I agree.
But keep in mind that small social networks usually do not run ads. Ads cause user engagement to fall, which makes the network less useful to advertisers. Because of this problem, social networks usually run losses for the first few years of their existence. These losses are managed by having successive rounds of financing that bring new investment capital into the platform. This is the way both Facebook and Twitter handled the problem, and it worked for them. After the network becomes really big, investors make up what they lost due to the high profitability of a large social network.
You have a point that maybe Steem is different. Maybe users would be more engaged because of the reasons you cited. But we should keep in mind that there are reasons most social networks don't run ads when they are still small.