I hit nine this week too. Of my thousands of followers only a few are active are engaging with me. I keep meaning to run a HiveSQL query to see how many of those accounts have done anything recently. I see a great missed opportunity here as we ought to have millions of active users by now. Just look at platforms like Mastodon that really took off, and that platform is about as user friendly as Hive. We have to ask why people are not here when the corporate platforms seem to get worse.
I've been on other platforms like Google+ and Tsu that got shut down so I lost contact with lots of people. I didn't have other ways to reach them. Some did come to Hive. I would hope that the blockchain can endure as we just need people to be witnesses.
I still find Hive fun with lots of cool content. However I just saw one of my contact here decide to quit over treatment of a project. There are all sorts of issues here and I get impacted by some of them. I would be very reluctant to leave and lose more friends.
Hive would change if it got much bigger, but I hope we could cope with that.
I saw that post and read some comments there. Everyone has a point where they can't tolerate the circumstance anymore.
I am not trapped by this place. I have no where to go. I talk to people here more regularly than elsewhere (with the exception of a few) - and I feel as though, even with the voices that have fallen silent here, there are many that still scream.
We must ensure that hive doesn't become a chamber full of echoed screams. Hopefully we can learn from other platforms.
I have been on lots of platforms and run my own blogs. Hive gives me the best engagement despite being tiny.
I never get any engagement on my photography website, mainly because wordpress is a disaster, and comments there are usually spam. I am still impressed everyday, that even without any captchas or "select the motorbike lampposts" how little real spam we get on hive.