If what you say is true then I foresee small groups of genuine contributors that pretty much keep to themselves and upvote each other surrounded by a sea of spam. Groups like Hive account@teamsouthafrica or the Aussies that set up their own territory within Steemit and police their members while fending off spam within the group but not being able to stop what happens outside of it.

How sustainable would that be? Wouldn't Steemit just fall apart? Perhaps this is just the first iteration and if Steemit folds then the next platform will hopefully learn from the mistakes.
I still think we should fight back though. There are people like Hive account@sherlockholmes and Hive account@stellabelle and many others that are fighting back. We should too, in whatever way we can.