I see this very similarly, back then each of my posts got 10 comments asking for "follow me back", "check out this post", "random bot message".
Besides in the comment sections of some popular authors there was no real engagement (The same can be said for any blogging platform out there too though, even on medium many big posts barely receive any engagement).

Then, the following HF purged all of these spammers and low effort comment spam.
Then, following this, we actually did lose a lot of authors, but not because of the platform, but because the price of steem went down significantly and all those people loathing "free $" from the platform didn't see it as "worth it" anymore.

I can't stress this enough but if people only post if they get a lot of money out of each post, then we don't need them here. Most likely they will never repay the platform what was invested in their content.

Millions of people post videos on youtube, threads in reddit, pictures on instagram without getting a cent out of it, a few lucky ones that create enough engagement for the platform end up getting paid but that doesn't apply to everyone.

I often suggested to "hide" the $ price a post gets here. Because else people will think that they "are owed the same amount for a similar quality post" but we know that this is not how this works.