IMO, there's really no way that it's a scam. Everyone knows how it functions (or can learn if they want to) and we can all guess whether or not it will work out or gain adoption.

If you describe the basics, like "the more you have the more your vote is worth" and stuff like that it can sound pyramid-schemey to people, if they aren't interested enough to learn more.

But some sort of way to have censorship resistant decentralized social media seems worthwhile. If there's a better way to do it than Steem, cool. But I don't really see how Steem is possibly a scam, unless there's some sort of lie of fraud involved.

(The people like Tone Vays who accuse it of being a scam never say what specifically the lie or fraudulent info is.)