I agree. I don't think members of the SSBC view themselves as authority figures, but it's true that push access to the reference implementation is a form of power.

Solutions like git-ssb are an improvement, but it's a hard problem to solve: when a stranger asks you for the code for the web viewer, is the correct answer just to give them what you personally run? If so, that seems similar to what the SSBC is doing.

I'd personally love to hear more solutions to this sort of problem.