See, this "Decentralised" is a load of old dishwater too! The word actually has no value as far as the platform or the userbase is concerned. This is born out by the original post in that around 10% (It might be more for the pedantic's among us) who effectively control what happens on Hive. For example, if it were decided tomorrow that only posts in markdown were acceptable, the likes of myself who post in HTML would be forced to convert to markdown or face being DV'd to oblivion. Don't believe me? I've seen folk being DV'd for selling their Hive to other people or, get this! Non authorised exchanges. Authorised? By Who? So basically, we're being told what to do with our own money! Never mind what we post. I even know of one witness that downvotes you if you dare to say anything positive about STEEM. If that's not an abuse of position, I don't know what is.
Talking of STEEM, there is the DV'ing anything that relates to STEEM, even if it was four years ago. I've even seen folk get in trouble for upvoting family and friends. Maybe they're vote farming? Who knows? But if my brother or sister were on the platform, I'd undoubtedly be too scared to vote for them. So, when you see someone claiming Hive is about "Freedom", tell them they're talking bollocks because it is not free it is someone else's (A groups) idea of freedom, and that could change today, tomorrow or at the next hard fork. Remember, boys and girls, the moment someone says: "We need a moderator." You should scream out loud:
"THERE GOES MY FREEDOM!"
Saying that Hive is decentralised is a hollow, worthless incentive to join; it would be better to say: "Hey! Come join this platform and get bullied and walk through a minefield that nobody has a map to. Have smart arses tell you how you haven't earned it yet, so you can't lose it!" Only an idiot wouldn't feel better about that DV napalm attack across their account now they know that "Potential Earning" isn't real, although it could be if they left you alone, but it's more fun removing it. I saw someone on Discord last week say, "I will downvote everything you post!" Now I accept that everyone is free to do what the hell they like with their votes; it's just some seem to get a perverse pleasure out of financial violence.
Please don't misunderstand me. I think there is a place for HiveWatchers. But they should close down at least two of their DV bots and focus on Plagiarism, Spam, Vote farming and Theft, and that's it. Anything outside of those four criteria should be none of their business.
As for whales, there's not much that can be done if you upset one of them, and some people are insanely easy to upset. 🤷♂️
This and the rest of your grasp to the circus isn't off the mark. The price of freedom is having this circus. Not going to defend the antiabuse side as it has its own moments that make me facepalm too, but would still choose this circus over what goes on at Steem where the visibility and financial rewards for new comers if they hustle are steeper so there's that.
HW ain't the right organization to talk about downvoting consensus, there's HDR which I think you've been invited before? It's a circus of it's own but it's the closest thing I can liken to community consensus to what is tolerable and not as pooled downvotes get discussed while having members not obligated to join in some efforts if they don't want to. The best channel is the shitpost channel there.
Beautifully illustrated by the JUSTINSUN debacle.