No it doesn't. Every single altcoin which is intended to be a currency presents themselves as an improved version of Bitcoin. Does that mean that they're all abusing Bitcoin's brand?
in my opinion, YES.
Bitcoin Cash is a split of Bitcoin intended to have a larger block size. They even have their announcement in the altcoin announcements section. How are they being misleading about what they are?
agree or disagree, they are harming bitcoin with this. and they will hurt a lot of businesses that have been shaped around bitcoin. in short and long term.
Was BIP 148 abuse too? I honestly think you're letting your opinion get in the way of your judgement.
it kind of was.
i personally see BIP148 and BCC as the same because they both have the same effect on bitcoin. (of course i am talking about BIP148 before miners started signaling 100% support for SegWit)
in my opinion both BIP148 and BCC are going against consensus by "forcing a split" while having little to no support. it doesn't matter of BIP148 was advertised more, it still had very little support from miners+nodes. SegWit2x with BIP91 saved us from its disaster.
and now we have another disaster called BCC!
i am against these things because a split will bring a lot of problems. and it can potentially harm bitcoin more than you can imagine. and the harm is not going to be only to price but to the most important factor of bitcoin: reliability!
you think Microsoft, Steam, Dell, and all the smaller businesses are going to put up with nonsense of split, replay attack, fork, orphaned blocks, delayed blocks for hours,... obviously not. they simply drop bitcoin and stay away from cryptocurrencies for good.
and by the way they do call themselves to be the original bitcoin. they use BCC but they claim (lie) to be Satoshi's vision
Satoshi's vision is subjective as he did not envision the existence of SegWit, nor does he seem to have anywhere where he considered those ideas. Satoshi appeared to support larger blocks and also oppose multiple implementations, so his vision doesn't really cover anyone, but there's nothing wrong with showing that satoshi supported something that you're doing.
Satoshi's vision was to have a decentralized system that works based on consensus not based on what a small group of people want. and right now BCC (and since you mentioned it BIP148 was in a similar situation) have a very small group of supporters who can not accept the opinion of majority. and that's what bothers me.