So I went through about half of your post, thinking "Yes I agree" , "Oh, I need to quote this and say how much I think you're right here" on basically everything you said. That's when I figured I'll start with this:

I wholeheartedly agree with basically everything you have said here and you make excellent points.

Now, about the discovery of interesting content here. I think tags should indeed play a much larger role on Steemit. Actually, I would love to see a big UI overhaul where not only tags play a big role, but where all feeds can be filtered and sorted on many things. I want to be able to filter in/out tags. I want to be able to filter on a reputation range, heck even a Steem Power range, so I can filter out types like sweetsssj and haejin. I want to be able to sort on payout, votes, views, time, reputation, or a combination of those.

Content discovery could be so much better here and it is really shameful that this hasn't been further developed yet.

I'm too fucking lazy to build an audience elsewhere.

That's the thing for me aswell. Steemit was the best place to build an audience a year ago, when I was looking for one. The instant flow of (small) rewards was a nice incentive. And even though I still don't earn loads, Steemit is giving me some much needed rest to get over my burnout, without feeling completely useless. I bring in a little money and that eases my mind. Even if it's only equivalant to a small part-time job.

I am also still here because I like my followers. They comment on my posts with more than just "Great post, plz check out mine link".

I'll just wait and see what happens when dan launches his own version of Steemit.

Reluctantly, I'll have to do the same thing. I still hope Steemit will improve and these magical SMTs everyone's talking about will be some kind of game changer. I don't know enough about them though.

I would probably go with both platforms, because I wouldn't want to just leave my followers here.

Anyway, I'm digressing. Basically what I wanted to say was: Great post!