The result of this outcome was often that Super Linear Rewards are inexplicable to new users causing difficulty meeting user expectations (particularly around “get paid to post”) and reveal a system that is not about how good the content is, but rather about How Big is Your Network or How Much Are You Networked Here.

This is true. From what I can see there is no cost free solution. I do think that at least back then some added value was being rewarded. Now there appears to be a broken economic incentive structure which isn't even as good as things were under super linear. I could be wrong but I'm going off memory of 2017.

Things were bad back then but the changes seem to have turned bad into worse. SMTs I do have hope for but this will take perhaps too long to arrive. We need a quick solution for now so as to convince people to hang on for the ride until SMT is ready.

Personally, I could spend a blogpost speaking to the merits of Linear Rewards.

Perhaps you should? What did we gain in practice which is measurable from the data? Did we get an explosion of growth in new users? Did we get added retention? What was improved from before?