I remember the large boom on Steem in during the 2017 bull run and how there were many crappy posts with just a picture of some graph and the current price of BTC getting huge upvotes

That's mostly due to circle jerking and we still have plenty of that on hive. Post payouts have almost nothing to do with a post's quality, a higher impact having your circle of friends and thei voting power. I doubt that will ever change.

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