What spam? If large numbers of ET traders used Ameritrade then there would be lots of complaints about their quotes being down all day. It appears that the vast majority of ET traders are smart enough to use real brokers and not bottom feeders.
First off, you make a rather poor assumption in that those that post on ET actually TRADE for a living. Secondly, there were a couple of other threads on ET today about AMTD data-feed issues. For some reason, you must have missed them.
I think it is purely because people here just don't use the place. If anyone could actually make a living using Ameritrade considering they sell their order flow (last I heard at least) I would be very impressed. And I would ask them why don't they go anywhere with direct access and make a ton more.
Because going with a direct access broker doesn't mean you make more money. Where the hell do you guys come up with this crap? If you trade with limit orders it doesn't matter if you have direct access or a retail broker. And even if you trade the most active stocks you can use market orders and it doesn't matter. A shitty trader will lose with direct access and a good trader will win with a retail broker.