The process of building apps or platforms for eventual profit purposes is done easier the traditional way in a centralized fashion seeking funding from private investors. This give decent amount of funds to support development and provide high quality product. There is no doubt about it. But in the end these product do not necessarily serve the interests of people who use them. Hence, they are just users.
Even the example you showed proves this. Yes, whatsapp was successful and what happened to it? Was bought by a bigger company. Developers of the app clearly had skills but also financial motivations. When it was time to make money, they didn't care about their userbase. They sold their users to FB without thinking twice about it. lol.
FB didn't pay a lot of money for some app or a platform. They paid the money for its users. This keeps happening over and over. Recently Coinbase bought BRD wallet. Not BRD wallet can't be used, its users need to migrate to Coinbase wallet. I doubt Coinbase wanted the BRD technology, but rather its users.
It is matter of time for people to realize that their are bing used as products, and when they find alternative solutions that let them do all the things they do elsewhere but as owners, that's when masses will turn to solutions like Hive.
It will be a slow process, because you can't just build apps on Hive and in the end sell your users to a bigger companies for a lot of money. Because Hive people are owners of their accounts. That's why financial motivations for building apps are lower than doing the same thing by seeking funding from VCs.
I would compare it to open source movement, where people just come together in building something because it is a good idea, and not necessarily to make profits.
You're making way too many contradictions here
Someone wanted to expand the value of the network with Justin sun through the acquisition of STEEM, but HIVE forked which is a dilutive action. Whenever you split a userbase you render yourself a niche application. Here's an example Bumble is a fork of Tinder, Tinder chose acquisition by MTCH companies and has more users and a 7x the market cap, Bumble has lost 75% of its value and still has a PE ratio of 13, its failing instead of remaining in the MTCH ecosystem.
The only reason HIVE has seen any growth, is Splinterlands, so does Splinterlands not care about their users, because they raised capital
To think that crypto is not about launching and be acquired by bigger companies because decentralised is niave. The days of someone spinning up an app or network on his home computer ended with satoshi, all applications in crypto come from VC money. You think Dan Lirmar pulled BTS, STEEM and EOS working at Mcdonalds? No he raised capital.
All crypto are loss-leading networks, looking to scale and then acquired, A16z, Cummberline Jump Crypto, Coinbase and Binance own half the shit you use through back hand deals
You are not realizing that your arguments prove the main point of the post. Everything you are saying is true in overall crypto world, and that is the problem. Hive is a solution, or at least an alternative. It offers clear path for decentralization, while everybody else is still trying to centralize things.