They don't pay only for using it. They pay to market it to their millions of followers as the best thing the world has seen since the internet.
The network/fanbase is usually gonna try anything they suggest, especially if it's free to signup.
They could even go so far to say that if you power up x amount of steem (500 steem e.g.) you will get a big upvote from me, your idol...
Some crazy people would pay thousands of dollars to get recognizes(upvoted on social media) by their idol.
Okay, so bribes, effectively advertising.
But instead of paying new members to consider signing up on STEEM, why not support (pay) the content-creators? Instead, they are taking away a larger cut from the content-creators, to favour the investors (curators). New members won't stay around unless we start properly rewarding good content. When the site is filled with high-quality content, it will grow and prosper. Right now we are chasing away the last of the real content-creators. Almost nothing left here except bots and spam.
Bribing people to send their followers here is only going to work if the followers will want to stay here. Currently, people are flocking away from Steem in droves, so it's not working. We need to fix this ship, not advertise.
"We need to fix this ship, not advertise."
Yeah, that is exactly why they are taking away a large cut from the content-creators. Because in 5 years, nobody on steem will give a fuck about "good content creation".
This platform is evolving from a content platform to the best app platform, the best gaming platform, the new decentralized censorship-free youtube/ instagram/ facebook, the best and fastest scalable payment solution (read new money)
Incentivized communities and SMTs for every internet business is the future.
Everybody will be earning 2000 different coins/smts for their daily activities freeing us from the tyranny of corporations and government.
Both ways can be positive for the community but they are not even close to getting to this stage yet. Influencers is a few kilometers down the road but taking care of content creators is just down the block. I wouldn't get my hopes up though.
Sheez! I had to read this twice. Because the firs time I read: "(upvoted on social media) by their idiots" LoL
lol