You got it! Like Patreon, GoFundMe, etc. Steem is a way for content creators to monetise their content and for consumers to reward good content. Unlike most mediums the initial investment can be retrieved and with Steem a successful creator can in turn reward other creators without withdrawing funds to redeposit, which is awesome!
The biggest set backs in my opinion are, like you said, fake votes, via bots, rewarding lazy/bad content creation and hiding good content from the trending/top tabs.
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