I posted here and steemit extensively for years. I also witnessed what I think are a lot of the problems with this platform. It has tremendous potential.

Staking into the platform makes sense. What does the person get for their stake? Yet, they can downvote posts into oblivion because they are "not interested" if they have accumulated sufficient power. I've seen this stifle creators. Those same people stifling will then elevate their buddies. This creates kind of a vacuum where they get more and more powerful which makes it easier for them to stifle and control.

They will argue that you still have free speech. Yet they destroy the idea that if there are people who LIKE your content you can earn something. They can squash that earning.

For this reason I've argued for no down vote before. Yet there are some reasons it has had to stick around. Mostly fighting spam, plagiarism, etc.

The reputation system was implemented long ago to counter bot accounts. It actually works quite well for that but it too can be gamified.

I can tell you I would have stayed active here like I was in the past but watching people get censored/down voted for reasons other than spam, plagiarism, etc. would wear on me. I saw the accounts that do most of it rise to power over the years. They essentially have turned this platform into their own fiefdom and the rest are the serfs.

Even the creator of Steemit, Dan Larimer noticed some of the problems. He and I had some exchanges on the topic long ago.

This platform has some beautiful never before seen ideas. Yet this also meant that there were new problems we would have to learn to deal with.

There are potential solutions but since the stake is already consolidated into the hands of what seem like digital oligarchs I don't see a way to fix it.

A new platform learning from the lessons might be able to pull it off but there is far too much competition in other areas now so getting momentum will be very challenging.