You keep using this word 'proper', but what does that even mean?

Proper, when people naturally, genuinely use the platform, and actually care about the content.

This is visible even in the smallest Facebook group.

FB that's full of annoying ads and 'suggested content' gets you nowhere. Their main advantage is sheer numbers. They have groups with more active users than Hive.

Not only the sheer numbers.

Even the smallest Facebook groups (like a few hundred members) have more interaction than the Hive blockchain in general.

You get out what you put in and I'm not purely driven by money.

Me neither. The monetary rewards are joke. The cents are not worth the stress. I earn more with a few hours of physical work than with an entire month of Hive blogging.

I am disappointed that Hive is still this small after over eight years. It has to compete for attention with others who have a marketing budget. We grow by word of mouth. You have to decide if it is worth your time.

The number of the Hive users is actually quite satisfying. But they are mostly content creators. The content consumers are very rare. And often even the so called content creators are not care about the content.

They focus so much on the monetary aspect that they forget (do not even care) about the content. And the automatic upvotes/downvotes are making it even worse. Many people blindly (literally without even seeing the contents) vote on the contents.

This is how they ruin an otherwise technologically revolutionary platform.

The platform itself is revolutionary. But most of the users are not grown up to it. Most people just want to take out the most (as much as) rewards they can.