I can relate to most of your post.
I have always seen steem as the combination of blogger and facebook. The blogger aspect with writing post and facebook with the aspect of the easiness to reply and to upvote!
But I cannot categorize steem as a social media. On a social media platform there is interaction. Here on Steem the average number of comments is around 2.4! Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and sort a like are laughing their pants off!

The best thing about Steem is that I am able to read stories, opinion and ideas of people all over the world. This is the big difference with FB. On FB people do know each other in real life before they follow each other, here I don't know anybody I follow in real life!
Never thought that I would have so many connections in Eastern Europe!

So, yes there are good things about Steem, but let's not call it a social media platform. It is more a social experiment which has been undermind by the greed of people!

Cheers,
Peter