The concept of "popularity" or "rewarding" good content is gone.
Popularity is still the main sink of the reward pool. Rewarding good content has gone, unfortunately, and I could be doing more to counter it, but...honestly from the 600 followers I have I think only 1-3% really read my posts. I'm not complaining because I can't read all my following fellows posts either. But it could be minimized if the 4-post penalty was revisited like you said.