Your concern is also shared by me. I've been more absent in the last weeks due to professional stuff but still I realized that feedback to our posts changed. The majority of comments sound like false empathy or flattering. Guess that is caused by the need of fast money.
I also blame payed bot services. Yesterday I realized this website https://steembottracker.com/ that lists the bot services. In my opinion this kind of services may destroy what I believed Steemit was, a place where people could create good/ important content that was somewhat voted/ paid by other users. This services can be both used for people that create good content but don't consider it is well paid, but also for people who create bad content and can pay a high vote. This results in less interaction...Wish Steemit Inc. could do something about that!
We must first realize that Steemit is not really de-centralized, then we must look at the few compared to the masses, then we must look inside... we give so much and are rewarded (more than the other platforms for sure), but a pittance unless a friendly few drops by.
Again not a complaint rather than a pause to think logically about where is my time better spent.
As example if I power down, it would be roughly 380 (steem) a week or $592 (equivalent) that would buy 6 LTC or 53 EOS (which will over time multiply with all it's airdrops), 165 BAT to use tipping people through the Brave Browser even if not on Steemit... or 22,796 DGB just waiting for people to realize it's worth and potential.
So many decisions.