Sorry you're leaving. I just found Steemit in January 2017, I liked it a lot. Things have changed a bit since then, I still see a future for it. I'm in for the fun, not so much the rewards. I can see your point about how easily flags ruin rewards, and demoralize users. Not good for onboarding new users.
I remember a few weeks ago I convinced my 9 year old daughter to post about her silk worms. She managed to get around 8$ in rewards until the whales decided that it was too much.. Greedy bastards are only interested in themselves