After doing these things you will see that Steem is in fact growing, quality is improving, and the sun is shining on all things Steem.

If you have data supporting the bolded statmeent than please share it. My own analysis agrees on the point of fake accounts, voting spam, etc. but does not agree on the point of there being meaningful ongoing growth.

Up until a couple of days ago we had a significant number of fake account signups

This is misleading, although your next sentence explains it better. To expand for clarity, there are still a "significant number" of fake account signups. No one should be mislead by continued growth in registered users that is not matched with growth in usage into thinking that indicates a huge drop in activity per real user. It does not.