I don't really even quibble with most of it, except maybe the dying part, but mostly because I don't really think it was ever a platform where voting ranking or followers meant much. If it never was that, how could it die as that?

It's always been a small niche user base and a likely quite a bit larger (and perhaps unappreciated) audience of read-only viewers who never even sign up or sign-in, much less vote or participate in any of this 'rewarding' stuff. To some people just having a functional platform, probably less censored in practice than a lot of the commercial ones (even if censorship resistance in theory is a bit oversold), where you can occasionally make a little money is good enough. But its still a niche platform, with an atrociously underdeveloped feature set (especially after two years live), nothing more.