Interesting post.
For these reasons I do not refer to people of Hive as users, I prefer to call them Hive participants, bees, owners.
It is important to note that you are making an interesting analysis with political, marketing, business and other connotations, but it is important not to demonize the technicality of the area. In the context of information technology, the word user refers to an entity that makes use of a system or device. This entity may or may not be human. The user can even be a software that interacts with another by making use of it.
From an etymological point of view the word user is justified. The first meaning of the Oxford dictionary is "a person or thing that makes use of something". For example, you are the user of your computer or your phone, regardless of whether you consider yourself to be 100% owner of them or not. Even software that controls a Hive account automatically is a user. Humans who have Hive accounts are strictly users of the system.
Since this is a matter of interpretation, it's easy to remember that the founders of open source (free software, actually) invoked the idea of "freedom" with some romanticism and political sense, analogous to what you question. Well, they actively included the word "user" in works such as "the freedoms of software" and others, and that does not make it any less free. They would argue that it doesn't matter if you refer to those people as users, but whether those people have the freedom to use, distribute, study, and modify the software they purchased.
Which interpretation of freedom is more important? I say that "freedom" cannot be reduced to the use of a word. It is something that is broadly interpreted and subject to a frame of reference, so the use of a word should not be demonized. I infer that your intention is not to demonize the word, but terminology is an important part of discourse, which in turn has a strong social impact, especially when it comes from influencers. We would not want others to look down on those who use the word user in their posts.
I still have to comment more on your interesting post, but right now I have to work :)