Yeah you are correct. This was a social experiment pertaining to the use of a crypto currency/token on a social type platform. Notice how they tanked the project as soon as Facebook launched their currency.

Makes you wonder if the 3 years of data collecting and learning were funded by Zuck.

This is the end. What a shame.

Above is the last page of the Steem Whitepaper.

Oh I almost forgot to mention, part of the experiment was to map the human brain and to teach A.I., that is a very important aspect as to what was at play. The funny thing is that 99.9% of these people had no idea they were being experimented on.