I've encountered plenty of people who complain about Hive a lot. Meanwhile others get on with earning. I do think people should feel to give their opinions, but if they resort to personal insults or attacks then they are likely to find they get downvoted. Hive is supposed to be about free speech, but it also has freedom of curation. I do think Hive has issues when it comes to user friendliness and marketing, but the witnesses and whales are well aware of those and it's in their interest to improve them. If they really were attacking the smaller accounts then we would be in trouble, but I expect most cases you could find involved abuse of the platform.
I've met a few top witnesses and they are generally friendly, even to the small fry.
Certainly Hive is far from perfect. Constructive criticism is warranted. There are areas where Hive needs a lot of work.
I havent met the top witnesses but have interacted with a few and most are like you said. They are also very dedicated to Hive and intent on pushing things forward. Many of them do things behind the scenes that is not seen by the average user. However, it is vital to keep things going.
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A lot of people confuse "free speech" with "freedom from consequences." Both on Hive and in the rest of the world!