It's clear that there has always been a total lack of guidance, support, direction and tools on Steem/Hive that empower established creators to onboard other people and also to be motivated to do so. Typically, the web 2 'influencers' are busy and - regardless of their public image - are often highly motivated by money.

I think that the right combination of education, improved tools/UX and support can change the situation you described, but it has to be a process that includes the full suite of changes - on their own they are not enough. The barriers to entry are baked in to Hive and I see their effects on the majority of people I try to onboard, which was also repeated by Lord Butterfly's experiences with onboarding for his music community.

The independent news and information groups mostly disbanded after the fork due to them perceiving the new whales wanted them gone through persistent downvoting. If they had no alternative sites then they may have stuck around, but they had other options.

Ultimately, social media is about eyeballs and engagement and cultivating that requires a mixture of factors to be present - most of them have been missing on Hive for a long time.

Steemit outperformed Hive sites for traffic afaik, partially because it had a better SEO profile and was therefore more visible to the masses. None of this is likely to improve without structured marketing strategy and implementation. That, in turn, requires experimentation, investment and research.