A How-To for downloading + going back to the old 5.6 version was posted here weeks ago and once you do that you can disable auto-updates (also explained in that topic) and simply ignore that there are any.
You do realize that your little hissy-fit here is helping nobody, right? It’s the dev’s choice which features to add/delete/change and if you don’t like it you don’t have to use it.
And yes, 80% is more than 17% so the majority, no matter what the exact number of users is for either scenario, ARE happy with K-9. No idea what you think you’ll achieve here, besides annoying those of us that come here and actually try to help.