As far as I have seen, almost no one has left Hive due to this. The biggest complainers who are "continually leaving" are, still here posting daily.
I know a very large number of people who either left or who laugh at the idea of opening an account. I personally know medium sized youtubers with 100s of 1000s of followers who refuse to come here because of the (relatively small) number of flaws, but that which are a major concern to them. These can be overcome if the community understands the issue and takes action, but it seems the community is split in their understanding of the situation - we might say 'polarised'.
This is nonsense in regards to Hive, as no one is supressed. The only thing the downvotes do is remove the rewards associated with the content saying it.
The purpose of downvotes is to limit the reach of content, to limit the growth of accounts through removal of rewards and to also lower reputation in some situations. The large downvoters constantly receive more upvotes and few downvotes - so inevitably they will eventually have the highest reps on the system and will be able to zero everyone's reps. Zero rep means near invisibility on most front ends. Even I, knowing this, still gloss over some comments that are muted because they are almost invisible in the UI.
If you think this isn't suppression then I suggest referencing the meaning of the word:
Full Definition of suppress
transitive verb
1 : to put down by authority or force : subdue suppress a riot
2 : to keep from public knowledge: such as
a : to keep secret
b : to stop or prohibit the publication or revelation of suppress the test results
3a : to exclude from consciousness
b : to keep from giving vent to : check suppressed her anger
4 obsolete : to press down
5a : to restrain from a usual course or action suppress a cough
b : to inhibit the growth or development of
6 : to inhibit the genetic expression of suppress a mutation
Source: Mirriam Webster
Numerous of these definitions accurately describe the results of downvoting.
Lol, none of them apply to downvoting.
So many of this group "know all the youtubers, all the rich investors, all the..." but none will come here because of downvoting. 5 years I have been here, five years of the same impotent protestations.
You have literally no way of knowing whether you are correct about the perceptions of such people you have never met. If you think I would lie about such things for no apparent reason then you clearly don't know me or have any respect in your soul.
With regards the logic of the definitions provided in the context of downvoting. Downvoting applies to the action of expressing messages on Hive, with intent to be heard by others by:
Dude - you are digging deep for those trash connections.
I will just comment on the last one... Inhibit the growth and debe moment of what? Hive rewards? Say what you want, it doesn't mean it will earn. That is not censorship - no one is stopping people from speaking here.
What you guys should do, is create your own interface like dozens of other people have done. Then, you can do all you want there, see all you want. You don't need downvotes, you can tokenized it how you want and, everything will still be immutably written to the Hive, censorship-resistant blockchain. No issues.
Oh, you won't earn Hive necessarily though. But that doesn't matter, since the only thing that is important is having your words seen by the millions of people who care about them.
Inhibit the growth of social accounts, their reach/audience and by extension, also possibly limit the growth of Hive as a whole. Obviously, people will debate whether Hive itself is being limited or not as it is difficult to measure without solid and consistent analysis of traffic metrics (which I don't have access to, but it is part of my job to analyse such data). According to dictionary definitions, the behaviour is indeed censorship - I have no interest or time to try to convince anyone here - the truth does not need to be convincing.
Layer 2 solutions are in process, yes. We would already have our own layer 2 space but a key team member had to drop out for a while and so things were delayed. Having everyone sharing the same rewards pool IS definitely limiting Hive's growth, that is for sure.
Nope, downvotes don't do that. If anything, they can actually help an account to grow and get support - well, if they don't incessantly complain about how unfair and "illegal" downvotes are.
The only people I have seen "argue" this are people who believe they are getting censored.
"legit"
I has not been "the same pool" for nigh on four years - where have you been? Alternate interfaces that show/hide different kinds of content have been around since 2016 - Remember Busy.org? That showed nuked content that didn't appear on steemit.com. Your key person must have been out for a very long time.
I'm not sure you understand how the reward pool on layer 1 works. There is only one reward pool that is shared by all the UIs. PeakD, Hive.Blog and the other sites all display posts from the same blockchain database and the rewards are drawn from the same single rewards pool. I have no idea what you are talking about tbh.
I know precisely how it works - but layer-two options have been around since about 2018 if i remember correctly.
You are talking about the suppression of content - busy didn't hide it. You could have done the same for almost 6 years now. You have been around longer than me - you should get organized with that interface already.