I know that a lot of people were skeptical about HF21 and how it would have a very negative impact on all the lesser accounts. To see and hear that authors would earn less for their contributions felt devastating and on top of that, we also heard that content that earned less than 20 Steem prior to HF21 would make less afterwards. This obviously lead to a bunch of assumptions and it filled content creators with fear and anxiety.
Many users felt like HF21 was the perfect thing to make the rich even richer, and that they would become richer on the expense on all the lesser accounts due to these new changes, and especially due to the new curation rewards.
I admit that I were one of them. I was skeptical before HF21, and even though I am still somewhat skeptical, I am not as concerned as I was prior to HF21. It's still early, but what I have seen so far looks really, really good.
My biggest concern with HF21 was that authors would earn less, and that newcomers and lesser accounts would ultimately give up because it would be too difficult to grow. I was also worried that flag wars would increase, as it felt like giving bad people more powers to use for bad things...
I got even more worried when I noticed how some people started to use their flags immediately. Some of them talked about flagging well-known authors who had been here for years... I was worried, and even though I still have some of those feelings, things seems to have worked out very well. Far better than what I expected.
The trending pages does no longer consist of low quality content that has bought their way to the top. Flags are being used to counter bid-bot abuse and we seem to have a trending page that looks real and legit. It might be logical to see Steem-related posts on the trending pages, especially this early on, but I hope that will change in the near future, so we can see more variety.
That being said, it was amazing to see my own content on the hot pages for the first time in a long period of time. The hot pages are filled with awesome content, we see lots of variety and due to the amount of new content being produced, due to the changes in curation rewards, and due to the whole #newsteem approach, we see new content being brought to the hot pages frequently. I love it!
As the use of bid-bots have decreased, we have also seen manual curation from these bots instead. I have been lucky enough to receive upvotes from both smartsteem and 
This has obviously had a great impact on my potential rewards, but it does more than that. It gives me hope and it fills me with motivation and encouragement. These things have so far proved that I was wrong in many of my early assumptions regarding HF21.
I was worried that these things would be used to only reward well-known authors that has published quality content for a long period of time, but I have followed many of these initiatives relatively closely and I am truly satisfied with the results so far. Content from all types of people are being rewarded, and it's fantastic to see.
The icing on the cake, that also proves that manual curation is truly back, is the fact that many users and initiatives seems to upvote content regardless of the new "5-minute rule", which was one of my other concerns. I almost took for granted that most people would basically ignore content that was older than 5 minutes, so getting an upvote on content that is 16+ hours old feels amazing!
Sharing Is Caring
Not only do you help to promote Steem and specific authors, you will also be rewarded for your efforts. - How cool is that?
There are many similar- and other really cool things going on. #Newsteem seems to be exactly what many of us have been waiting for. It's still very early, so we have a lot of ground to cover, but things are looking really good so far. My skepticism is being reduced for each day, and I truly hope that things will continue in this direction...
It certainly feels like HF21 took us to the next level.
- What are your thoughts so far?
- Have you seen results you are satisfied with?
- Is there anything you are worried about?