I have to agree with you on most of those points. The lack of features to let users customize what they see has probably driven more people away than have stayed. The steemit circlejerk, guide fest, and but kissing has gotten out of control and very boring.
My only suggestion is to post the exact feature you want, and see if others want it too. Maybe, at some point, when crap gets too deep and people stop logging in, they will look at user feature requests...
How to Stop the Scams - Stop voting for Introductions and Steemit guides
Allow the users to fix the problem through curation.