I don't think I said that or that I stand by that:
content cannot only be considered valuable if it promotes Hive.
If you were talking about the section of me discussing influencers, content can be about anything. The issue I have is when these "influencers" have been given a lot of time, some times years, with consistent autovotes, often trending and they still fail to garner attention from other Hivers in the form of views on peakd/3speak or any kind of engagement in comments on all front-ends but are still massively showered in autovotes/rewards. That's where I have an issue, at this point these influencers should be aware of what's great about Hive, not just about immutability but also how they could curate and value their followers engagement with upvotes from the stake they've received over the years. It just feels like some either never bother learning more of where those rewards are coming from, possibly think it's adrevenue or something like their other front-ends, or they just don't care about trying to give the unique platform they share their content on some value back by mentioning/promoting their posts from here on other socials. It's just pointless at that point to continue showering them with rewards in the hopes they'll decide to at some point promote it and the way they react to downvotes has shown they don't really care neither.
There's plenty of other influencers out there who may "get it" eventually and at least attempt to bring traffic towards their Hive posts eventually that I'd rather see get a chance than the ones who've been taking 20-100k hp over the years but their accounts look like the potential sock/alt account I mentioned above.
I admit I was surprised you felt I was pigeonholing you until I reread my comment, and feel I poorly stated what I meant.
I don't disagree with your OP regarding the reasons you feel accounts like you highlighted are abusive. Neither do I disagree we should be promoting Hive, and particularly those with substantial audiences on other platforms. I intended to convey that promoting Hive isn't only done overtly, but also by Hive enabling substantive discussion of various issues that are particularly censored elsewhere.
The fact we can discuss things here that people get banned for on other platforms is the strongest advertising Hive can get. When people are drawn here by those issues, Hive also strengthens broader society, and that is something I hope Hive will do. I can see how my reply appeared to imply you disagreed simply by my focusing on that issue. That was unintentional.
Okay yea, for what it's worth, and since a majority of such content I've disagreed with the rewards has been of that nature where their content revolves around things that would be censored elsewhere, that doesn't matter to me. I'd be of the same opinion of an "influencer" talking football (soccer) for instance, if he has a great audience outside and is confirmed the account belongs to him it's great that people are focusing a lot of voting power his way, but over time, if all they do is just cross-post content, accept rewards, there comes a time where you gotta wonder what the value is we're getting out of the influencer. Is he bringing in people by maybe mentioning hive/sharing hive links in his other socials? Are people joining to consume his content on Hive (even without his efforts)?
So as you see the controversial content doesn't matter much to me and I've never downvoted due to that, it's just been about disagreement of rewards that I feel are unwarranted after a certain amount of time and stake has been "spent" on such users without any signs that it's being used well in exchange of value for value.