This part sums it up so well.
At the end of the day the people who will fall for this level of marketing will be the ones whom we don't really want to attract in a young platform to begin with — not at least at before wide adaptation.
Having just recently joined steemit it has felt like navigating a jungle of quality, bots, craziness and desperation. Not sure I would have believed in the platform long-term were it not for getting into communities at steem.chat, and @steemSTEM in particular, and thus seeing that indeed there are people with long term vision for the platform, and the ability to build it.
yeap, it will take some time but I believe if we talk about the issues openly we can make a difference.
The problem is that new people, with lower voting power, can't stand up for themselves if a "crazy" whale (or an average person in the community), decides they don't like the thoughts and opinions expressed by the newcomer. Which does not exactly make it attractive to start out.
Coming from the space sector myself I've been raided by these people. So a lot of clean-up to be done (whether it be by the community, or by some changes made to how easily someone can flag people for no good reason).
Anyways, hope to be a part of the people who can speak honestly and openly about this issue, and try to make the difference.