You can, what we're trying to say is that the regular usar doesn't have the technical skills to do this (and do a query on the chain) and all the info we present goes over their heads.

• On a side note, we are also investigating some issues with the Steem blockchain if you are interested on that too.

Steem is basically dependent on Steem Inc. Steem isn't universal, it doesn't belong to it's users. If Steem Inc closes, others would be able to fix minor bugs, but would not have permission to do anything major (for example... a hardfork)

They’ve entirely open sourced the Steemit.com source code, but the Steem blockchain remains under the control of Steemit Inc.