After reading through most of this, I can see SOME of what has transpired. Though we will never really know for sure what exactly was talked about(obviously many secret chats exist).

https://steemit.com/steem/@jesta/the-recent-controversy-between-steemit-inc-and-the-community-the-premine-control-and-where-it-leads-this-blockchain

Why not reveal the entire secret slack channels? Why is it that @ned is the one who is posting a snippet of it? We vote for witnesses and the way this is looking is that a lot of them are talking in secret channels, or a "public position and a private position" if you will... AHH FUCKING POLITICS! ;)

We all have a vote with our SP

Hard Forks that DON'T confiscate funds I am ok with, as both chains have the same balance and people have a choice. In general, Hard Forks across Bitcoin and Ethereum have just led to having differing tribes who stick to what coin they want to use. There really isn't any harm in that.

I think that we should examine VERY CAREFULLY the ramifications of doing such a hard fork and confiscating funds. If this happens, I strongly believe that BOTH forks are going to be valueless, it will prove that this method doesn't work if funds can just be agreed upon by the majority to be taken away.

Now hard forking certainly has its uses and can make sense, but when you split a community under such circumstances you get Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash(though neither confiscated funds, Bitcoin SV is proposing that though now). Bitcoin SV in the long run is going to have the same fate as Bitcoin Gold. Doing the same with Steem one fork is going to die off a terrible death and one may continue to grow, but it is extremely doubtful that it would be the one that confiscates any funds. I will leave this platform entirely if this happens. I don't want to worry about some benevolent witnesses who say I can keep my funds everytime they do a hard fork(we are up to hard fork 20 now).

You could just as easily confiscate funds now and promise in the future you won't. Then the witnesses could continue to develop whatever, and oh hey we need another new hard fork coming up and on this next one heres all the people losing their funds. I don't want that instability. Its nonsense.

I won't vote for someone who will confiscate others funds via a hard fork, and I don't think you should either.

Spend time doing something great instead of trying to punish someone else

Put more work into getting people involved into using Steem. Get more games made like @steemmonsters (i would love an MMORPG like Runescape or World of Warcraft, or something simple with bad graphics if you have to). Make @dtube better. Work on spreading the word of livestreaming on @vimm . Get more people to use @partiko on their smartphones. Highlight the power of having the ability of posting News/Facts/Data/Articles to a blockchain via @busy.pay

We saw that Steem recently has been added to https://www.stateofthedapps.com and other people have been contributing to writing code/making programs/DAPPs/running servers for years.

Where are we right now?

• Stuck in a negative feedback loop where both sides are getting nowhere
• Accusing people of nefarious things with little to no context/proof
• Playing the blame game
• RocksDB thing happened and that seemed to have done well, lets do more stuff like that???
• Some witnesses appear to want to target funds for confiscation via a hard fork
• Most witnesses don't want to hard fork and confiscate funds and won't support it
• General despair/negative sentiment on all sides

What should we aim at?

• Positive change to improve, with goals laid out in a roadmap
• Public lists of what needs to be done, what support can experts help with?(as we saw with RocksDB)
• Encourage everyone to get involved in what they can help do(we all own a stake in this blockchain)
• Team work makes the dream work, stuff isn't going to get done with all the bickering/negativity/drama(every work place I have been in with an environment like this was hell and nothing got fixed)
• General positivity with a focus on coming up with ideas you think will help/improve the Steem blockchain