Are you talking about @dsound and @dtube specifically? These are the only working examples I’m talking about, the only two platforms on here that function as intended and short of maybe two people off the top of my head, @dsound at the very least has been some of the best curated, most actively engaged communities I’ve seen, -especially- considering the vast majority of people I’ve become friends with there have stuck around as their average vote went from $60 to $1. If that’s not worthy of support from Steemit Inc’s massive stake, I don’t see what is.

Thinking it’s a free handout, or was seen that way ... to be honest that sorta tells me you haven’t spent appreciable time on the discord or met the people there. When the @dsound vote was 1.3m Steem, I promise nobody saw it as a handout. It was absolutely a carrot (and absolutely a source of mild drama as regular contributors struggled to be recognized and seen by curators...but good lord if that’s too much for you, this is empirically the wrong platform).... that generous upvote, applied intelligently was something simple and understandable to aspire to as a new steemian ... especially considering it was actively being curated by a small handful of motivated people .... and receiving it was a HUGE morale boost as I figured out how to MAKE MONEY ON STEEM which is WHY PEOPLE WILL SHOW UP.

Note: still very much trying to figure out how to make money on Steem so uhhh monster dose of salt here.