I can understand you feeling any number of emotions in response to your experience here and I would have a ton of empathy for that.
I may even try to support your efforts to change the rules about dust payments (or any number of other issues) which I personally believe are working against building our user base.
But your request and list !
I would not support that kind of thing
Please help by filing complaints with the following organizations, as I have done, and which may also assist in getting your money back from this illegal ponzi scheme.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/?utm_source=takeaction#crnt&panel1-1
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/enforce/claims.htm
"... which I personally believe are working against building our user base."
If we are to be honest with each other and with ourselves, I am quite sure that you realize that under Steemit's current design, its user base of active members will never grow beyond its current level, and if fact, will continue to decline as it has been doing over the past year. New members sign up. Perhaps they invest in some Steem, and perhaps not. But as soon as they discover that it is virtually impossible to make any money with the platform, they will want out as quickly as possible. The only thing creating the "illusion" of greater support, is the fact that it takes 13 weeks to get your investment back. Remove that barrier, and I am confident that you would find that Steemit would essentially become a ghost town overnight.
If Steemit became a ghost town overnight as you say and the price plummeted, I think that it would present a very real opportunity for growth.
I agree, it is very difficult for small accounts to receive rewards. Even most of the votes we are awarded evaporate into the largest stake holders accounts.! The same as it happens in all Communist States.
We can moan and grown about how much the situation sucks for ever, and it will not make things better at all lol
We need to focus on what we DO want, not what we don not want.
So let me ask you the question:
What positive changes do you want to see?
Lets talk about that and find ways of getting closer to making that happen.
"What positive changes do you want to see?
Lets talk about that and find ways of getting closer to making that happen."
Fair enough! Here are 6 for starters...
Change the member "reputation" system so that no member can downvote other members, or hide their posts. This could be accomplished in one of two ways: i) Allow only upvotes for posts, comments or replies; or ii) If we allow both upvotes and downvotes, eliminate the reputation system completely.
Set a specific amount for each upvote, regardless of how much steem power the voting member, or the author has.
Require all members to have so much steem power for each upvote they wish to cast in a given day. i.e. No steem power = no votes.
If we allow downvotes, restrict all members to perhaps just 1 or 2 downvotes per day. This would prevent most retaliation by those members who get their kicks out of downvoting dozens if not hundreds of posts from a single author they decide they do not like for some reason.
Change the curator reward pool so that it is equally divided among "all" upvotes for posts, comments and replies. We could even set a time limit for votes to be counted, perhaps the first 12 hours of a post?
Change the current 13 week power down time frame to something much less, perhaps 4 weeks as a current proposal suggests.
..
If you could contribute something positive toward moving the platform toward a democratic process for choosing our top twenty witnesses, that would be enough.
What would you need to change about the management of your account to achieve that I wonder
"If you could contribute something positive toward moving the platform toward a democratic process for choosing our top twenty witnesses, that would be enough."
Personally I would completely do away with the Witnesss system. Some of the worst abusers on Steemit are actually Witnesses. i.e. @themarkymark, @blocktrades (AKA @unclemantis), @gtg, @cervantes, etc. These people downvote other members for no reason other than their own personal hate.
Witnesses should NOT have the ability to downvote other members. Doing so should immediately remove them as a Witness, and perhaps even have all their Steem Power taken away. Also, allow members to vote "against" Witnesses, without retaliation, NOT just for them.
Please read the whitepaper before speaking again.