RE: I am powering down - The extent of Hive censorship finally reached my awareness!

We agree on some things, but our differing goals and understanding create some dichotomy between our positions. Whether the control of a network is malicious or not depends on whether one benefits or not, so that's subjectively determined by users of the networks. Whether one has control or not isn't subjectively determined, and that's all I can actually address.

"...there is a very good reason why "another tube" does not exist."

Several platforms based on the code Hive uses do exist, but none of them are 'better' in terms of the performance of the platforms distributing economic resources to society. All of the platforms that attempt to create egalitarian economies that replace Web2 have failed, or are failing, for various reasons, and that includes Hive.

"Anyone in the world can become a Hive whale at these prices."

Sure. Anyone in the world can do anything, which is why everything is done by somebody. But the fundamental proposition of Hive is to prosper creators sharing media, not to create a financial elite that dominates the economy. Web3 isn't advertised to the world as a way for profiteers to become whales, but as a means for everyone to prosper across society by sharing the financial value of social media with everyone that creates it, rather than focusing that financial value on whales as advertising does on Web2.

"1% of the Bitcoin wallets own 90% of the supply."

This reveals that BTC has failed at replacing the legacy financial system with an economy that isn't controlled by banksters. Cryptocurrency that is simply a new way to create elites has completely failed to free society from that financial control.

The imposition of KYC on crypto is the imposition of identical control over crypto banksters have over fiat. However, Hive's use case, unlike BTC, wasn't to break the banks. It was to break advertising by replacing the economic structure that enabled platforms to reap all the financial value of social media by creating a mechanism enabling consumers to financially reward creators directly. The maintenance of the majority of stake by the whales simply replaces the profiteering of Web2 through advertising with extraction of inflation from the rewards pool that DV's prevent from being widely distributed.

This is why Hive is failing, why user retention is abysmal. This is why platforms attempt to implement this proposition without replicating the vectors of control of distribution of rewards, why Blurt doesn't have DV's. But, as you pointed out in a different comment, Blurt instead has enabled the principals to unilaterally manage users and stake via a different mechanism(s), and my interactions with Blurt principals have not produced substantive discussions regarding that, because they devolve into ad hominems, as shown in this thread.

User retention is a reflection of the utility of Hive to the vast majority of people, whom are not retained, because Hive does not deliver a fair distribution of rewards to creators as it proposed to do. Hive replicates the advertising mechanism focusing financial value on a plutocracy via different mechanisms. Plutocracies cannot avoid capture by whales. Whether that is considered a bug or a feature depends on whether you are a whale.