Hi @wil.metcalfe. I'm responding to your tag.

This idea that @hivewatchers are some form of centralized police, judge, jury and executioner is simply not correct. They are just another Hive account that has the right to upvote and downvote as they wish.

They don't even have that much HP behind their votes.

They are not a Whale and are barely an Orca (including with delegations).

If people chose to follow their voting trail that's the personal choice of the other account owner (which they presumably based on how good or bad a job they think Hivewatchers is doing).

The Hivewatcher bots that look for and highlight plagarism are not perfect but it just posts a comment alerting other users and it is up to the individual Hive user to review the Hive post and the material the bot thinks its copied from and determine for themselves whether the content deserves an upvote or a downvote or nothing.

This is how Hive works. Large numbers of individual decisions to up or down vote using their HP stake determines the final payout of the post.

Hivewatchers has no special powers or role on Hive. It is just another account that can do what it likes with its HP.

Anyone can create a blacklist and anyone can choose to follow or not follow it.