Does the hive blacklist, a penalty imposed on voters for expressing their opinions, reflect a sincere and fundamental belief in the freedom of speech?
A few things here...
It's not a blacklist. It was an "exclusion" list for the initial airdrop. Subsequent airdrops can still take place to those who did not receive the initial one.
Nobody was "penalized" for expressing an opinion. Some users (a very small number, in fact) were simply not rewarded with new tokens because of their actions that assisted with the centralization of the Steem blockchain. There is a difference between expressing an opinion and committing acts that can potentially and actually harm others - in this case, financially.
Nobody's freedom of speech has been infringed on this chain. Clearly, you are still here, not only able to post content and express your opinions, but you are actually earning from that content and those opinions. So where have you been blacklisted and silenced?
In regards to exclusion list vs. blacklist:
Sorry that I keep quoting Confucius, but you will remember that I did a whole series reviewing all 20 of the Analects several years back on Steem.
Furthermore, I elaborated on censorship above. I will merely add that they may think we voted for centralization, but I assure you we didn't. We voted for a deadlock. 5 witnesses from Steemtron, 5 of the original witnesses. We chose 5 because that is the minimum number needed (it actually might have been 4, but we were worried that it might also be 5 so we voted the latter. Either is greater than 2) to stop a hardfork.
One thing I will add is that Hive as a blockchain is filled with numerous inaccurate transactions which are not permanent due to the decision to airdrop. The Hive fork effectively eliminated permanence and immutability by zeroing out millions of wallets, but leaving the records of previous transactions on the blockchain. Hive can't have the cake and eat it too. Either they created the stake out of nowhere, or the stake is a result of those transactions. Those inaccurate "records" still existing leads me to believe the latter. I left an example in my comment to @yabapmatt.
this situation did not exist.I have always been appreciative of you @ats-david, and I have always thought you were one of the better assets to this community. I wish you luck, and I wish