It's all about the visibility. From the 4 menu buttons on Steemit, 3 promote self fulfilling prophecy - the most viewed get more views. Making it impossible for any other post to be objectively valued, positively or negatively. Unless you have friends to always vote you up, or enemies to always flag you, no matter what the content is.

Sola.ai has solved this in a very elegant way. There are no "Trending", "Hot", "Promoted" buttons there. You get to see random posts. You have three choices - like it (reward), skip (neutral) or flag it (negative). Simple and understandable.

Why should "Promoted" even exist on Steemit? On top of all the countless voting bots.... What does "Hot" serve for in addition to trending? Why there should be strategies for getting into those lists (Hot & Trending)?

Aren't these pages too strong of incentives to play the "being smart" game instead of posting honest content? Aren't these pages a temptation which is too difficult to resist?

If you don't have friends to vote for you, and bots (paid or unpaid), the chances are that your post will remain invisible, regardless of its quality.

"New" button is OK, even though not perfect. How about this:
Somehow, give each post equal (or nearly equal) visibility on a random basis. Depending on the votes (up, down, neutral) this view ratio will be adjusted and will follow the vote profile.

"Trending", "Hot", "Promoted" destroy any reasonable proportion of the content distribution on the system. The algorithm plays the role of a chief editor, and the result is a snowball effect growing into avalanche. In contrast to the vast desert of dry unseen posts into which who knows how many hours of work have been put. And almost nothing in between.

Let there be some hills and even mountains. Some lakes and even seas. Some caves, deserts and ocean depths that no one ever sees. Some valleys, roads and highways. A colorful bouquet of post and authors.

Same author can write a good or a bad post. Authors can grow or corrupt. Why all the post of a good author should be necessary good? And why a far from perfect writer could not grow and improve? Ever heard of "one hit wonders"? Give them a chance to get discovered. Not only in the 3 milliseconds visibility on the "New" page.

This comment was not meant to get that long. Just hoping Steemit will come closer to representing the real life diversity, powered by almost HALF A MILLION accounts as of this moment. Make the stage broader. Build more stages, let more stars shine in the spotlight.

Give each post equal initial views, and from there, follow the long and winding road of the votes.