Maybe "gatekeeper" is a good term, here. I'm no crypto expert or blockchain enthusiast, I'm just a content creator seeing a possible opportunity and platform for expression. From what I have seen in the time I have been here, Steemit (the company) as often as not seems to get in its own way of going forward. As an analogy, they may have "invented the wheel," but they seem to know very little of building anything that actually uses wheels.
Again, not really knowing how this works, it seems like this might be an opportunity for the Witnesses to form some sort of "co-op" to take over responsibility for the Steemit social front end and kick some life back into it. There's both coding/developer and marketing/community talent in that pool. Like it or not, Steemit does seem to be the de-facto "public display" of the Steem blockchain and if it goes to see it would reflect poorly on the entire Steem ecosystem, no matter how many great dApps come along.
Bright Blessings!