Which public statements are you referencing here? Can you provide the source?

There were several tweets and articles. They have all been deleted as far as I know. This post does a great job of documenting some of the statements like "Your Steem token will turn into nothing" if you don't do a token swap in time. There were also other circumstances such as the Tron Genesis voting issue which indicated that they had the will to make use of any new found power regardless of past promises.

What do you think will be the long-term implication of this? How will this affect governance (who owns and controls resources on the platform)? How will this affect user behavior (how content is created and curated)?

I think it is a very interesting situation. One thing I forgot to mention is that it will also fund Hive's proposal system. In this system, proposals for projects on Hive are submitted and voted on by members on the blockchain I would suspect that this would lead to greater incentives for developers to want to focus on Hive. It will also allow users to have more influence on what projects and changes get put into new hardforks. I hope that it eventually results changes that the user and content creator community wants to see.

Isn't there is still a considerable risk of collusion inherent to the DPOS mechanism when stakeholders with a disproportionate stake collusion? Especially given the skewed wealth distribution on Steem (and hence, Hive)?

Yes. There is. However, it is to the ultimate benefit of holders if we were able to onboard and retain more people. The more folks that have Hive, the more likely it is to be used in commerce. Therefore, i think there will be considerable pressure on witnesses to implement ideas which are voted on by the community. Of course, the high stake holders can also use their own influence to vote on their own proposals as well.

What could be some potential downsides of decentralization?

Well, sometimes bringing about change in a decentralized can be slower than a centralized platform. There is also no central authority to serve as the judge and arbitrator.

From your perspective, is more decentralization always better, or is there a valid case to be made for more centralization on the platform?

The best way to answer this is that freedom holds some certain value in and of itself. Perhaps I can use the metaphor of free speech to illustrate. While at times I may feel that media coverage on a certain subject like mass shootings does more harm than good, I cannot justify taking away the freedom of the media write as they wish. The freedom to report the truth outweighs the harm that may be done by exercising that freedom.

So, it seems that users will have to choose between greater decentralization (and hence, participation in the governance) in Hive and social and emotional capital they have already built up on Steem. Which of the two do you think will matter more to you (and for users in general) in the long term?

It is important to also remember that all our history was also carried over to Hive. The Steem legacy is also Hive's legacy. Hive is just the next evolution of Steem. Like many, I have made the choice to stay on both chains with a focus on Hive. So I wouldn't necessarily say that I must make a definitive choice between the two. More so, I would say that certain dapps which haven't or won't switch over or build a mirrored service on hive would do more to keep me coming back...that is until a competing service is created over here.

I think in the long term, user experience will win out in the end. From that standpoint, it is always good to have competition. I think Hive will attract more Dapps to be built and hopefully lead to better user experience.

Also, how would your choice be impacted if one of the two platforms (or both) turned out to not be economically sustainable?

I mean, currently the earnings from either for myself are pretty insignificant yet still worth thousands of times whatever I post on Facebook for free. So my choice would probably not be impacted all that much as along as the community is here to support and as long as there are witness nodes keeping the database alive.