Yeah, that's what's I'm referring to. I've read that article, plus a few others. I'm not sure if we're talking false flag (create a reason, blame it on the reason), or if there's one party acting against Steemit, Inc., or if Steemit Inc.'s actions are totally unrelated to the other, since a hard fork would need to take place (with presumably 17 of the top 21 witnesses on board), which also seems unlikely.

I agree, though, that if such a thing were to happen, someone able to write code and then get the witnesses on board to act, that yes, that would destroy STEEM. It would destroy STEEM for whatever account(s) (doing it to Steemit just makes the biggest statement possible).

re: bots

Yeah. Plenty of them hovering around. I wonder if anyone has written and submitted any code to github to wipe out automated comment bots? Probably not. That might actually be helpful.