The communication aspect is of great concern to me. I hesitate to use outside resources because that lessens the pressure to fix these things on THIS platform. If we truly desire a community to thrive here, then why encourage people to go elsewhere? Put pressure on those who can effect change to make the required changes instead.

I did mention that notifications here are a joke and need to be improved, along with so many other things. It would be great if someone from Team Steem or even one of our witnesses would explain why these things are not being made more user-friendly.

As for a lack of privacy; I'm not so sure that is a big deal. Having public discussions is inclusive and builds trust. Having private conversations builds suspicion and distrust. If there are things that NEED to be said in private, then people will always find ways to accomplish that, but I don't believe privacy should be encouraged on a social media platform. Can you imagine how Facebook would look if everyone there kept telling others to go to their private website for all their interactions?

STINC and HIVE also do not communicate with anyone (that's also major difference between FB and Steemit, the difference that made it more likely for FB to succeed).

I agree that there needs to be a whole lot more done as far as connecting the user to those in control of this platform, however I don't understand the inference that Facebook communicates with their users. Granted, I have not used Facebook for over a year, but before that, I did not see Facebook making any efforts to get user input. They did have some self-help files, but did not have any way for users to ask questions directly or offer suggestions from what I could see.