I do find the whole zero fee concept interesting. The other day I was thinking about it. The fees are basically hidden in the form of the 10% reward pool that goes to witnesses.
I hear a lot about how Steem is only using 1% of it's power but this platform still has a long way to go. There are many parts of this ecosystem that lag or have bugs. In fact I can't even upvote you or post this message right now because I have temporary negative bandwidth ATM.
I've got a disillusioned friend who keeps saying we need to jump ship and find a better blockchain. LOL... what blockchain? Steem is literally the only social media blockchain so far. It's so far ahead of the curve at the moment.
If Hashgraph releases its own crypto and/or makes something like Steemit, then your friend will have something valid to propose as an alternative
There is no doubt there are still challenges ahead of us and things which need working out.
That said, there are other interfaces to use like busy.org which do not have the same issues at the moment.
Overall, we can all point to what is not working and find cause to leave. Many did early last year from what I hear only to come back recently kicking themselves for missing all that time.
People do not recall what Facebook was like in the early days or what Google was like in the early 2000s.
Few things happen in the tech world without challenges.
Hell Windows is still a mess....and comes with tens of thousands of updates all fixing something.
A coin might release a paired social media site at a later time, I can't think of many coins that have fair distributions though so the killer coin might be yet to come. If it has serious backing from big players, or is easier to use and navigate through content than steemit... watch out.