I suspect that the team running the HFs doesn't understand how psychology affects users. I know they consider game theoretical aspects, but prior to HF21 my incentive to post was low, since even for posts where I spent hours and got a decent amount of votes, the payout was extremely low in contrast to those who are gaming the system. Now under HF21 my incentive is even lower. I had already stopped trying to convince others to join the platform, and HF21 lowers that incentive even more. This seems to all be the result of having an oligarchy run steem. Steem needs many more users, but its complexity and lack of features are unlikely to result in more users. HF21 makes things more complex. You can argue that you don't get anything on the mainstream social networks, but that again goes back to psychology. Folks see the huge payouts on meaningless posts, put time into their posts, then wonder why they get near nothing. Overall, my 1+ year on Steem has largely been a huge loss in terms of time and money invested. In contrast, my time on Twitter has been very valuable, because there are communities there with which I can have meaningful scientific discussions.