This was a disappointing read for several reasons. The product/management/PR issues are very relatable.

The community good of a database like iNaturalist is incredibly valuable, both now and for untold uses in the future. I've read interesting research that made use of that data and have personally found the range maps produced by it interesting.

As a user I will be very sad if they kill off Seek. I'm somewhere between a casual and a power user. I don't work in a field that would use iNaturalist but am a pretty dedicated amateur when it comes to identifying plants and animal signs, and have a stack of well worn books for such. I tried getting into the iNaturalist app several times and it just never stuck. But a couple years ago I tried Seek and it has been great! It's not perfect, but it works quite well and at a minimum gives you a starting place to confirm or reject an ID.