Well, I see that Stinc is so far the sole developer of the chain, and the witnesses run it. Stinc has a fiduciary obligation to it's stockholders, and under American law actually is bound to maximize profits for it's shareholders. Further, the blockchain is open for business to the public, and there is an obligation that such business not cause it's customers to be harmed as an effect of it's business practices. Both to it's stockholders and to it's customers, Stinc bears obligations of fiduciary prudence and to not cause harm, respectively. Jurisdictions in which Stinc operates may also otherwise burden it with obligations.

Harm isn't just physical. One of the features of Steem, part of it's business model, is downvotes, and another is content, including comments. Steemit describes how downvotes should be deployed in it's papers. Personal antipathy is not called for, and IIRC is described as a negative impact on the business in practice, and should be discouraged. Additionally, Stinc has an obligation to prevent harm to it's customers, and by allowing Bernie's botnet to repeatedly commit criminal acts via comments and posts that constitute threats of violent physical attack, sexual harassment, libel, and extortion, as it provably has for years now, Stinc has neglected to prevent, stop, or mitigate that harm, and therefore injured parties can claim Stinc has harmed them, if only through negligence.

It doesn't matter if you or I agree that such speech is a crime. It matters that those crimes are on the books, and courts can act on them to sanction both criminally and financially, which will possibly cause you and I intolerable harm - and that this harm is entirely unnecessary and avoidable.

By allowing stakeholders, or customers, to do harm to others without undertaking actions legally available to them to prevent and mitigate such harm, Stinc causes that harm either intentionally or negligently in whole or part, depending on the specifics. Flagging for personal reasons can constitute harm (loss of business) if conducted as it has been from time to time by Bernie's botnet, causing accounts to suffer loss of income and reputation, and the limited censorship greying out posts and comments effects, over extended periods.

This isn't theoretical. It's the proven business model of institutions mentioned in the OP to prevent spam, plagiarism, and scams.

Stinc can act to prevent such opinion flags from even happening (I don't recommend that, but they can), or they can mitigate such flagging, as @freezepeach does, and I also do to accounts I follow as I am able. Since those flags would not cause the harm Bernie intends it is likely they would not be continued (this brings up an interesting point: now that the downvote pool provides free flags equal to 25% of one's VP, there is no 'free' VP available to counter them. That may be something to look at, if opinion flagging is harming the platform, and available VP isn't able to prevent that harm). I can't mitigate much, and @freezepeach has limits too, but Stinc could prevent harm from being done at all by simply countering the flags.

" It is an interface that happens to be privately owned by those involved in the creation of the chain. I'm not sure of their, or any witnesses, liability in any legal sense to spend their energy and holdings to fight off moves by others of large stake that are harsh and rude."

The harshness and rudeness didn't come up in my screed. That's free speech, ill advised though it may be. Threats of physical violence, extortion, sexual harassment, and libel aren't merely bad manners, they're criminal acts. When a long established pattern of tolerating bad actors committing criminal acts via services and mechanisms that are the ordinary manner of doing business is clearly demonstrable, allegations of negligence, at best, are potential and actionable. Stinc has an obligation under law to prevent crimes from being committed with it's resources, and there is a further obligation to not harm it's customers, a tort. It is apparent that organizations have arisen on Steem to satisfy some of Stinc's obligations using downvotes to discourage bad actors, and in many cases this does work. A great deal of spam, plagiarism, scams and what not has been prevented when those organization downvoted the accounts undertaking those harms and caused them to cease such activity by making it unprofitable.

It is arguable that no such organization has the stake to do to Bernie's botnet what @dan did. Since they cannot completely suppress the botnet due to it's stake, they don't try, or at least that's a reason. That may not be the reason, and allegations could be made that collusion was involved. Given delegations from certain associates of Bernie's were used, or even Bernie's botnet itself, to fund those organizations, more or less credence and actionable liability may inure to such groups, depending on many factors, such as if claims were made as to what actions would be undertaken, to what degree, what metrics govern, who provided funds, and on and on. It is not plausible to exclude practically any allegation from injured parties, ranging from claims of fraud, misuse of funds, to failing to perform obligations for which consideration has been paid, and even possibly silly extremes, like mental anguish.

I am aware of such allegations being made currently, on chain.

How courts will resolve such matters, I don't know. I am not making the claims. I consider it unfortunate they are being made, but worse that they are not unjustified. Not only such organizations, but Stinc has not acted to protect folks it sought to provide a service to, who were harmed by the actions of one botnet they clearly have both the ability and the obligation to prevent. When they censored @fulltimegeek, they actually cleared away impediments to the malicious botnet's causing harm. I am not claiming they did so and chortled like villains in their secret hideaway, but others might well do so, and it is undeniable that some people suspect collusion.

Again, I am aware of specific claims of exactly that being made on chain. I am not making them.

I am pointing to them, and saying 'we need to make these problems stop happening.' By acting with it's stake to counter Bernie's botnet, Stinc could do what @dan did, and greatly encourage a change in behaviour. I haven't seen such action taken. By doing to Bernie's botnet what was done to @fulltimegeek, Stinc could prevent crimes from being committed again. That didn't happen. By using it's stake to mitigate the opinion flags they could prevent some harm. They don't. There may be other action being taken to discourage such profiteering and criminal harm, but I am not privy to it. I do hope that is the case, however.

Might makes right is not the whole of the law. Not sure why you mentioned it.

As you point out, many people having reached their limit of grief and left their accounts as a result of abuse from this botnet. Allowing that to become a major impediment to growth was poor judgment on the part of Stinc reflecting on it's obligation to it's stockholders, and the expectations of stakeholders. There are specific ways in which financial support is thrown to Bernie and his witness, and those that have an obligation to prevent crimes supporting Bernie's witness financially at the very least appear to be not only endorsing those actions, the claim can be made that they are financing them by supporting the witness.

Finally, all of these issues are real and actual, including that claims of intent to pursue relief through legal action have been made by parties that have suffered real and actual harm due to criminal acts. My hope is that action will be undertaken to eliminate such liabilities from impacting Steem, as liabilities drain value from Steem and degrade society. They are unnecessary, and it is unreasonble to consider them overly difficult to prevent. Before action at law is undertaken, which can be very expensive, it would be reasonable to seek to mitigate harm that underlies claims that can be pressed by injured parties. Perhaps only gestures and sympathy are required to satisfy those parties, rather than expensive payments and all too visible litigation and bad PR.

I have repeatedly pointed out that I am not one of the parties undertaking litigation and don't intend to. These parties do exist though, and are not going to be the last ones to do so - unless these harmful actions are prevented.

You seem to be saying to me 'if you don't like it, leave.' Would you say that to someone who took a car to a carwash where it was keyed by one of the employees who was bigger than it's owner? There are reasons the owner of the carwash would not say that, and most of them are sound business practices, such as not driving customers away, and not suffering legal action to impact the conduct of profitable business, and not just that it's wrong to pay someone to key someone's car.

Good management just doesn't work that way. Stinc and witnesses have obligations to folks that have stock in Stinc, have Steem, use Steemit to engage and publish, and use other services using Stinc's APIs and nodes, as well as to jurisdictions in which they offer services. You may not think Stinc has these obligations, but laws exist whether you like them or not, and these events have happened. IRL actions have consequences, and the consequences of these actions may well impact you, I, and many other people intolerably. I reckon the parties in positions of responsibility to shareholders and customers should meet those responsibilities, and so should we all. We should not commit crimes using Steem, and when we find out folks are committing crimes using Steem, we should act to stop it, prevent it from happening again, and seek to make folks that have suffered those crimes whole as we are able. Stinc and the witnesses are paid, and obligated by law, to do those things, in addition to them being the right thing to do.

I am opposed to profiteering, as you know already. I am in favor of capital gains, or what you have referred to as HODL and pump. It is not only other social media platforms that attract investment from investors seeking capital gains, but almost all commercial enterprise since long before the historical record began. This is not a condemnation of it, as if capital gains were obsolete. If the profiteering model was working out well for Steem; the number of users growing, the community happy with it, perhaps even the price of Steem rising, it would be shown to be a successful business model and Stinc would be meeting it's obligation to it's stockholders.

I don't think it is. I'm not a stockholder, so no one cares. Stockholders may seek redress of such grievance though, and that would affect you and I both, so I don't want that to become an issue.

Just because rewards are paid out per this or that codification doesn't mean that's the only way they can be, and HF21 is one of many examples of how such code is malleable. Code is infinitely malleable. Again, Stinc is managed by folks obligated to meet certain standards by law, and not just free to do whatever they want, regardless of whether you or I think there should be standards at all.

Steem is not performing optimally in terms of market share. HF21 doubled down on financial incentives encouraging profiteering, and I have volubly and passionately pointed out they should not do that. They did it. Well, to a degree I have been proved wrong: the price of Steem didn't immediately plunge, Bernie didn't start flagging 25% more people, or 25% harder, and bots didn't become more powerful - at least not yet.

I reckon that's good. I'm very, very glad to be wrong about those things. I hope they don't change, and prove me right if only premature. I am not confident, yet, that they won't. We will see.

However, those are separate issues from management practices courting unnecessary and expensive litigation. I am pointing out problems that seem to be leading straight to unnecessary and expensive litigation, and perhaps even worse legal problems, and volubly and passionately recommending a course of action to remedy the situation.

As a member of the community it is in my best interest to do so. As a stakeholder it is my right. As an American it's my duty to prevent crimes from happening here insofar as I'm able, and that's what I'm doing. Do you know what misprision of a felony is? It's knowing of a crime and failing to report it to authorities, and it's a felony crime under federal law. Frankly, all of us who have seen these crimes happen should have reported them. We want Steem to work, and involving federal authorities would harm Steem, so we'd better prevent crimes before some honest citizen actually follows the law and reports Bernie to federal authorities.

It's the right thing to do in this circumstance IMHO. We should hold Stinc and witnesses accountable to meet legal standards of business operations in regards to safety, management, and to improve the product provided to us as customers as we think advisable.

I'm not whining about Bernie flagging me, or anyone else. I haven't even mentioned having hundreds of Steem taken from me by a hacker (until now, just to point out that I'm not playing the victim, as you seem to imply). I'm not whining or complaining at all. I am recommending sound business practices and doing so to prevent harm from coming to the community and businesses involved, which I think is a good idea when I see that harm is seen being threatened. I didn't make this shit up.

Unless we sail the ship of Steem around the shoals and rocks of bad judgment, bad business practices, and even the appearance of corruption, collusion, and criminal acts, we're gonna sink. There is no good reason to hit those rocks and sink. These problems are easily handled, and should be. Lastly, I don't know how much Steem Bernie has, and I don't care. If he owned it all except for what I do, that doesn't make me liable to allow him to make my Steem worthless. He can either straighten up and fly right like the rest of the flock, or he can get the hell out.

Either is fine with me. Like I said, it's nothing personal. He's been bad for business, directly and personally causing these problems that affect us all, and that needs to stop. He can end it himself, folks responsible and able to do so can stop him, or we can suffer the consequences of his willful disregard, perhaps even losing such value in our HODLings as remain and seeing the community continue to shrink until Steem is gone. He's cost us a lot of money, and I don't want that to keep going on. I don't think we can let it keep going on TBQH.

Are there other options I haven't addressed in that last couple paragraphs? Of those options, which do you prefer? If you can explain better options to me, I'd be happy to change my mind. I don't particularly like the options I see available anyway. Please provide another one!