First, I'd suggest a less adversarial approach. It's hard for some people to accept, but we all get to have our own opinions, especially opinions about something like "what is the best way to make a customer loyal" or stuff like that.
Your statement about the site review thing is valid, and something I've thought about before.
Your main thrust though is here:
"This suggests that somehow rakeback is bad for this industry. I think this is a load of crap personally!"
Why would you take this personally? This goes back to the first thing I said. For years some folks thought tournaments were bad for the poker industry, while others of course were tournament directors or tournament only players. Whether they were good or bad is just a business philosophy disagreement.
Rakeback is terrible for the poker industry (but if some cardroom chooses to have it, fine, they can choose their own business model). The reasons are nearly endless and, no getting around this part, fairly obvious to non-newbies.
1) Focusing on the rake in any way is terrible for cardrooms; some people do not even know how the cardrooms make money (both online and in casinos you hear people wonder this)
2) Rakeback means there will be scandals and ripoffs. It is a dead certainty that every rakeback site in existence now will not be in existence forever... suppose even some rakeback provider dies. What happens? Those players promised something will not get it, period. Unfortunately most people have no interest in the long run and don't think about this stuff (just like some people assume those idiotic "lifetime" clauses in affiliate deals really do mean "lifetime")
3) Rake wars are a loser for cardrooms, and always have been. Why do you think no cardroom comes onto the market with a 1% rake? All that could ever do is be matched by the bigger places. It would never work, and all it would do is reduce revenue.
4) Rakeback encourages player poaching. While this is just bottom feeding unpleasantness in general, the cardrooms HATE this for the very obvious reason that they don't want to pay out first time bonuses a hundred times.
5) The largest cardrooms are in the poker business, not the promotion business. This is still the central element of why the biggest rooms are the biggest. They run poker rooms, not sideshows. If they want lower rake, they wll lower the rake, they don't need some third party involved in anything regarding their players.
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