The part I keep seeing here is everyone's forgetting, is that apps take a cut of the profits. Which means you will be getting in less then you think you will be getting. The Apps will not cut out their fee's it's not going to happen. As more specialized apps start and host images or videos. These costs aren't cheap don't expect apps to cut fee's very much other you can kiss image or video hosting goodbye.
Also, what's stopping anyone from just automating curation as they did before and like they do now. Also, people seem to think this 50%/50% will trip up the bots. The model is likely to switch over to @smartmarket style.
Or they are likely to start self-voting them self with big votes as some do now. Content curator plus biggest vote on your post means more for you. This update has a bigger positive for circle jerks and automation creation services. And the spread will be just as bad as it is now.
The apps with delegation wouldn't have to take a cut, because when they vote for content on their app, they'd receive a higher curation reward. Now factor in popularity. If more members were available to curate, instead of being paid to look away, a really good photo or popular video of the day would generate even more revenue for the app in the form of curation rewards once the other votes start rolling in.
Automated curation isn't terrible. If I earned someone's vote, and they want to support my work even when they're sleeping, then come later to view, which is typically the case for me, I don't have an issue with that.
Would you purchase votes if you knew you'd be losing 50%? Spend twenty, get $22 placed beside your post, no views, lose half to curators who were paid to look away. Does that still sound like a 'smart' market?
Did you just self vote yourself three times for no gain, no reason? Just wondering.
You raise some good points @thedegensloth. I agree with @nonameslefttouse regarding the Apps. It is quite possible people will move to the @smartmarket style of vote selling. I consider this less problematic as at least people keep their Steem Power rather delegate it away, therefore they can still curate whenever they want with ease.
Higher curation rewards combined with more downvoting, adds risk to selling votes to lower quality content. I think it is possible that good curation may actually be as profitable as selling votes. The same can be said about self-voting low quality content.
I think the proposed changes are worth a shot. I find it hard to imagine that we will end up with less manual curation than we have now.