I am curious about how it all works.
What are the complex questions which only go into the Hivemeind layer? Follows, post feeds, communities, and what else? Doesn't this partly compromise censorship resistance?
What is the difference between the consensus rules for blockchain nodes and those for Hivemind nodes?
You can think of Hivemind as a database that collects the data from consensus nodes and organize them for a faster access. See my
SteemPressure #8: Power Up Your dApp. RethinkDB? KISS my ASAP. Ideally there would be a consensus node, and all other data effectively processed, stored and served by bunch of specialized microservices.Hivemind fetches the data from Hive nodes and interprets them for API purposes.
That itself doesn't affect censorship resistance. Of course API node can be malicious and/or censoring(*) the content as it happens on Steem with Steemit Inc node, but to get the content you are looking for all it takes is to find other non-malicious node or get your own node running. To check consistency with the consensus... the consensus node is enough.