Even apart from the totally ludicrous conflict of interest issues in witnesses who are voted in by Freedom deciding to fork out other ninja-mined stake because it might be used to choose witnesses...
Does nobody who runs this chain understand how a blockchain works? If something truly dastardly were ever done by the new owners of the Steemit Inc. stake, the witnesses could always choose to fork by restarting the chain from the preceding block. Nobody has to prepare for it ahead of time.
You might lose the support of exchanges by doing it that way, I suppose, when they would ignore this method. But if that's the real concern here then hiding it in the background while making arguments that have no technical standing is basically fraudulent.
RE: Steem Consensus Witness Statement: Code Updated