Simply put, Steemit is not about 'empowering anyone' but is about a traditional business model but using trendy 'crypto' and 'blockchain' buzzwords to make it look more cool and sharing.
It might work and might be classified as 'decentralised' if the ability to run nodes ere extended to the masses, if there were a way that anyone with a PC at home could be running a mini node, but no. The complexity and cost mean that the fabled decentralisation extends only to the highly intelligent geeks and/or people with huge money in the first place to set up a node.
Half of the nodes running this decentralised blockchain are owned by Privex and are in a handful of data centres!
As I have said many, many times here. There is no brave new world, just a redistribution of wealth from some old school bankers to some new school techies.
The only benefit we have here is the lack of censorship and blatant advertising. But that will one day come.