The witnesses will always act in the interest of the blockchain, not of Steemit Inc or any other party. That's a given and should be said first and foremost. There's a lot of opportunists out there who can code. All of their attempts should be taken seriously but not panicked over.

This is just a fork. A fork is worthless unless accepted by the majority of witnesses by stake weight. No one will accept some random fork unless there's real reason behind it and all agree. Remember that the chain can be rolled back if absolutely needed. It would be a mess but its a possibility.

When Steem was created Steemit Inc ninjamined a huge amount of tokens. Dan rolled back the chain (as I mentioned above) to do that when users figured out how to follow Dan's nonsensical instructions for the mining ask. Restoration of any state prior to the current block state is possible but not advisable as a normal day-to-day activity. It's akin to having major surgery.