In my opinion #newsteem is much better than #oldsteem.
Under #oldsteem hardly anyone was manually curating. All curation was done by paid voting bots and #newsteem fixed that. The trending page is more interesting now.

But this is my personal opinion and my experience. If you are getting downvotes I understand you are not happy with the changes. There is a reason why people downvote you, however. Paid voting bots are not accepted anymore under #newsteem. Everyone that used voting bots have to adapt to the new rules. It's the community that sets the rules. I like this decentralized approach.