What I miss on Hive is a universal private messaging tool. We're a social network in a way, and that's a quintessential feature of such platforms. I have onboarded a few dozen people (about one dozen is still active years later, which is quite something), and I am quite sure I could have retained a few more if only I were able to ping them directly without using a third-party tool.

Apart from that, I believe we should become more fragmented and decentralized. Supportive of minor languages and all topics. By cherishing and nurturing communities, I guess. Now, people are forced to use machine translators to publish in English in order to be eligible for major upvotes, which is kinda sad. No other social media requires you to use a language you don't really speak.

Just my two cents proving your second paragraph completely right :)