Yes, they are, because steemit is simply one window into the Steem blockchain. Nothing happens "on" steemit really, it all happens on the Steem blockchain, Steemit is just the interface.

I was stressing the point because of the way you said "I will never stop using Steem or Steemit", which to me implied more of a connection between the two than there is. If steemit.com went down today, and never came back, none of the content would disappear, and there would no more difficulty posting, commenting, etc.

Since Steemit was always a problematic company, and now they've been taken over by JS... Why not stop playing with their toys? Everyone on steemit is paying them with ad revenue (you are a product), and if it does come down to a hardfork, steemit.com will be the only front-end off on its own chain while the dApps & communities head off on another one.