I'm still at Whaleshares and will remain for awhile longer anyway - and see what falls out of the tree. But yes, I've also had serious concerns with the way Whaleshares is run and I have been vocal about it at times too.
DaBa is a serious obstacle that I think the platform was better without - or maybe a steeper (positive) curve so that as people prove themselves, they can go about their normal activities. As "bandwidth" was here on Steem. RCs may be better, may be worse, hard to say, but I know they stymie good newbies.
The value of any platform will end up being dependent on consumers. Right now, there's so much emphasis on creators also curating. It's all well and good, but to get better content, we need to (as a platform) be able to better support authors. A steady (small) income should be achievable for anyone with the will and the drive. (I'm hopeful that HF21 will actually bring some of this about.)
Closed source is a disadvantage, for sure. One of the things that's really worked on Steem is all the other front ends, vying for attention - striving to be better. I use Steempeak mostly, because of the templates and scheduler, but I value the variety available. wls.fintehru.org was a lovely alternative to version2 Whaleshares - it was still a little buggy, but not as bad as the new mainstream. Now, with 2.5, I don't have that choice anymore. Competition breeds excellence... monopoly breeds complacence - not a good business model.
The weird "pod" thing on Whaleshares could be a huge blessing... but considering I had to come over to Steem to be able to upvote/comment on your post just shows some of the limitations of it. If I can read it, surely I should be able to upvote it!!! That could very well scupper the whole thing right there...
BUT.. there's always HF3... and HF4... maybe the necessary lessons will be learned.
I'll keep crossposting for now - running my second-run of my books there... (First run is here, simply because it was started here first...) and see what happens.
In any case, it's not worth breath-holding unless you like blue skin. ;-)
I do thank you for opening up the dialogue on this issue again.