The dust has settled after the rolling out of the new hardfork(s), and there has been mixed opinions. Some say that it is making it harder for new accounts to earn Steem, while others are loving that bigger accounts are manually curating and bid bots are losing power.

I have been at a distance from Steem for the last few months due to travelling, but am slowly learning more about how the hardforks are affecting the platform.

Manual Curation

It is no secret that manual curation was broken before this hardfork. The shift towards the 50/50 split has changed the attitudes of many curators (especially those with larger ammounts of SP). I have noticed upvotes from accounts that would never give me attention beforehand. Although my blog posts arent earning more, it is encouraging that engagement has increased - more coversations and upvotes from a wider audience.

Free downvotes

I am ashamed to say that I havent cast any downvotes yet! This is more due to lack of time and education than amything else. What I have seen though is a massive change in the trending page, with less acceptance of people botting crap posts to trending. Bots have ecen started manual curation! All of this is encouraging stuff, and shows Steemians wont put up with shitty content any longer.

A bright future

From these changes I see a bright future ahead. It is still hard for newer accounts to get started, but with more manual curation that will become easier and good content will get noticed. Additionally with things like @steemhunt, @dlike, steem-engine and the many tribes, there are now a multitude of ways to earn Steem.

I have been on Steem for just over 2 years, and the progress has been massive. I think it would be much easier starting off today than 2 years ago when I started.

Steem on!