Maybe the answer is a steem-blockchain-based platform that doesn't use post payout value as the basis for post ranking? I dunno. There is, of course, one's feed to help you curate what you like to see best, but how to find those in the first place? It's a conundrum. Anything that can be bought will be sold. In this case, what's valuable is $ on a post, so people buy valuable votes. As I go through a list of the possibilities of how to organically rank content in my head, everything is purchase-able. (And, even worse, those who already have the power have the ability to gain even more power, since wealth is power.)
Perhaps a platform with 'trending rankings' based on how many real-human comments it has? pro: things are ranked by actual interactions. Con: It seems hard to program an AI smart enough to tell the difference between bot comments and human comments...Though, captchas to answer before you leave a comment? hm.
But... we can all agree that, relative to many posts on this platform, this one isn't worth 200,000 times as much as the average noobie's introduce yourself. So, shouldn't we all "disagree on rewards"? Except the power is concentrated in the hands of so few, and there is such an incredibly strong anti-flagging social pressure, and my trickle is better spent upvoting the content I like than downvoting the content I disagree on rewards for, especially if I don't hate the content, just think it's not worth $2k, and since it'd be such a small drop in the bucket...
OH!
oOo. There could be a ranking platform that would pay curators a little more proportionately that had them compare two posts and vote on which they liked better. If you wanted to be considered for the trending page, you'd opt-in. Hmm.
I'm no developer, but that would seem a little less abuse-able. Ideas Ideas.
Putting forth actual ideas is worth an upvote.
I appreciate it. I do hope there's some method by which the average user's interests can be taken into account as the platform develops, even though so much of the stake is currently held by a very small percentage of accounts.