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What do you mean with "declining authorship"? Quality or quantity?

I'm talking about the quantity. If people are abandoning the platform, quality is irrelevant.

So there are 3/4 of a million dead accounts. That's terrible.

One should not focus on dead/inactive accounts.
Did you ever wondered how many inactive users there are on Facebook or Instagram?

the declining authorship has me really worried about Steem

Life is made of ups and downs. The long term trend looks goo, especially for the number of active users.
Less posts could be a good thing: less bullshit and more quality.

Active users appear to be remaining steady, but if authorship declines too much there won't be anything to share. I don't know if we're getting more quality with the decreasing posts. I don't know how to measure that, but if people are abandoning the platform and there are less and less authors posting, then that is a problem no matter how you slice it.

And yes, I do wonder how many dead accounts there are on those other platforms. That matters. Facebook claims to have 2 billion users and Twitter in the hundreds of millions, but we know those numbers aren't accurate. That changes how the platform behaves and the incentives at play. It also demonstrates that Steem might have the exact same problem they do and is less valuable than we might imagine, both on the price of Steem and its position within the market.