Steem is a steeming pile of trash. It is absolutely NOT sustainable long-term. Who would have thought that a "project" by the infamous Larimer gang would be another pathetic, worthless, money grabbing scheme to ripoff the naive? Just say NO to the Larimer trash and their anti-free speech Chinese communist backers!
perhaps. but if Larimers can't pull it off after this $333M pump up ... then things look slim for the Omni social media project too

long term stuff
thewhales = the advertisers
call them accounts content kingmakers, that wickedly insert subliminal 'buy this crap', and have the steam power to hit the frontpage.
no different than the media platforms of before in terms of intent.
They perpetuate the lie by advertising, "Welcome to Steemit, decentralized and incentivized social media.", and generally plastering the word 'decentralized' wherever they possibly can. Of course it's not decentralized, the founders just mined 80% of the mineable coins, making themselves able to elect the vast majority of delegates in the DPoS validation scheme, not too mention wield the vast majority of the influence about who gets paid out and how much. Steem is decentralized like Turkey is a democracy.
You said what I mumbled to myself in disgust in recent days.
$ETH
BTS
Stellar
XRP
Are blatant corporate financed projects. Larimers China LLC.
They will (and have) adjusted the 'smart contract' as they please. +ICO / premine nonsense.