Glad to hear from a like minded person. Its difficult for Steemit to become a link farm (there are very few outgoing links). When you "unlock" follow links at about the $10 mark - you show up on the other sites like Busy, Steemkr, etc.
The trending page is something I am still testing. Obviously the more people see something the higher the chance of you getting backlinks.. But is there an SEO benefit of sitting at the top of trending for a week? Im not sure -yet.
That is why I don't believe in all of those promo bots. I think people should produce content not because they can get on the top or earn a couple of £, but because they want to share something important. Quality is the key.
One day Google bots will be more intelligent and all of that backlink rubbish will be worth nothing.
I am working on SEO for my company and when I scanned competitors using Moz I was shocked. Well established companies are still using "vagra" spam techniques and they see nothing wrong in this.
I personally use the promo bots to gain followers. I have been posting on Steemit since the beginning - but i've taken breaks in between. It is a terrible financial proposition but it helps build a following and re-establish old connections. A backlink from this site is valuable and I dont think its wrong if relevant to the article.
Some of those spam links are competitors trying to poison your competion. Most companies have a huge disavow list - some of those links might be on it.
Like medium or buzzfeed or any other site that allows user contribution - it will always (and should always) be a part of SEO. I don't think google will ever reach the point where it simply looks at quality content - it will evolve -but as long as they are the gatekeepers setting the rules - we'll shape our content strategy to follow suit! Good luck with your SEO endeavors!