@ned was treated like a piece of toilet paper on here for the past little while when he was active, somehow I'm not surprised - is that what you mean by "The lack of discussion with top witnesses who are as surprised as the 50 SP account holder on this one spells revenge to me."?
This is too true. When the TOS came out I reached out to Steemit regarding some issues I had with it. Eventually @ned got back to me, and I was forthright with him regarding some issues. He assured me that before a certain event took place, my issues would be addressed.
Long after I gave up, he did address those issues satisfactorily. While it took a long time (Stinc is famous for that) @ned kept his literal word to me, and I cannot fault him for that.
Justin offered him a payday and a way out of this mess, and I'm not surprised he took it.
Yeah, Stinc and @ned have their shortcomings, everybody does, but people on the internet are just a "tad" too harsh sometimes, IMHO; It's often forget there is a person on the other side of the line, either that or the distance and/or anonymity makes them care even less than they already do. I guess we'll be finding what happens to this whole ecosystem within the coming days.