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Because you had bought them out remember?

Well, not so much, since you can just buy the top 20 witnesses with cash, and run whatever code you want.

You misunderstand. Steemit weights our vote power (VP) with our holdings of Steem Power (SP). Witness votes work exactly the same way. So, all someone needs to do to decide who the top 20 witnesses are is to buy enough Steem to simply have enough VP to elect the top 20 they want.

This means that those top 20 will be the top 20, not that they will be irrelevant.

This means that Steem ISN'T decentralized at all in terms of VP, as money is the most centralized resource of all.

@pumpkin is making moves as we speak. We shall see what comes of it.

Aha! Now I get what you mean. But still if there would be a hardfork, the longest chain wins or where the most people are thus making the other chain worthless or less valuable?

Just as you say, as BTG, BCC, ETC, etc., have shown.

Given that Steem can be easily taken over with Mark Zuckerburg's lunch money, a platform considering using SMT to monetize content creation has to consider that their platform would become vulnerable to that takeover.

I have discussed this at length in prior posts, and in correspondence with folks at Stinc as well. Despite some assurances that this would be at least discussed, I haven't seen it happen.

A problem is that the founders' stakes are the ones that would be necessary to buy up the witnesses, and such an attack is basically a golden parachute for them.

For us, this is a problem. For them, it's a feature, and business model.

As refugees from Gargle, Fakebook, Twatter, etc., come here, the value of Steemit to oligarchs increases, and the likelihood of such a hostile takeover increases. SMT is potentially a huge increase in the value of Steem to censors, propagandists, and the like, as it may increase the number of platforms that can be controlled with the investment.