My opinion on the steem/hive hardfork

When people write "steemit has gone full authoritarian", I read "the major change is that you get blacklisted if you post about competing platforms" which is actually not that big of a deal. I can't say hive is that much better when hive outright banned select asians from the airdrop for no real reason.

Coming from the average extremely active low-stake user, I think both chains have dubious authoritative regimes. I honestly think the hardfork happened mostly because of the steem (money) witnesses were getting but aren't getting anymore after the takeover. Hive might not exist if the people who made that initiative would still get a steem witness spot (money).

I mean, sure, noone likes how justin simply took over, I don't like it either, but tecnically the only thing different right now is how we can't post about competing platforms. But yeah, there is no trust. Except it was never there.

The thing I particularly hate about the takeover is how justin cheated by convincing exchanges into helping him... But my position is that I don't trust either of the chain's governance. Although it's not like the steem governance was ever, ever trusthworthy in the first place.

Don't you average users remember this? Bidbots officially allowed then bidbots officially prohibited anyone? How is "bidbots prohibited" not an authoritarian move anyway. The witnesses themselves from any fork have always taught us we would only really get rewarded if we do what is good for them.

So from this perspective, there has been no change in power abuse. Only people directly connected with circles around the "top 20 witnesses" are in any pain right now. I'm sure some of you have read that "there are steemians who just post like nothing is happening becuse they don't care", and that proves my point. The average user is not affected at all.

Fortunately, the positive change from the past few months have remained on both chains - good authors get good rewards. Unfortunately, I know witness-related users generally don't give a crap about this.