There was a lot of drama created when Justin Sun bought @ned's Steemit stake, first it was said that the stake sold could not be sold because it was ninja mined and there was a pledge by @ned to never sell it, that Steemit would become a centralized exchange etc. Then the old whales and witnesses tried to neutralize Sun's stake with a hard fork, this he was able to shake by having the exchanges out vote the other witnesses. Then the previous owners of Steemit decided to hard fork and it was said in many places that this would be the death blow to Steemit and Steem. 

Both sides played some devious games going to the extent that people who were moving to Hive stayed behind trying to create havoc for Steemit, they were hard forked out, and their intents just stayed at that, intents. I don't think any of the parties is wrong, you do what you think is most convenient for you, so a lot went to Hive and I stayed at Steemit. Why? Because I feel Hive is just a re hatch of all the old Steemit problems mainly because it is the same people who made Steemit go wrong over the years. With Sun at least I figured I would find a different Steemit.

And you know something it is different, I feel a higher sense of community on Steemit than there has ever been, people who would cater to whales to see if they got a good sized vote every once in while are now able to garner votes with the new Steemit challenges. I read on Hive that Sun is buying activity, I don't see it that way the big upvotes are for the good articles as it should have always been. Downvotes are hardly a problem nowadays, auto votes are nearly gone so most votes are organic, the circle jerk is gone. We still have @haejin and some others who self vote a lot, but hey nothing is perfect.

All in all I feel Steemit is a better place now, it is not perfect, it has a lot of flaws but for people who can't afford to buy huge amounts of tokens to be heard things are better than they ever were.