I’m not sure if the concerns of the “ghost town” in the original post can be resolved by having non-registered viewers see a bunch of NSFW posts. If one believes the 1% rule that says 99% of people generally lurk and it is a small minority of 1% (and maybe 9% who contribute once in a while) that actually create content, it feels like growth and discussion comes from hitting a critical mass of users (which this community might not have hit yet, but may hit in time), rather than “look, here are more NSFW posts, but you can’t comment until you register an account with us.”
Though it’s not quite the same as hiding away NSFW posts behind registration (since a flood of “wtf” NSFW posts relative to the viewer could flood the front page), I guess that can also be a function of post content as well (SFW vs. NSFW and so on.) With that, I would support your suggestion on the UI changes, since it would give them the same view as registered users (albeit an expanded view of non-blocked communities). At the very least, having the “wtf” content be blurred and not auto-expanded might help avoid insta-reject reactions (or delay it for a few seconds until they click on one out of curiosity and go AHHH MY EYES WHAT IS THIS) 😅