Being over 100m eth addresses with 32 eth at least already makes it more decentralized.
If it was just 1000 addresses that's 50x more decentralized than hive.
128 validators are randomly chosen per block out of a potential 100k validators. Further, there will be at minimum 64 shards that are all working at the same time.
Its not a straight forward calculation, but at minimum its 100,000 x 128 x 64 vs Hives top 20 or top 100.
More shards will be added in later as well.
It would be almost impossible for someone to purposefully collude in such a system, especially when you will lose your entire stake if you try.
Theres lots of other chains where you earn crypto for content or playing games, where people can start from close to 0 and make it big. Anyone can start posting on YouTube and earn ad rev, bitchute does that now too, LBRY, BTT, Minds, soon reddit will do a site wide roll out of their crypto for getting upvotes.
Hive isnt unique in this regard, and it's going to unfortunately be overshadowed when facebook and reddit allow earning crypto, everyone is already there and the exp is super frictionless.
Hive can still be worth 10 usd per token though, it has its place.
RE: The main excuse for malicious down-voting is "Over-Rewarded Content..." What about the account making $10k+ PER DAY in spam comments?