last I knew (years ago), Hive whales were actively downvoting her.... so I guess it could be worse. ;-)

I read the comments of the proposal to connect Steemit, Hive and Blurt on Hive and there are similar complaints there about an inactive user base. On the surface, Hive looks more active than Steemit but in reality, it appears to be a similar story to us where most content just gets ignored (presumably there's a lot of cross-posting so this probably isn't surprising). They also have the self-destructive tendency of just downvoting for fun, rather than for a purpose.

It wouldn't surprise me if we never discover what JS was really referring to in that tweet.