I don't know how to phrase this diplomatically, but I think your issue is that you were benefitting from the system, but now are not.
There is a fixed pot of steem that is generated by the blockchain every 24 hours - about $200,000 worth I think at the moment. If one person gets huge rewards, everyone else must get tiny rewards (as in $0.05 a post, especially if it's a growing platform and lots of people are posting. If it has gone from about 5000 users to 70,000 users it is not possible for a handful of people to continue to earn huge amounts and everyone get even less, because remember it is a fixed pot of steem. Something had to give.
The devs made a small change - they allowed the whales to choose on a sliding scale how much their vote would give. Before their vote was huge and they could only give 27 people a massive amount and lots of people nothing. Now they are trying to distribute the funds much better.
In addition, as the platform has expanded new writers have come in. The whale bots curate based on profit. If they've removed you from their list it is because they have found another more profitable writer to upvote. That is the nature of this platform.
The amount of Steem is fixed, the value of Steem is not. If Steem grows to 70k users, the value of 1 Steem will be higher and even so will the total reward pot of Steem in USD be higher.
Why dont start to pay a max. payout for each post, lets say 300$ for example.... more people would benefit at the end, guess it will be way more fair for everyone.
I didn't know about this modification, I had seen mention, but not a clear explanation. It may well be that I am wrong about curation rewards and they can become a net value add. Possibly some kind of ranking that modulates how the whale can win them would eliminate abuse potential, making it really a proper competition to see who can see the best stuff early on. The goal of developing with this AI algorithms to pick this then would make more sense.
Anyone who has more than 30,000 Steempower can now select how much to give - say 33% instead of the full value of their vote. That's why the really big single upvotes have stopped and you see a lot of smaller amounts given.
Yes it was added a few weeks ago to the Web GUI but was always a part of CLI based voting. When you use the CLI you give a percentage to indicate how much of your vote weight you want to give at the time. For the GUI it only applies to high value accounts from what I have ascertained (don't know the cut off) - they have a little slider like a volume control to decide how much they will give each post.
Ah, this explains why the multi-thousands rewards have stopped, and a lot more stuff is apppearing on the trending page.
If I may interject: why the discrimination, why do only "whales" get to use a slider?
There is a minimum vote weight accepted by the blockchain at all to prevent spam. If you have low SP and you you reduce your vote power further with a slider your vote won't be acccepted at all.
Very interesting take. If the price is right and the people want to get paid more, maybe some sort of affiliate marketing or advertising system could be set in place. Money will not appear out of nowhere and people want to invest in something that has the potential to have many eyes on it. I hope that steemit is never publicly traded because that will kill the community and instead focus solely on the bottom line.
People also need to realize that since steemit is based on user content, those with a large stake want steemit to succeed. If the whales decide to vote on content that others feel is not worth the price they may move away where content is rewarded more for substance and that will make them lose a lot of money as investors.
So grow the collective expected account values using creative development and marketing?
The amount of users on Steem has nothing to do with the value of each user on Steem. There is something more going on.
https://steemit.com/steem/@dana-edwards/are-we-over-valued-or-under-valued-on-steemit-a-steemit-blogger-is-currently-valued-at-usd25-878
The pot of steem is fixed in a 24 hour period. And in dollar terms the amount distributed in any 24 hour period depends on the price of steem.
At present about $200,000 worth of steem is being distributed to 70,000 users. Of course not all of them post, I think Ned said 21,000 posts are being produced per 24 hours. If it was distributed equally, each post would get about $9.50. Of course the distribution is not even, it is done with the Pareto principle.
A month ago, when the price of steem was four times what it is now, you had $800,000 worth of steem distributed in a 24 hour period amongst a lot fewer users. I think it was 30,000 users at the time.
It is simply arithmetic - if you are distributing a fixed pot amongst a lot of people, then everyone must get less. If you are distributing a shrinking pot amongst even more people, everyone must get even less still.
Stellabelle was moaning that she wasn't getting paid the way she was when steem's price was four times what it is now and it's users were half. She's effectively arguing she should earn the same as she was and everyone else should sink to fractions of a penny to pay for it - in other words she wants a higher % of a shrinking pot to maintain her dollar amount and by definition she wants every one else to take home zeros to pay for it. That's a dodgy attitude to take particularly as she's couching it in terms speaking for the majority, LOL.
If you want individual posts to earn as much as they were and an expanding user base, then the price of steem must rise proportionately to pay for it all.