You paint a sad picture, but it is pretty valid for the current state of the platform. Sadly, I don't think these particular things will change much, because it basically works the same way the world works. Small break throughs do happen sometimes though, with a nice upvote on one of your posts, but it's becoming increasingly rare, due to the massive amount of posts being shared. I'm afraid that will continue, so it will be more and more about who you know.

I still hope more filtering options will come, especially amongst the people I follow, because I already miss a lot of their posts aswell. I want to support good authors, but it's hard to find them in the big list of crap that is the New section. Comments on good articles, in my opinion, are the best way to find new people to follow and to follow you. It's all about networking here aswell I guess...

The amount my votes go for is still declining, but that goes for everyone, because the Steem value is low at the moment (just like most cryptos). If it rises again, all of our votes will be worth more and things might look a bit brighter again. Only for the payout amounts though, it won't change much about the inner workings here.