We certainly didn't look into this before, but I'm going to make a reasonable assumption that Steemit only did this after being contacted by law enforcement in the US. If that's the case, I don't see much benefit to expending even the relatively trivial effort to display this presumably old data now. It's still out there, for anyone who wants to see it, on the blockchain, in any case, as you've already mentioned.
RE: What True Decentralized Social Media Looks Like