I’m not convinced of any of that and there’s no reason why we can’t have advertising and a good user experience where control is retained by the individual user.

I fully agree that advertisement can be implemented in ways the user will actually 100% accept it, and I mean 100%, all the users!

You make some interesting proposals for advertisement, something we shall further think about what the best methods are. Without telling to much, I have a method that 1) gives 100% control on push messages to the user 2) higher value to the brands of each user it likes to target 3) none intrusive to the users 4) includes fiat currency revenues. I do believe in a model without any ads in our HOME channels, HOT or NEW channels. I do believe in no ads in post or comments, since the sender may want it, but the receiver not. Now, when it is receiver based, then in post ads may work, but the sender may not want to have some ad in its post (dynamic per reader) or may not want to have some brands associated with him/herself. But a solution could be created for that, bit complex to manage, but still, a solution can be created. My concept (yes, concept since I wrote a whitepaper for that already years ago for some particular service that I never took further due to getting side tracked and drawn into other things). I can tell you, the concept I've developed could fit Steemit perfectly. I need developers to create is, when I would have them, then I would already work on it. So, any time you or anybody who reads this and says: lets to business, get in touch with me and lets talk business.