Right, to be clear: it doesn't fit any definition of backdoor I've ever heard and its to me it was used as a misplaced pejorative.

In your restatement, it sounds like you're saying that it is a special power reserved to the powerful (here powerful being the largest stakeholders).

But IMO the argument basically just collapses to "stakeholder weighted voting" is wrong, because as I pointed out already, much more powerful actions can be taken by stake-weighted voting than disbursement of the funds in the DHF, so it's hard to see how the DHF is some special case outside that reasoning.

There's certainly arguments for the idea that stake-weighted voting is wrong. But it is the core consensus idea behind Hive, so changing it now for Hive is the wrong idea, IMO.

Now perhaps it could be argued that many people have joined Hive without being aware of the stake weighted voting (e.g. people who posted articles and got rewards without actually buying any Hive) and thus stake-weighted voting is some secret power alloted to the wealthy. But given that the root of all such awarded value comes from stake-weighted voters, I think it is a bridge too far.

So if we've gotten beyond the pressurizing semantics, lets get to brass tacks: you're proposing a change in protocol and it would need to be implemented by someone and then voted in by stakeholders.

Instead of arguing for a protocol change, I think it makes more sense to campaign to voters to stop voting for more proposals if you think too much is being spent.

Based on current voting by stakeholders to fund some proposals still (not a lot, I might add), it seems unreasonable to expect that the majority of stakeweighting will be in favor of the protocol change, as they could easily cut spending by simply voting to cut spending without any code change at all, as I pointed out earlier.

But it's not impossible: maybe stakeholders vote on things they really don't want to, just to virtue signal, and thus would be happy to have a mechanism that forcibly prevents them from spending regardless. On a personal note, I don't fall in this category.