"I also really like the idea of being on a platform which isn't owned by some corporate and is instead effectively community owned and managed. Maybe I am in the minority with that attitude though."

Not at all. I used to write more about all the cool advantages of Steemit, for example, the applications to future historical study.

However, the rewards are by far the most obvious and widely-appealing factor. The vast majority of people on Facebook legitimately do not care they are censored and tracked.

"I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt."

That's been working fine for me, too. You start to get good at picking out the fake bot comments, and the rest are obvious.