"...demons they are portrayed as."
A bit pejorative, but I point out as often as I discuss the matter that it is prudence that is behind these machinations. Neglecting to chase spooks when you have the real deal in hand isn't doing a crap job. It's maintaining extant cash flow and income, if at the cost of theoretical potential that might or might not run into any of dozens of impediments besides whales maintaining their lock on governance.
Undertaking unnecessary risk is directly contrary to the first rule of investing, which is keep your principal. I don't object to prudence, nor preservation of capital, but I do the incessant deception that is undertaken to justify it, to them as don't know better, to be availed of their productivity, at least until they give up. I wouldn't necessarily call that demonic, but it's not good, honest business and that has cast the stink eye of the cryptosphere and the market for social media upon Hive, for good reason.
Flagging a plagiarist when they publish plagiarism to gain author rewards is the one purpose which I am hard pressed to demonstrate DV's are without utility to serve. However, that isn't at all an accurate description of what HW does, which is to tax content providers 100% of their earnings on every post and comment indefinitely, if they ever once somehow triggered HW, whether rightly or not. All too often accusations of self-plagiarism, also publishing content elsewhere, or just not engaging with their audience enough to please HW are all the justification they need to tax an account's earnings 100% forever. These are laughable pretenses, that along with their false claims that such unrestrained taxation isn't censorship, demonstrate at least disingenuity, if not outright malice.
"There are lots of reasons why Hive is not growing..."
My experience here and familiarity with claims of them that have left is that DV's are the only substantive reason. The bidbots were another that potentially so disgusted many good folks they put us in their rear view for good, but honestly I have not heard any say so. The fact that ~1m users onboarded and undertook to climb the learning curve to post here disproves that onboarding or the UI were relevant to Hive's abysmal user retention. I'm unaware of any other potential reasons, much less lots.
Well HW are a divisive force. I don't agree with all they do, but I have seen them withdraw their DVs from people on appeal. It's all just humans with their failings, but they are not exactly doing it to be loved. I don't think they are as evil as some make out, but they need to give more people a chance to redeem themselves. Many come here with wrong expectations.
You do know that hundreds of thousands of accounts do not have a person behind each of them I assume. Yes I know a lot have left and that is a big shame. I know plenty just gave up or got bored. We need compelling reasons to be here.
We're not going to agree on many things, but that's fine. Just do what you think is right. We can't change some things easily.