I fully agree with your section on the witnesses running bid bots and driving out users. We lost so many good people due to those with large stakes, throwing them around to intimidate those who didn't agree with them or spoke out.

The lack of development over the first two years was a real killer but before the justin sun announcement i felt we were on a really good track with the steemit.inc team rolling out upgrades and some of the apps doing really well to improve our experience on steem and add functionality to it like @splinterlands and @travelfeed.

While we had lost a lot of ground from where we should be it felt like turning a corner under eli powell and i could see a bright future again. With justin I was cautiously optimistic until we saw his true colours. While the witnesses fucked up with their soft fork that was sprung way too early an before we had any real information. His actions since then have been very telling. If Justin really wanted to improve steem and grow it's value he has had every opportunity to put a plan in place. Discuss it rationally with the witnesses and we could all work towards that. Instead it's been all lies, aggression and downright ignorance from a so called businessman and marketing guru. What kind of CEO acts in this manner and expects to succeed in the long run?

The witnessess fucked up and were very underhanded in how they went about the hardfork but a good businessman would have solved this situation from the beginning instead of inflaming it and making a mockery of his own projects and this one.