Completely agree. Else you're just pouring water into a bathtub with a hole in it.
We now have free and instant accounts for interactions only, with the built-in opportunity for those accounts to earn their way to a Steem account through positive interactions. Still working on better content discovery, although I see it as less vital for us since our bloggers mostly work to promote their content themselves. Moderation is not only a feature but a requirement imo. Our users are 100% in control of what comments are visible on their websites, no idea why this is so controversial to many Steemians when having ownership of one's own blog should include the ability to moderate it... (When I first started on steemit, I put in a tonne of effort into making content relevant to my work in the space sector, but there was no way I would ever share it with my colleagues, friends or other social media following with the comment section turning into spam by flat earthers...).
In any case, I think Steem can add value to a social product without requiring it to be used in its "vanilla version" with stake based content discovery and no moderation.