My opinion on this is still swaying from side to side, I guess it will be fine as long as people develop alternative algorithms to view the content on the blockchain.
But I still would prefer to have this same system embedded into the blockchain or steemit.com in which funds used to promote would be burned, sharing the profit between everyone.
I'd also prefer the Trending contain something else than just "ads". This current change has very likely impacted efforts towards finding quality content a lot. We would do a lot better, if we aim towards finding quality content and rewarding it rather than encouraging and forcing everyone to buy their way into the spotlight.
At least that's how I feel on this issue today, might be different tomorrow. But we should aim for something better.
I'm aware of it, I'd like to see promoted integrated to trending so it actually has some use. Who visits promoted?
But that would be forcing ads down everyones throat. You kind a want to take the end user into consideration as well or they'll leave or never come at all. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, just look what other social medias are doing, it is rather simple. Reserving posts for promoted/ad posts between trending posts.
It could work, I'm all for trying to change the current Steem meta. I have one project in development to assist in this.