Sorry to see you and all the little helpers go-away. I have seen a whole lot less Social on Steemit since the EIP. The vote system has been broken since I joined, and the bi-yearly flag wars that were between only a few people have certainly escalated since the free down votes, and the newsteem drive.
I really do not see much difference between newsteem and old steem, Names have been changed to protect the guilty, that is all. I joined steemit for a few reasons, one of the primary ones I made it through the first 6 months was a very good lack of trollish activity. EIP made sure to fix that oversite on the part of steemit.
Most down votes used to be on plagiarism or abuse. Bid bots were the first target, many other than myself tried to warn about the escalation and "the they did not come for me, so I took no stance" syndrome.
It is a broken system, I am still going to hope for improvement in attitude, but I seriously doubt that will happen. I know many people that have started posting less frequently, (myself included), due to all the bullshit down votes. it started with all the little ankle biter 15 SP accounts powered by @steem, and the lack of any visible action on their part to do anything about it.
Now it is SBI that is being systematically down voted, and a lot of people have bought, and thus gifted others with an SBI or two. The bid-bots that are trying to go to curation voting are also being heavily down voted.
The large account holders can talk all they want about they don't really do any damage to the account, and that kind of thinking is just allowing the normalization, (once again), of bad behavior to continue.They seem to not understand that people do not like seeing meaningless down votes on their content. If their is a reason for the down vote, people accept it, when it is completely out of left field down vote for no reason other than to down vote, people, (myself included), do not like that. So the simple thing is to not post as frequently, to not post meaningful items, to avoid at all cost any semblance of a social post
So the social content is going away, @haejin may want to re-think his powerdown and departure, A lot of good writers/authors were driven away, the social posters are being driven away, next up the photo people will be driven away, and that will leave it at what, TA after TA of this crypto coin or that crypto coin.
I do hope things begin to change by February next year, so that I do not find myself in the same boat as many others when it comes to deciding to stay or go from steem block chain.
Thank you for all the help when the Mesopotamian were running, it did help shape my presence on the Steem Block Chain.