There have been moles in the mix since the very beginning, it looks like they may have succeeded in killing blogging just as they wished they had killed the tech.
Not all of them are gone.
A few of them have substantial stake, afaict.

What the restivus need are for people to know the entire crowd and work as party mixers.
We had a chance at that back before the trubeliebers, that were sold on the steemit dream of crypto domination(we were #3 at the time) realized that the moles were winning and resistance to that trend didn't pay the bills.

The code in those days wasn't up to hosting the masses.
I'd think that a great problem to have, instead the crowd that controls these things started turning people away.
There are also likely laws impacting certain beneficial activities that very few of us are aware of, ie paying salaries to the help.

Be all that as it may, the code is 'in the wild', there is no shutting this runaway train down, we can just fork out the troublemakers and they can take their chain and do as they please.
So far, the few devs capable of pulling that off successfully, that I am aware of, didn't find the tech worth the effort, and mostly left.
I can count a minimum of 2.5 of those personally.
There are many more options available now than before the fork.
It would not surprise me at all to find that it has already happened, accomplished by the folks that made this chain possible, but only allows for private invites.

At some point the moles find that the effort required to control this chain is no longer worth the payoff, this is the point that much be reached, IF change is to occur.
We will know our success by the ~1000mv voluntary cap on voting rewards from the pool.
Until then, more of the same, and maybe a rugpull, is all we can expect.