Having said that, I'm really confident that good content will shine on its own! Automation or no automation...

I think this is true, too. People on other platforms put in months and years of hard work building their audience and sharing their own content before they eventually hit the monetization tier (and how many burn out and give up before getting monetized?). Steem actually has a lower barrier to entry than most other platforms. If someone produces good content and does the same legwork that content producers do on other sites, I'm also confident that their content will stand out.

It's easy to lose sight of that, so thank you for raising that point.