Well after nearly a year, I finally heard directly from Ned.

[-]sircork (61) · 55 minutes ago
But... you didn't actually answer them, @ned, you just copy-pasta'd the same shit you've said on every other thread about this and it's not a satisfactory show of accountability whatsoever, it's pathetic back-peddling in the face of an entire community calling you dumb right now.

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[-]ned (69) · 26 minutes ago
It actually accomplished a specific goal. To uncover their hidden plans to compete. They jumped at the opportunity to announce - if you didn’t notice.

I’m all for competition if it must be - I wasn’t for subversive contradictory, pre competitive narratives.

Here’s how I explained it to the Witnesses

Witness: Well, on the discussion if eos aims to compete with steem or not. The first example contract that was uploaded to their public repository was actually this one: https://github.com/EOSIO/eos/blob/master/contracts/social/social.cpp

Ned: Yeah, it was not hard to put the clues together. Beyond that they’ve been talking privately about competing directly since the beginning. Better to take the sheeps clothing off the wolf. Thank me later

We’ll compete openly if we compete at all, better than an aggressive, surprising subversion moment 6-10 months later. Only reason it hasn’t happened sooner is the order of development [infrastructure first] that needs to happen.

Now we build. SMTs outcompete. Communities out network. Build or die regardless.