Also... If you are a big company, and your reputation could be ruined if something goes wrong (remember HF20?), would you rely on something that is decentralized? On something that can be changed by some people who are not under their control?
I mean... 100 witnesses x 50$/month worth servers = let's be generous, 10.000 $/month. 10.000 $/month is a peanut for even a decent company, not giants.
What do you think, if Instagram needs a coin, would they build their own coin, make HF overthrown impossible and keep all the servers under their control, or they will just believe that people are good creatures and that they would never, ever do something evil against them?
This is the current paradigm and it works. Your right, centralization is highly efficient because it brings control and ideally, experts can make better decisions... but there is a third way:
Using the big data of the users as democratic input. Not asking what they want like in our democracies, but looking for what they do. This is what Facebook is doing, but with a real DAO you dont need a Zuckerberg anymore.
When you see some concentration of voting circles and strong self-votes and you can correlate this with loss of users, THEN THIS IS already a DEMOCRATIC DECISION. You only need to translate it into action.
But I fully agree, most witnesses are the same amateurs as we users are. Them having a big stake is no argument, its a fallacy/a bias and as we see in Steem it leads to HFs which are maybe not the best decision. Is a witness an expert in social media marketing? Are the people who have penetrated..uhmm I mean voted the witness have any expertise? No! But Facebook is an expert just by selection.
There are many things that should/ could be modified.
However, there are fundamentals that should not be even touched.
Cars must have 4 wheels, not 5, not 11. Four wheels.
And if you want to hire someone to be on a well paid position - you shoul make an open call, make some selection and chose those who fulfill the criteria.
Simple as that
In the real world people still do not get the idea of what cryptocurrency is and how it changes the world. Even if Facebook in the end does it, it does not mean that ANY other social media sites gets it.
I have personal experience with these things... 1 in 50000 people gets it after years and years...
This is dPos. Those witnesses would also need to be voted in with massive amounts of stake in order to 'take control'. Simply running a large number of witness nodes would not achieve that effect.
Why build your own chain when you can get one that is already established, comes with an existing large community and support, desired social features, and your own token with which you can still perform an ICO if you wish (SMTs)?
Why wouldn't I? (I, like a strong website)
I could make my own rules, my own settings. Code is already open-source, thus I know how to do it. That coin would serve as an extension of my brand. And that coin would not have the past that is maybe negative.
In other words, very small infrastructure could de novo mine Steem-like token with some upgrades, and the whole mess with fake whales, bid bots, blah, blah, would be avoided. The graph on coinmarketcap would be pointing upwards, not towards zero.
They are not going to invest in this coin, it would be a business suicide.
The only way to maybe bring some strong player would be to bribe them with a massive amount of coin. Coin with low value. Coin that you (Inc.) had, and now you have much less.
Again, crown example, @rt-international came - what have you done to get their public support and to get some exposure in media?
Or, even better question. How many websites are using Steem (that stuff, much larger than Steemit) and what is the total traffic they have? After 3 years. Which of those websites, platforms is the most well known?
Also, who is the most popular Instagram star who joined Steem(it)?
And who is the most popular Youtuber?
Any celebrities?
There are only three options: