It takes time and dedication to create great and valuable contents on this platform and to be honest people are doing it basically for the money.
So here is my opinion
- the promote feature should either be removed or tweaked such that contents will be revealed to targeted audience, depending on the amount you spend promoting a post and some specific keywords targeting like facebook and ads networks use.
- cost of promotion shouldn't be so high that there should be a level of guarantee that a promoter wont run at loss in terms of returns.. I think this will really help the community grow
- i think upvote services arent a bad thing when used for the right purpose, which applies to almost everything in life.