It is public knowledge that the mining had to be restarted becuase of a bug (maybe that's were that person was confused?). Anyway, here is the link to the anouncement for the relaunch after the bug was fixed.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.0
As you can see there are several miners commenting that they were able to do it so what ever the person you are referring too was saying is disproven by that fact.
Yeah, I took the time to reread a few pages. While I don't fully understand the technical aspects, it doesn't seem like a completely transparent release.
There is also no way to prove that some participants had privileged information to configure the witneses.
And if we see the corporate face, ambitious and not very productive that steemit inc has, I wouldn't be too surprised either.
After almost 4 years they don't even have a miserable App for Android, the web interface is practically the same and their biggest achievement was to modify a logo.
Now, they get 800k steem per month? It's not that I'm interested or it's my business to use them, but I could tell you that's what they don't do with that money. There are no advertising campaigns, the interface was already surpassed by every project that tried it (busy, partiko, but above all STEEMPEAK).
There is no leadership, no tasks, no collective goal, no path. We vaguely shout "Hurrah! Steem is the best" but we wander each one separately without a common goal.
They lower the costs of the nodes, dismiss staff and then plan to benefit (once again) those who already have everything? Because "it's not business" is literally saving the banks, the same thing governments do! The rules always change in favor of those who have more?
Great advantages of decentralization (?) because the rules have to change when those who win, don't win what they want? Or do they only do it because they are the ones who have the baton of command?
Forgive me if I find it outrageous (xD)
It's not that I can "pick another steem," it's the only one that exists. Should i move GOLOS? (I'm joking, on all fours I can speak English)
(SMT incoming. No! Joking! its not! Get a fork instead! King Steemit needs more money)
I can't blame you for having that point of view. Anyway, I wasn't defending Steemit Inc, I was just pointing out that "premine" is not an accurate term to use. After all they where upfront from the beggining that they intended to have majority stake, anyone that complained at the early mining stage of the project has only themselves to blame or were not competent enough to do it. I confess I didn't have the know-how to enter at that early time but I don't go around blaming steemit inc for my lack of knowledge like others did.