@jackmiller (eye)Witness-Update Part 2

As I said in yesterdays part of my update, since continuing on my witness duties on Hive, there is the personal, people side of things here too.

There are many people who are still very emotionally attached to Steem, Heck we all were and in many ways are.
Think about it, everyone that is running the Hive code is running the Steem code prior to Ned selling Steem out and making it Justin Suns little toy.

What takes most teams of coders out there months to achieve, our team of fellow Steemians put together in days and got everything up and running. Some even put their personal differences aside for a while to get the job done. All so as to ensure the dream that was there prior to it being sold out may still exist.

Easy for me to say that, as I was there to see it. Yes, that is the truth. Prior to this I was never in “the slack” and as such was given little drips and drabs of information about what is going on in there.

Here I actually read every word that everyone had to say, no matter who it was and 99.99% of the talk was exclusively about saving the chain that everyone of us has in our own unique way contributed to.
So there is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that the best interests of the chain were at heart with everything that was done.
Saw it evolve right in front of my very own eyes. So it will be hard to convince me of anything different that may be based on “opinions or feelings”. I am strictly talking as a first hand eye witness to the facts and events. No “hear say” or “opinions”.

As for myself, it hurts, to the point where it almost makes me chuck up, when I look at what is going on in some places. Yes, I am talking about the outright censorship coded in, so as to shut people up who do not hold the same or similar opinion as those in control of the code.

While some may say that is all OK and similar to other actions, there is one fact that nobody can ever deny:
That never happened on Steem prior to the takeover. The people who saved the code and who ensured that the dream continue on with the fork are pretty much the exact same people who NEVER allowed for the code to be weaponised for the purposes of censorship of individuals on any front end out there utilizing the blockchain.

Now some may say “downvoting” is censorship, in fact I have heard that said by two people.

Sure, one can look at it that way, why not.

But then, let’s look at the facts once again.

Prior to Steem being sold out by Ned, the only people doing any downvoting, was just about EVERYONE.

The company Steemit Inc NEVER used their stake to downvote people for “not agreeing with them”.
Yet, this is happening now. So that is one very important FACT that must not be overlooked or ignored.

People downvoted each others posts on the blogging platforms.

Yes, that is very true.
Still is true.
Probably always will be true.

So where is the problem?

Well, from what can be noticed, the people who have acquired more stake through business dealings, blogging, trading or just plain old outright purchasing it seem to be the ones constantly named in the “downvoting” topics.
So then it comes back to the topic of “they have more stake than me and if they downvote me it will hurt”.

Yes, that is true. Same as when those people upvote others, it is much more noticeable than when we little fish support each other.

As I am not a “writer” not a “brown-noser” (a-kisser) I have yet to be noticed by many a person with a lot of stake. Big fkn deal. Join the club people, there are many of us out there who are in the exact same boat and are not crying about it.

Saw the exact same thing with the bidbot topic, so many of the exact same people complaining were always stating how that stake should be used to vote on their posts “for free”. So the only issue was INVESTMENT, putting ones money where one mouth is.

Personally, I was never a big fan of the bots, but yeah, they offered a means for many people to earn crypto. From those delegating to the bots, to those purchasing an upvote and guess what!

“Milkers” were flagged/downvoted. There were some misjudgements made, so what. I can bet my bottom dollar that those mistakes made were less than 1% of the downvotes cast.

So, yeah, I see the same old trend “money for nothing” type of attitude.

Sorry for not being all touchy and feely about it. Saying as I see it.

Yet, no matter what the case may be as far as “opinions” go, there is still the fact that many people are emotionally attached to Steem.

I am one of them.

I am only human.

Three years of my life were on Steem (not counting the months of watching it and reading it prior to registering an account).
& guess what?

It hurts to see the mess Steem is in.

Yet it confirms every single reason why the chain had to be saved via a fork.

There are probably many out there who disagree with parts of or maybe everything I have written, yet as a first hand eyewitness to just about ALL the events from many if not all angles, my duty here as a fellow human sharing the emotions of everything going on is to share what I know and see. Otherwise I would be doing an injustice to everyone.

I know that it hurts, it still makes me sick that we got sold out.

It is sickening that one person used a loophole in the ecosystem, to collect the cash and exit.

It is totally appalling that this type of behaviour is accepted by so many in the blockchain/crypto scene.

Yes, it happens in the “fiat world too”, but the fact is, the blockchain scene aims to be better than the immorality seen elsewhere. Unfortunately, as we all saw and experienced with Steem, human greed and opportunism is still a huge issue, no matter how much we try our best to prevent it from hurting others.

Do I personally hold it against anyone for trying to stay on Steem and make it what all of us had hoped for?

No, of course I don’t hold it against anyone, as that is exactly what we are doing on Hive. We are continuing on with trying to make the dream we had all hoped for. We want that dream to become reality. So how or why would I hold it against anyone for trying to do the same thing elsewhere?

I would only expect the same respect back and the same amount of passion in the defence of the basic human rights of “Freedom of Speech”, “Freedom of expression”.

Personally I do not like it when people throw labels out at others, such as “racist” without knowing a single thing about that person.

Yeah, right, a racist, a person who has been an foreigner for the best part of life, living abroad, really doesn’t know a single thing about how it feels to be the black sheep!

No comments on that one, but some people are taking the anger way toooo far and not caring about the fellow human with whom they have spent the last 3 or 4 years with.

Nobody is turning their back on anyone, we are all still trying to make the dream that we all had become reality. Some wish to do it without the central authority that Steemit inc. is and others wish to do it in conjunction with that central authority. Either way, anyone with their heart in the right place should not be looked upon as an enemy. We spent some very nice times together, working on the same dream that we are working on now.

I can’t speak on behalf of others, but I can speak on behalf of myself and state that with what all I saw, from all the attempts to find a means to save Steem (the chain) to the actual fork itself, all I saw was a passionate attempt of saving everything that was worked on for the past four years.

& if someone wishes to hold that against anyone, then that person really should think twice about it and think about the facts I relayed here in my eyewitness report.

Stay true to the dream, stay true to one another as unique individuals, respect each other as unique individuals and I am sure that we will get over the emotional anger and pain that Ned caused us.

Yesterday is in the past, it is what one does today that can make a difference and have an effect on tomorrow.

Peace to all my fellow dreamers out there, who wish for a better tomorrow for one and all.

Yours truly,
Hive account@jackmiller