I would be very surprised if it turns out that there is more spam and milking now than let's say 2 years ago. Would have to see some data on that.

Also there's been spam abuse both by bernie before, as well as others like fulltimegeek many times. It is not new.

I just find it disingenuous to see the communications in the softfork account, as well as in the recent Twitter messages, paint this as what "Hive witnesses" (in plural) are doing. As if you don't know that it is just 2-3 people. At least I have done nothing of the sort, nor anything close to it, and also condemn it. Both because it is petty and childsih, but also because it should be in everyone's best interest to allow each side to build the best products they can make and bring new people into crypto.

Edit: Threats are ofc also completely unacceptable. I was surprised to get my first ever death threat myself on Steem back in 2017. So I guess that too happened before as well.