This is one of those posts that reminds me, from time to time, that even Hive may not be my permanent home.
There is an entire pandemic going on, and people are DESPERATE for all sources of income. This was true before the fork and the pandemic -- people in Venezuela, Malaysia, and elsewhere were using Steem as their margin of survival. Everybody doesn't have our first world problems. Some people had two resource streams suddenly at the fork, at a time when they would need it the most. AGAIN: the global economy is being affected by the pandemic, and for some people Steem and Hive are the margin of survival.
Why would you mess in that, @arcange, at the very worst time in history? Do you know how many people on your blacklist -- 2,461 people -- may be doing what they have to do to SURVIVE? Has it occurred to you that you are putting your weight AGAINST actual humans needing to do what they need to do to survive?
The tragedy of this for me is that I generally agree with you about what happened to Steem, and I am not dual posting there for roughly the same reasons. But I am here in the United States, and I have the luxury of not needing Steem -- but even I was tempted back in April, because my city was the first in the U.S. to lock everything down and throw most of its citizens out of work. Because I am hugely prolific, I could have made twice as much money and I NEEDED THE INCOME, even right here in the U.S. However: other options were available to me, and I found and took them. That freedom does not exist in many parts of the world.
Love or hate Justin Sun, but that does not change the fact that there are people who depend on Steem to survive, and that even the addition of Hive does not change that in a global crisis. They need BOTH. I know some of these people. They outnumber Justin Sun thousands to one. I will not agree with anyone who wants to band together and take half of the food out of their mouths. They have the right to use the tools necessary for their survival, and this should not be interfered with, especially now. Please reconsider.
In the meantime: I voted you for a witness back on Steem, because I value the work you brought to the chain there and also here. Yet with deep regret I have removed my witness vote from you here on Hive. I despise Justin Sun and EVERYTHING he stands for, but I will not stand for taking that out on those that need all the help and earning opportunities they can get right now. No community is better than how it treats its neediest people, and a lot of people posting on Steem and Hive are doing so to survive. You and I are not in that position, but bringing together people to downvote those who are is wrong, and I cannot support a witness that does that.
P.S. I could have written in detail about how your post is a PR DISASTER for those of us trying to onboard people who don't know the history. "You mean the leadership will punish me for taking advantage of a similar opportunity to increase my income -- at a time like THIS?" That, by itself, destroys the whole conversation about decentralization and freedom and fair opportunity, because if a group of leaders can get together and punish those on one platform, they can do it on any other. People are not dumb, @arcange. They understand precedent. Many of us are here on Hive because we understood it on Steem... which brings me back to my introductory comment.