I would believe that the development team was aware that any organization could enter and fork the blockchain. What might be of help is that while Vice has intentions of doing what was written about in the SMT white paper, how many non porn sites want to use a blockchain associated with that? This is especially true when you have the exact same options with steem.
I would love to hear @ned's thoughts on this.
Yes I do not particularly see it as a bad separation.
There might be 'social baggage' associated with Vice that could in some arenas be a negative for steem. So an air gap between them would be no bad thing.