I remember the days when you'd conduct a search for information on Google and get a results page full of useless content because website owners could just pay content providers to write them keyword-based content that got them respectable search engine rankings. I was fortunate, and unfortunate, to be in the content marketing business at the time. I tried to sell useful content services where people would pay me to actually write decent content for decent money, but I got so many requests for cheap SEO articles. Eventually, Google changed its search algorithms and got rid of the trash pages, aka spam. Really good SEO writers can still push a page to the top of the search rankings, but it is harder, and it's even harder to stay there.

Where there is money involved, people are going to figure out how to game the system and tilt the odds in their favor. The reason we have government regulators is to reel those people in when they get out of control. We can bitch about regulation, and sometimes I do, but it does discourage bad behavior and cleans it up when it gets too out of hand. I don't think Steem Inc. has figured out yet that being in control of the governance mechanism means they can influence the outcome. Or maybe they have figured it out and just don't have the will.