A very serious topic that requires a lot of frankness, difficult to achieve here, in spite of everything.

Who are you, newbie?

The most important and most difficult question to answer.

Of course, if it is a real person 🤔

Everything starts from here.
Personally, I'm too biased, having seen things over the years. And I, the prejudiced one, say this: back in 2018 it was even too late to enter this network. And today, after so many years, there are no "new people" for me.
I know this is a misconception and many newbies will be offended. But imagine what it's like to find out that one person owned 1,500 accounts. Or that mass identity theft is practiced from Instagram, FB and similar networks, with all their photos, etc.

Steemit and other blockchain networks are being touted in poor countries as a means of printing money. Why would they be otherwise attractive to people, don't you think? Whether they will be able to overcome the attractiveness of FB or Instagram, despite the lack of freedom of speech there - I doubt it. But at the same time, recruiting new people from poor countries doesn't seem entirely well-intentioned to me. I mean if there is no benefit to the onboarders.
Things are tied to each other, says the biased blogger in me again. And this is one of the reasons I am very careful with such accounts and prefer to stick to a certain circle of people.

I don't know if it makes sense anymore to ask ourselves the questions: did things go in the wrong direction and what could we have done to prevent it. Because if someone is interested in this type of network, they will stay, regardless of the lack of comments on their first post or the lack of a large first vote. Voting for the sake of voting, just to keep someone here, at any cost, is also wrong.

I know I can't even write a meaningful comment on this all-encompassing topic, where if one digs into the details, one can make terrible assumptions and be endlessly frustrated.
But anyway, thanks for the useful information and food for thought!