And why? Because money talks?

If I say "proof of stake require stake to make proof," is that a little too on the nose? I mean, it is right there in the basic definition of the commodity and everything on the platform is based on that basic assumption.

So – yes. It remains to be seen if Justin Sun got it wrong and will burn his investment. It took years for Steemit Inc. to bring things to the level of instability and general despair of improvement that provided the opportunity for Sun to be able to afford to move ahead and make use of the system as written. He invested then used the steak he got in return for his investment as it was designed to be used.

I find it absolutely hilarious that JS is simultaneously portrayed as a genius multimillionaire who knows how to exploit every single dime out of a system and a bumbling incompetent who is only interested in his ego and couldn't make money with a printing press. That is the sign of a bugbear, a made up threat which has exactly the capabilities the speaker needs to create an air of uncertainty and panic at any given moment.

I am a content creator. Its how I make my living. It was before steem came along and it will be if steem does not survive. I just though steem was different. Maybe I was delusional to believe in a truly decentralized system, a new web. A more fair system for the content creator and consumer. After all, without creators and consumers, there would be no web.

You may have been a little delusional. But on top of that, you may have made a particularly bad decision: at some point you stopped believing that the platform was here to enable your business and started believing that your business was here to enable the platform.

Now you have to make a decision – which is it? Is the business, your business, more important than the portal through which people do business with you? Is the business, in effect, more important than your choice of credit card processor? Is the business what you're really interested in doing or is it an excuse to do something else?

You were delusional to think that the web was not a truly decentralized system. It was, is, and will remain so. Anyone can set up a server, anywhere they like (outside of truly authoritarian countries like Iran and China), put whatever they like on it, and take responsibility for whatever business they do on it. That is true decentralization. Nobody can keep you from doing that. You labored under the misapprehension that you could put some of that responsibility on other people and that they would not, in turn, leverage the power that you gave to them in exchange. That's not just a little foolish. It's a lot foolish. Have you met human beings?

The Steem blockchain was always about power being centralized in the hands of people who held the token. For the last three years I've heard people go on and on about how that made the system as a whole "decentralized," and I've known that they were very poorly educated on what the word "decentralized" meant. If you recall, I produced graphs, descriptions, and code for people to be able to prove it to themselves, but the same arguments came up again and again. All posted to the same very small handful of websites controlled by a very small handful of people using a database driven by a token largely held by a very small handful of people, and all of these hands were at the end of the same arm.

I'm not sure how "fairness" and "decentralization" ended up riding in the same boat, either, but one never implied the other and if someone told you that, they lied to you. These are orthogonal axes even when they do occur in the same system.

After all, without creators and consumers, there would be no web.

That's not actually true, is it? The web is a series of protocols which describe a method by which servers and clients can communicate. And that's all it is. While there would be very little purpose for the web without "creators," if you define "consumers" to be "people willing to pay for that content," the web doesn't require them at all. The original web as an academic signaling system had no interesting consumers at all.

What you mean to say is "people buying stuff" and "people selling stuff," as well as "the commercial web." Confusing these terms is the root of quite a lot of emotional distress for many people.

I have wanted to post. To continue on as normal, but I have not been able to. The uncertainty is harsh. Things are not normal. Do we stay or do we fork?

Here's your problem: what does this have to do with your business? What does your business have to do with the platform? Why does it matter whether or not the Steem blockchain forks to you pursuing your business? Does it not seem dangerously disingenuous to convince yourself that your business depends on a platform that never has been in your control?

But what does that mean for a truly decentralized web? It's like we are being moved on like an unsocial gang of youths instead of a professional organization. You know the way those illegal sites go down and pop back up under a new name. Is that the way things will be for us?

Have you dealt with Steemit folks? Have you dealt with most of the developers on this blockchain? Have you dealt with the community here? Having done so, can you really say that they are in any way not more like an unsocial gang of youths than any kind of professional organization?

I've worked with professional organizations. I've programmed for professional organizations. I've written for professional organizations. The Steemit blockchain doesn't represent a professional organization (outside of a few, very rare, extremely unusual individuals). Professionalism is not the name of this game.

And you are seeing the inevitable consequence of that.

But what you are saying is not "you being moved on," it's "you choosing to move on." Which might be a perfectly reasonable decision, a perfectly sensible way forward, but you'll never know it unless you actually think about the situation professionally.

If you keep chasing the ball, they'll keep throwing it.

If you decide that the ball is only of interest for the moment and you can stop chasing it anytime you want, the ball no longer controls you.

So what happens next? I wish I knew. With Covid19 putting many of us on lockdown, patients and emotions are thin right now. I will continue to stand with the steem community. I will continue to campaign against the #steemhostiletakeover but I don't feel I can make a difference and I just don't know what to say.

Only you control your business and only you can decide if your business is more important than the patch of dirt it happens to occupy at the moment.

Personally, I would argue that the "hostile takeover" occurred when witnesses decided to act unilaterally and collusively to remove the power of stake from a major investor, putting the entire platform at risk by undermining one of its core principles, but regardless – if you can't make your business function because you're worried about what Steem is going to do, you arbitrating your business. It's not more important to you than the patch of dirt.

If you want a new place to put down roots, there are plenty of options. There are plenty of options if you want to do business using cryptocommodities in new places. You want integrated video and blogging? I moved my YouTube content over to LBRY over the last week, and honestly I think I made an excellent choice. Distributed content platform? Check. Ability to host video and HTML? Check. No obsession with proof of stake cryptocommodities? Check. Resilience against censorship? Check. Ability to decentralize hosting for your material and allow it to be linked to from any other social media architecture? Check.

https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@squidlord:4

Drop by. Check it out. There are a fair number of people already there and sharing content.

Steem is just a platform. It's a way of getting your content in front of people. You still have to get people to see that you have content on offer, and the Steem blockchain doesn't do that for you. You are doing that for you by going to where people actually are and directing them to where you just happen to keep your stuff.

The Steem community is not your business. Your business should drive your engagement with the Steem community.

I can absolutely understand being pissed that the overall value of the STEEM in your pocket is tanking like the Titanic. Except of course that it is doing that along with the rest of the global economy and Bitcoin, the primary driver of cryptocommodity value. I can absolutely understand being deeply concerned that JS is not doing things to improve the value of the Steem token as you would have them. My wallet is taking just the same hit.

But being goony about "decentralization" and playing this victim disempowerment shtick? Not cool. You want better tools? We can find you better tools. You want to work your business? We can get you to work your business. But none of that has anything to do with the Steem blockchain except the harsh realization that your understanding of the platform has been wrong and you have over invested your time and effort into something that isn't your business.

We both got on board back when the value of STEEM was meaningful enough that producing content on the platform provided rewards in trade for the deliberate choice of being somewhere discovery was harder for most people. That hasn't been true for over a year, if we're being generous. That is not the fault of JS, that is the fault of Steemit Inc. and the crop of witnesses that have largely been the same folks for the last couple of years.

The fact that the Steem blockchain doesn't work for you is a side effect of the fact that the Steem blockchain doesn't work for anyone. There has been plenty of uncertainty and doubt for years. Right now, people have an excuse to express it.

So what are you going to do for your business and not the platform?