I agree with you that right now Steemit is pretty much a worse version of all its competitors. Steemit is worse than Reddit. DTube is worse than Youtube. DSound is worse than SoundCloud. Dlive is worse than Twitch. But this is temporary.
Now that a middleman doesn't take a disproportionate share, there large economic incentives to transition these platforms to decentralized ones.
Look at https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/d.tube & https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com . These sites are rapidly growing even though the ui and content is worse. They will keep growing because there is an economic incentive for content creators to use them.
Even better, if you can figure out a better ui that hasn't been invented yet, you instantly have access to platform with hundreds of thousands of users. Centralized companies have to grow each new product from 0. With steem, any new tag you create automatically gives you exposure through steemit.com
Right now it's worse, but it's getting better and it's going to keep getting better.
I see this is the future, but I have a difficult time seeing Steemit in its current form taking a significant part in that. Sure, it had a good run in the last crypto bull market, but now, it's in a bear market. I think for a good reason, namely the reward pool abuse.
Then there are other projects targeting that space as well. Basic Attention Token and the Brave browser for example. I haven't used them, but the idea behind them is interesting as well.
I wonder, if this could save Steemit. Steemit already has some great authors and content, but it's so difficult to find them, because trending and hot tabs are populated with mostly self-promoted posts.
If Steemit wants to make it, they should consider creating a home page that is populated with posts relevant to the user, similar to the homepage of YouTube. Only then does this platform in its current form has a chance to succeed.
The best UI would be, as I mentioned above, the one that takes into account the content consumer's preferences and customizes the content according to the end user's preferences.
Who is best placed to do that than yourself by following the users that write to your liking ? In order for Steemit to do that in your stead it wold have to collect and analyze your personal data. A lot of people came here precisely because they don't want a plateform to collect and use their browsing and reading habits