I wasn't attacking you, you are on my friendslist from over the years I believe. I was going after the illicit user steemcurator01 and steemit inc in general. Top keep steem curator from hiding posts to the bottom due to downvoting, the mechanism of responding to the top most appearing comment ensures that steemcurator01 is impotent at tossing the dissent/critics to the bottom. There is more overt censorship going on, including fully hiding users and their post at the condenser api level. Eventually they will do that to all of us.

Justine had a talk with Bernie about a year ago, he supposedly stopped downvoting literally just about anyone. He was behind a lot of pojects at steem, knew there was a lot of potential behind steem, but knew how idiotic the leadership was and the risk of the ninja mined stake. In his own way, He likely was protecting new users and their investments from the incompetent management of Powell and Scott. That is, not to invest in the sinking ship. They have since played the ninja mined card, and you have the same set of retards at the top....and Ned Scott is back.

I rarely use the trending page, I mostly use friend's feed. Steem's front page is really bad though. I think i know a potential solution but the implementation may have to be tailored beyond a proof of concept phase, but not going to help steemit. I'll see who I can try to talk to in hive about it.

I've never observed the, "I want to get my part of it because I did sooo much for HIVE" attitude you speak of.

As far as hive being oligarchical, it isn't a dictatorship that is scaring away anyone who is interested in investing and having a say in governance. Before the justin sun Takeover, only a few people took time to vote. If anything the those hive whales have lesser say now than all the minnows who schooled together to hold off the invasive predator. Witnesses have changed naturally over the years, so replacing witnesses wasn't unheard of. Due to justin Sun causing the minnows to school together, it is now, I would imagine, 4x more difficult for a new hive witness to enter the top 20 in terms of votes and are the witnesses that the community-not the mad dictator-wants.

The old witnesses brought years of knowledge to the chain, and knew the limits inside and out, and potential outside of blogging. Steemit inc just has the same ole retards running it, the true talent left, and they are destroying it internally, while trying to keep it limited to a steemit/blogging box. When your enemy is in the process of destroying himself, don't interfere. So it really is comical to watch the old leadership commit seppuku in terms of western markets. Really the only market that is going to be left for steemit will be the the CCP.