I've seen a few familiar faces complaining about being blacklisted, removed from the airdrop. To be fair, I don't particularly agree with the whole blacklist, and surely understand the argument behind the critique. The idea that a group of people can elect who is out, hardly sounds decentralized, but this is only true without the whole context.

Entitled?

I guess that's the key question here. Who is entitled to get free tokens? If you guessed zero, then your mind is on the right wave. Nobody has to grant anyone tokens. Why? Because such is life.

I could fork Hive tomorrow (not that I would) and give 1 million HiveCash tokens to myself, because I'm "the owner" airdrop 500 Hivecash tokens to all Hiveans except for @eonwarped because he's a dog person, and I'm a cat person. Would he then have the legal grounds to go after me? Would he have any way to demand I airdrop him 100k HiveCash because his dog is cute?

Yes, I'm being a bit ridiculous, but I think the point is clear. If you believe anyone is owed tokens, you might not be understanding voluntarism at all, a concept that is at the very core of this whole "crypto thing" you got into.

All that being said...

Did we lose?

When I say we, I mean us, the hardcore steemians who hodled when hodling seemed stupid. The answer is nuanced but not that difficult to answer.

We lost the name, we lost a chunk of the community, and we lost, in theory, someone who big pockets who "technically" had the financial muscle to put STEEM on the mainstream.

But in my opinion, and for what it's worth, we won the war and that's what matters.

Unlikely Ally

I find it borderline comical that Justin Sun is not only censoring posts he does not agree with, in a truly totalitarian fashion I must say, but also downvoting comments and posts that simply talk about hive.

I don't know if he's aware that he is making the case for the existence of Hive all by himself. You see, Web 3.0, this whole thing we are fighting for, only works if it's censorship resistant.

In other words, he is literally showing us that STEEM under his control, will always have a looming big brother watching all it's users.

I would venture out to say that if you decide to talk negatively about the Chinese government, which these days might inspire you to do so, there's a gigantic possibility it will be censored, since the Chinese government is known to "value free speech so much", so much so that the ones who talk negatively about "it's president" take sabbaticals all expenses paid and never get back for some reason.

But.. @Ihatewhales is a good guy!!

You see, unlike STEEM (these days at least) @ihatewhales is welcome to start posting on Hive. He can even continue his/her hatred for whales, but it doesn't mean anyone should be airdropping some hiveage their way.

That being said, if you feel like @ihatewhales could use some HivePower, then I can point out a tutorial on delegations so that you can act on that sentiment yourself.

Yeah but... Steem > Hive

Maybe, who knows? Truth is this. Not all value is determined in dollars or satoshis. I for one, don't feel like being part of a network that is controlled by Justin's whims, but if you feel comfortable with that, then that's perfect, more power to you.

The choice is yours, you could do both, you could stay there, you could powerdown and increase your influence on this network (what I'm doing), or you could sell your hives and go to the other side of the Berlin wall. It's all voluntary.

As for me, I've made my choice.

MenO