Hello @firepower, and what an excellent set of points you make here! Thank you-- bookmarking this!

I have run into pretty much the same set of "rebuttals" when mentioning Steemit on our gallery page on Facebook, as well as on my wife's and my own personal Facebook pages.

What's interesting (aka "sad") is that even though we're also taking the "doing good" angle in our appeals (this Steemit account was mostly created as a way to give additional exposure to art AND to help raise a few $$$-- withOUT people actually having to GIVE money!-- to fund giving new aspiring artists exposure in our store) it has fallen on dead ears.

What DID seem to help a little was focusing purely on the "Stake Holder" aspect and not mentioning money at all: instead just saying that Steemit is an exciting new social content venue where people can become stakeholders in the platform by building the equivalent of "shareholder influence" (Steem Power) over time.

What makes me really sad about the whole thing is that almost automatic assumption that if someone gets rewarded for something "it must be a scam?"

Thanks again, for a great article!