i'm suspicious of anyone in there 30s, especially over 40, who is an idealist. Its about power, influence, money.

I honestly do not know. I do know why people are leaving though. I have said it hundreds of times it seems. Human nature has not been studied well in here. It is the flagrant voting of shitposts that is destroying the integrity of this place. All the professional writers I know, including some who write for VICE Magazine tell me that they see Steemit as a casino, and that's it's pretty shady. Platforms like Medium are thriving because pro writers see what the Medium staff finds valuable: highly intelligent, very controversial, well-crafted articles that are critically written and provoke deep thoughts. Controversy is shunned by whales on here for the most part. This is a HUGE PROBLEM. 

Steemit produces fluff that is consistently given huge payouts and therefore real writers just laugh and wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. All the artificially created Robinhoodwhale programs are trying to fix the inherently flawed, centralized system. Little thought was ever put into the reality that powerful whales make poor curators. Organic readers and curators are here, and there needs to be a way to allow them to surface, and have more power. Usually power hungry people, writers, artists don't make the best readers and curators. I'm more of a creator, not the best curator, but I know of many curators who are great. They need to have more power obviously because they are keeping Steemit alive. I've already outlined how I would solve this issue.

The sooner the devs and other Steemit shills get out of their bubble and begin to see this light, the sooner all of our investments will grow. Until then, the shitposts, the scammy people and the half-assed shit writers will continue to thrive and drive down this place. I might add that not all the trending writers are bad, take @infovore for example, he's a very good writer and deserves every single upvote and reward. The shitposts and the whale shills need to go. This place has a chance if the quality rises to the calibre of Medium (Medium is where I came from and if this place continues to degrade in quality, I'll be left with no option than to return to reading there.) I'll never give up on this place, but we all need to start dealing with reality and solving the problems so this place grows, instead of shrivels. Negative reputations of companies are really hard to shake. If this platform continues to be associated with shady-as-fuck conmen and shitposts, the value and engagement will remain flat. Things die only to be reborn, so let the big flushout begin.....Dan and Ned's hard work is still intact. So much went into building this thing, it would be a shame to let a few fuck-ups ruin it.