And that's what the witnesses do, but at the end of the day, all of the arguing in the world may not change the dev's minds on how to go.

And you call it paid membership, which it's not. To use the Discord channel and network and make connections is free. Several people have come in, made friends, and are being successful without using the bots or transferring any steem whatsoever. It seems to me that you signed up, made a decision without really checking out what was going on, and have decided that it's not a help.

The real rise of all of this multi-account abuse is HF19, which encourages this type of behavior.

If you want your 0.002 steem back, I'll be happy to send it to you, but there will be no interest.