I have been on Steemit since August 2016 so I am not one of the really early members but still earlier than most. I have to be honest when I first got on it I wondered wtf was going on it took me a few months to really understand what it was all about. When I understood the idea I began to believe Steemit was a brilliant idea but it had a problem, there were not many people using it and it was full of bots and the flagging system at the time was ridiculous. The payouts were and are still low (for 99% of us) but I own my own site and I figured at least it advertises my site and therefore my blogs and videos.
I have so far earned about one thousand pound in UK money on Steemit which is not bad tbh compared to Adsense and YouTube it is brilliant especially when we consider there are no shit corporate ads on Steemit to fund the payments.
Slowly but surely I started to believe the hype and I still did up until recently. A few months ago I blogged 17 posts on the subject of Britain's Paedophile elite and they did quiet well. They did not earn much (a repost later earned 44 USD.) I believe I seen a drop after that, I also notice pizzagate has disappeared from the tags on the sidebar, at one time Steemit was full to the brim of pizzagate information all of a sudden the information being released seems to have slowed down.
When people assume Steemit is decentralized they are actually wrong, Steemit is not decentralized it is centralized in profit (look at the top earners and compare them with the rest of us) and it is centralized in control. Steemit top 1% probably earn more than the other 99% (I have not checked for a fact but looking the payouts it has to be something like that) and their vote counts for more than the rest of us.
Interaction with posts seems up and down and ridiculously inconsistent, we expect changes but on Steemit we see huge changes that seem to make it harder for newcomers or minnows to be heard but the changes don't seem to effect the top bloggers so much. Another good point a (former) Steemtian is many of the top earners are friends and family of creators of Steemit?
What kind of secret features have been added to the coding system? Invisible accounts? Allowing for flagging and shit I would not be surprised but at the same time I cannot offer proof, its just a theory?
What is even worse is if Steemit ever does get to the same level as Facebook is at, celebrities and rich people and corporations would be able to simple buy Steem power and make themselves much more heard than regular users that have invested long hours of time in to it. I think Steemit could equal trouble and I there seems to be a denial of its blatant manipulation in trending posts and information. There are two reasons for this denial some people are happy with what it pays (you can't money at the pay rates compared to alternatives if you have the rep) and people just want to believe.