Good catch!
One can consider the delegations itself, and how they were and can still be used, have been agreed by the community and don't present new security threats. This is at least my point of view.
Shall any delegation change (create, update, revoke), this will have no influence on governance as it is not taken into account for witness votes.
I'm just trying to nail down exactly what this is about so I can make informed decisions about the situation. If this is about enforcing a contract that comes along with the Steemit stake, then those delegations should apply, as it was also promised that stake would not vote. If it's about a security threat, then I could see the position that the delegations aren't a problem.
To summarize:
In soft fork 0.22.2
Steemit accounts (misterdelegation, steem, steemit, steemit2, and steemitadmin) can not vote directly from these accounts. But they can delegate steem power to other accounts (same as they were doing before in order to support different projects). So yes, in the end, this power is used indirectly to vote posts. (But take into account that if you restrict this then Steemit Inc will not be able to create new accounts with delegation), which is very important to welcome new people.
However, they can not vote for witnesses or proposals, and can not delegate this vote (can not set a proxy).
Finally, all operations like transfer, power up, power down, are not allowed.
In soft fork 0.22.3 (timcliff)
The restriction is only in voting for witnesses.
Vote for proposals are allowed, and all operations for vote posts, transfer, power down, etc. are also allowed.
I understand those points, but it seems like a slippery slope. The talks have been about enforcing promises, but they only want to enforce some of them while ignoring others. I understand why they would be hesitant to enforce the delegation measures for a number of reasons, but it seems to be counterproductive to their stated goals.
All the promises are well defined excepting the restriction for voting posts/comments, because as you said they can delegate and vote from another account.
BUT, the main reason of the softfork is to:
So, this list of promises is very well enforced. Votes for posts/comments could be a good thing to keep an eye but it's not very relevant.
Steemit Inc shouldn't be allowed to vote. The reason why those delegations weren't revoked is the very reason why they shouldn't be allowed to vote.
It advantages some witnesses at the expense of the rest. The longer those delegation and vote will be ongoing the harded it will be to stop them.
Agreed, even though it's not a conclusion I come to lightly as it effects many blockchain apps. What do you think about the delegations for new steem accounts that steemit creates?