts simply stating prices of Bitcoin (this is irrelevent instantly and I could have just checked myself if I care.. if I really care I already know), or posts in languages I don't understand (don't get me wrong, Steemit should be for everyone, and having such a mixed community is great... But I think we need filters).

In my feed I can change these things, I can unfollow people or follow people based on what they post. I have no problem with that. But as soon as I step out to the other pages, I find these articles to no end. However, I think there is an easy fix to this problem as I mentioned earlier. I think Steemit should remain as one site, but I think that different languages need catagories, a way to filter them. I am interested in English and sometimes Korean articles, however I come across hundreds of Chinese articles, Russian articles, and every other language. Once again, this is awesome and amazing! But is there no way I can filter these languages so I can only find English?

I love Reddit because I can scroll down the home page and find only content I understand. While lots of it doesn't interest me, I can actually understand it.

I think having these catagories would also help with my other issues, people who only want to post an image with no description could have an area, and we could have a 'crypto news' area. Yes, we have tags, but let's be honest, they aren't very good.

No Progression

Maybe this is just me, but this is an opinion piece anyway. Steemit has no sense of progression. When I created Steemit I made under 10 cents a post usually, and sometimes I would get a successful post that would make $50+. Now? My posts usually get 0-5 cents and sometimes make $5 maximum.

While this may just sound like me complaining, please believe me, I'm not just complaining. I have never begged for followers and my followers were gained from my own work and exposure. Yet even with these 'authentic' followers, I make nothing each post... I get that not everything is money deserving or attetnion deserving, but what annoys me is the lack of progression. If I used to make 1 cent a post and now made 10 cents a post, that's great. But it's not. If anything I've gone downhill. Why should I even stick to this account? Why not create a new one? I haven't gained anything anyway. Followers don't count for anything it seems. I just wish I could have some sense that I am actually getting somewhere... Working towards something.

Spam

I think everyone on Steemit has seen enough of this, and I think it is ruining the platform. Sadly where there is money there is greed. Bots spam welcome to people who join (tutorial and helping bots are another case) and spam follows to gain their own followers. And if these aren't bots? They are people who do it thinking they will gain out of it.

The amount of accounts I find with 300+ followers but a level of under 50... Even 40 or 30 is incredible. These people make less than 50 cents a post and just spam posts and comments to gain followers. And sadly Steemit seems full of them now.

While I don't know exactly what can be done to stop this, I'm sure there are some bright ideas out there. It could be server side in the form of anti-spam bots, or something the community does... I don't know, but I do think it needs to be dealt with.

Steemit still is a great platform and there are great people here. But I do think changes are needed.. the platform honestly seems like a mess now. Am I annoyed and complaining a bit? Yes. But I think these problems need fixing, Steemit used to be a platform full of interesting topics and conversations. Now I struggle to even find that content.

Thank you all for reading, and once again, I meant nothing personal in this post. I just hope Steemit can continue to grow and become better.

If you have any comments, input or feedback please let me know down below!