I am not happy you're leaving. I fear you'll discover Blurt has it's own issues, because I have.
"...why a downvote-enabled platform will inevitably end up in centralized..."
This is only true if it's either all or nothing. There are a plethora of limitations that can be applied to DV's that will mitigate their impact. The reason none of them are deployed is because the oligarchy wants the platform to be controlled by them. What we see as a bug, they see as a feature. It is their control of governance of Hive, maintained through their possession of the bare majority of stake, that enables them to choose the code the witnesses run, and that code enables them to maintain a majority of stake. By this means they attain to the vast majority of inflation, and that income is their primary interest in Hive.
However, the oligarchy will eventually lose interest, sell, or die, and then new users will wield that stake. Every day there is potential for everything to change, and eventually there is a 100% certainty that it will. When other values than financial that society accords more valuable than mere money are factors in governance, that will change things for the better. When DV's are only allowed in limited circumstances to counter plagiarism, that will be a change for the better. Antisocialist likes to point out that we can make those changes at any time we want by buying enough stake to gain control of governance, just as Sun Yuchen did.
"...the corrosive force of coordinated character assassination and flagging avalanches of a cartel with obviously bad intentions. The tribe disbanded and only a few remain on here.
"There is a police force on this platform pretending to do good for Hive when all they really achieve is alienating people and making promising minds leave the platform."
These are undertaken for the very reason that the oligarchy must maintain a majority of stake to maintain control of governance in a pure plutocracy. Sun proved that a relatively minor financial player can not only buy bananas for $6M, but buy control of the platform as well. Oppressing new users, up and coming communities, and driving away influencers prevents Hive from growing, and Hive would grow otherwise. Were Hive to be growing it would become an attractive target for stake looking for ROI, and the biggest fish in the little pond of Hive are minnows to the sharks out there. Preventing Hive from growing prevents outside capital from taking an interest in the platform that could dislodge the oligarchy. They cannot just not sell their tokens to prevent such an event, because that would eliminate Hive's utility to them as income, so their best weapon against outside capital taking over Hive governance is preventing it from growing. This also has the benefit of preventing wider distribution of stake, and this makes maintaining a bare majority of political power to govern Hive facile.
The draining of the DHF caused me concern because sucking cash on hand out of the investment vehicles Bain Capital Partners and Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts target is what they do just before they jump ship. Sucking the cash on hand out of Hive signals the oligarchy is prepared to abandon the platform. The blatant theft by fraud by which that was being done showed how little concern the oligarchs have for the Hive community, and how little they feared law enforcement, and even politically charged accusations of funding terrorism - which funneling money into Venezuela is easy to arouse. This indicates to me that the oligarchy is connected to spooks, because that is the only way they could be immune to such politically directed law enforcement.
Given the blockchain, Hive is a very useful evidence storage mechanism, where old posts can be dredged up to support criminal charges, as we see driving cancel culture as well.
However, all this being said, Hive with some minor tweaking to governance and DV limitations is able to provide governance services IRL. An HOA could use Hive to discuss their neighborhood issues, vote on them, and fund them at the same time. Further, Hive can support pure voluntarist governance, where only those voting for something are tapped to fund it. Hive as governance technology has barely been explored, and has incredible potential. The witness voting mechanism enables liquid democracy, where people can change their minds and withdraw funding from a candidate, bureaucracy, or policy at a moment's notice.
Being a clone of Hive, Blurt should also have the capabilities - but, as I said, Blurt has it's own problems, which are why I'm not posting on Blurt.
"It is always a fine line between diplomatic laying out of what I found vs. frantic spewing of words that could be misinterpreted as harmful to someone."
As you know, frantically spitting truths regardless of consequences isn't a potentially successful political strategy, and being politic and tactful - demonstrably a form of self-censorship - is necessary to civil society. Libel isn't hurting feelings, and we are all prone to misstatements, misunderstanding, and being misled about things that can cause us to make false allegations. Even if only for these reasons, we should be circumspect about what we say, and particularly folks like you and I that make claims of malfeasance of authorities. We also need to be prepared to admit we are wrong when presented proof, and to withdraw claims we have made that were false. We should even be willing to apologize when we err.
That can sometimes not be enough to repair damage to people we have caused, so it is better to be circumspect and only state definitively what can be proven factually, to avoid compensating those we have injured when we are misinformed and pass that misinformation on. We should under-promise and over-deliver. That is the cost of seeking to influence civil society, and isn't malicious censorship. We need to differentiate between speaking tactfully and being censored, because the former is good and the latter is bad.
"...a black list of automatic downvotes until my account is hidden from view, and all my comments."
That is censorship, and is beyond the pale of tolerability on Hive, but it happens every day, and it is happening now.
"...Blurt - where such a downvote function and self-professed opinion police force does not exist."
It exists in a different form on Blurt. Don't be fooled, I beseech you.
"Most of them are now on Blurt and speak their mind freely."
This is not true, and a moment's reflection will reveal that fact to you. Blurt doesn't even have as many users as have been driven from Steem and Hive by HW's. Most of those folks have gone back to X and Tubeyou, from whence they came, particularly them with substantial audiences that can monetize their content on Web2, after they discovered they couldn't monetize it on Web3.
"I am working on something big."
I hope it's as disruptive as you anticipate. At least that would flag you off the platform instead of rage-quitting. I look forward to reading it.
"I want a place to post my content that is TRULY censorship-resistant..."
Me too. So far only speaking in person has that attribute.
Keep me posted on how things are going as they develop.
Thanks!
RE: I am powering down - The extent of Hive censorship finally reached my awareness!