trending is almost all organic now, though I wish there were more non-STEEM related articles dominating

I've been complaining about this for years now! Posts that talk about Steem itself always get the most attention. I think people have realized this and post steem related articles on purpose to exploit this point.

On the other hand, it is certainly a topic that most if not all Steemians are at least somewhat interested in, so that could play a big role in why these posts are so popular.

The main problem with this is when you go to Steemit.com logged out, as a new user you see mostly posts about Steem itself which might be pretty boring to someone contemplating creating an account. I wonder if maybe there should be a different feed that is shown to new people. Hmmm....