Censorship and Deception on Steemit

I wrote an open letter to Justin Sun and Steemit Inc. where I strove to be civil despite the chaos surrounding his acquisition of the Steemit stake and site, and the subsequent anger at his actions that resulted in Hive coming into existence.

After that post, I continued to read more from the community and the various official posts from Steemit. On further examination, it became apparent that the Steemit team had recently added a new clause to the Terms of Service specifically as an ex post facto justification for punishing dissenters and hard fork secessionists.

14.1.7. [You agree that you will not...] Use our services to promote third-party platforms or to promote each other without our written permission.
—Steemit Terms of Service

As of this post, the TOS page still says, "Last Updated June 15, 2018." Thanks to the Wayback machine we can look allllll the way back to March 8th of 2020, barely two weeks ago, and see this. No clause 14.1.7. Nothing. Nada.

We all know any website terms and conditions are subject to change at any time, but this quiet edit is a transparently malicious scheme to quell dissent via censorship instead of fulfilling the promise to cooperate with the established community and promote open discourse. This action is proof of the new Steemit administration's authoritarianism. They even conveniently ignored clause 9.4 themselves, which states, in part,

All proposed Steem blockchain transactions must be confirmed and recorded in the Steem blockchain via the Steem distributed consensus network (a peer-to-peer network), which is not owned, controlled, or operated by us. [emphasis added]
—Ibid.

So where did all those sock puppet witnesses come from, hmmmmm? I smell rank hypocrisy. You've got some 'splainin' to do here. Why are you so afraid of dissent that you need both public and private blacklists built into the website code to silence opposition? Why didn't you have the courage to make a public announcement of the new terms of service? Why do you see fit to silence dissenters, edit your official posts, and lie to the public and the community about your intentions here? If free speech and open discourse don't suit you, why did you buy a stake in a project designed to promote those very principles?

Justin, when you first arrived, I said I didn't trust you. Then, it was because you were a newcomer who had not earned my trust yet. Now, it is because you have acted to undermine any chance to earn that trust.Are you willing to work to gain it? I am still willing to return to STEEM and Steemit as my primary access point, but you need to give me a damned good reason for it.