There's a whole industry that profits from selling the biggest and baddest pitbulls. And you're right, there are a large number of owners that own the biggest and baddest pitbulls as a status symbol. Some of them want to use their dogs for fighting, some just want to lead them around on chain-link leashes, looking like the BSD. Neither of those groups are interested in delineating which specific breed their dogs belong to (I'm guessing they're not a pure breed anything at this point).
The American Pit Bull Foundation also doesn't seem to want to declassify "pitbulls" and separate them out into specific breeds. This isn't a fringe group of "badass pit owners" - it's an advocacy/education group.
https://apbf.dog/
Another rescue group - Pit Bull Rescue Central
https://www.pbrc.net/ - includes "”Pit Bull” is NOT a breed. It's a generic term often used to describe all dogs with similar traits and characteristics known to the public as "pit bulls." When we use the term “pit bull” here, it should be understood to encompass American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Staffordshire Bull Terriers, and mixes of those breeds.". They lump all of them into their program, rather than separating them out and saying "we're an American Staffordshire Terrier rescue group".
At this point I would say that "pitbulls", functionally, are a specific breed of dog. You might not like it because it does a disservice to your American Staffordshire Terrier, but I don't think the majority of these pitbulls are pure bred anything. And if they are, their appearance and characteristics make it impossible (or at least impractical) to try and differentiate them.
I don't know how you swim upstream against everything else that says that these dogs are pitbulls. And, as a group, pitbulls are responsible for >50% of dog attack fatalities, despite making up only 6% of the dog population. Lots of things have been outlawed because they do a disproportionate amount of damage - even if not every one of them is responsible.