I have to agree with your points. If I had been here as long as you have my post would be strikingly similar to yours. I can poke holes in just about anything but this post is sound. I didn't come here for the money as it is not a motivating factor for me, fortunately. I came here to play with something built on top of a blockchain but the new user experience is shit. There's nothing good about having bots run the site. Discovering new people to follow is awful. It took me 3 weeks to find you and it was a complete accident. So, I hope you keep posting because I like following people on my wavelength. Don't leave just yet.

The Steemit team is technically subpar. They aren't focused on this platform, they are focused on their SMT token which is just a load of crap. The next phase of the web will not be so social as they think. The follower model and upvote model do not work well together. If you want new users to have a good experience their needs to be a level playing field. The number of followers is directly related to the number of upvotes. This means high user rank + high follower count can shitpost and still receive massive upvotes and rewards. The best comments are not rising to the top.

Steemit is not going to intervene and stop the bots. They want as many developers as possible building on their platform. Perhaps they just don't have enough daily active users so they like what the bots are doing for the site. It's kind of like when reddit started, the team posted stories and fake comments day and night until they achieved a userbase. Unfortunately, these bots are don't care about post quality. Just making money. I don't know if people believe in Steem. Most just take money out and buy other coins with proceeds.