haha yeah, I'm a bit of a fan in case it shows!

They've had the first batch of accounts powered down to near zero, which is why they've now been abandoned. There's no doubt these new ones will have the Steem Power undelegated from them eventually, however it's becoming a never ending game of whack-a-mole now. Surely since the introduction of the terms and conditions, Steemit have the grounds to just perma-ban the user. They're abusing the system in every single way they can think of, and all it'll take is for a few more of these weirdos with too much time of their hands to come along, and they could start affecting user retention rates. If you're a new user and suddenly start getting flagged into oblivion, well you aren't gonna stick around.

There's quite a few different things they could do to try and prevent this, and it really worries me that they don't really seem to be able to do much. Why not prevent brand new users from flagging? or maybe below a certain reputation? Why not beef up the identity verification process? I can't shake the feeling that maybe those in Steemit HQ aren't that experienced in any of this. The tiny cosmetic changes that have been made to the site over the past 9 months are laughable really.

I think you've probably hit the nail on the head, I know the number of users has increased massively in recent months, but how many of them are genuine users who will then go on to use the site on a daily basis? Not many I'd be willing to wager.