I almost missed your answer since your response was not shown in my notifications (or I might have overseen it).

There are many contradictions here at work. I responded in another blog post to the problem in my own language and give you the translation:

The problem here on Hive is that the rules are unclear - not that they ever reach a clarity that satisfies everyone. Some of the big players do it through their community operations (where they upvote their own postings, for example - those who don't know this may not be around long enough or prefer to ignore it for some reason) and make clear announcements about onboarding, for example, and emphasise that spam and plagiarism will be punished, so users are under observation. They also define that there must be a certain variation in the use of images and text, and classify this as "quality". The self-voting of the big community operators, however, is perceived as a double standard, how could it be otherwise?

Other big players say there are no rules on Hive and so everyone votes as they feel like it and what deserves down- or upvotes according to their own subjective opinion.
If the Witnesses were in agreement about the rules, something would be gained in this respect, that is the thinking. But since they are not, it remains as it is.

This lack of clarity in the rules requires the individual to accept operating in an uncertain space and to develop a certain intuition as to whether one's actions are overshooting an (admittedly vague) boundary. I would think that people have this intuition. Those who ignore it are caught cold. Nevertheless, I have a great aversion to "lecturing" in the comment section.

The other problem of the "executive" in this respect is that they punish first and do not first express suspicion of abuse, but establish it directly. It gives me the impression that hivewatchers have too little desire and serious energy to devote themselves to each individual case. In my estimation, there is no professional legal understanding here, as the people don't seem to be trained in such things. In my opinion, a warning would be the better way, i.e. entering into a dialogue with a suspected case of abuse. That they don't do it publicly but on Discord, I can understand in a way, because they have to fear that bystanders will get involved and a huge wave will take place. But that happens anyway - LOL

I state that there is no explicit solution and that one has to live with implicit perceptions.

I agree that in the long run, however, this does more harm than good to the platform as a whole if it gives the impression that, despite contradictory messages among themselves, the Witnesses rarely stand up for an individual case where abuse has been perpetrated on a small fish from within their own Witness ranks. Clearly there has been. I suspect that this happens so little (at least not obviously to me) has the background that the Witnesses fear that a new war will then be sparked among themselves, which will then also cause a bad external image.

There is also the assumption circulating that the big accounts do not have an interest that Hive becomes mainstream for they might fear a hostile takeover and so, as a consequence of that anxiety, keep the place small.

card game

you mean Splinterlands? Yeah, I personally find that utterly uninteresting.

I would like to see this place actually go through another whale experiment.

What exactly do you mean by that?