The DHF abuses don't help at all. But the problems definitely go beyond that. Signing up is difficult and the complexity of the key system prevents most people from even trying. Then the few that do pass that gauntlet, they have to face no support and a hostile Hive watchers. It's no surprise we get very few new users who stick around more than a week.
Perhaps when we finally get light accounts, potentially making signing up easy enough to actually pass the grandma test. At that point if we can make a push to get Google to index us more, we might actually get new users. But then we have to figure out how to keep them around.