This is an important question to ask, especially in an environment like Steemit.

User can be influenced by incentives offered through the design of the system. What happens when content becomes competitive, and different sites look to monetize based on different sets of values?

Likely, the people who's posts are most inline with the dominant paradigm on the site are the ones who receive the most financial recognition. It will lead to the same situation we have now, where different sites have different political stripes, but some authors will have a ton more influence than everyone else.

In terms of how to combat it, I think about the differences between the US political system and parliamentary systems abroad. In the US, people choose candidates based on the 2 party paradigm because it's winner take all. In parts of Europe, voters are allowed to make multiple decisions, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

Even on Steemit, voting is all or nothing - vote up, vote down, or don't vote. I think a non-binary decision about the quality of content could help to provide a spectrum of ideas in various sites. Interaction would not be measured by how many people agree with you, but by how many people respond.

This raises another issue worth discussing, which is the idea of being outrageous just to get attention. Let's call it the Paulie Shore effect. I am not sure how fond I am of single-issue sites, but I know I am not interested in single-personality sites.

So what we have may be the worst system of financial incentives, until you start to consider all others.