but I'd like people to give feedback if they've noticed anything.

okay

1) By defining what is "thoughtful" and what isn't, you've turned the tenor of the site much more cautious.

2) Those people among us who tend to be emotional have left.

3) What discussions we do have tend to be boring exercises in navel-staring.

4) there's absolutely no point in looking at anything until it's half a day old.

5) I regard this as your passive-aggressive attempt to make "following" work despite the fact that there's no point because you've got about 30 actives.

6) People are now hostile, just delayed.

7) The medium of Hubski is "maximum confusion" which basically means that the people who are used to your hijinks are more likely to interact. New people will simply opt out. I've had this discussion with two separate signage companies this week, by the way - making things difficult to do is not the same thing as making the stuff you want them to do easy. The end result is the same, except the interface amps up confusion, fatigue and hostility.

8) "If people don't like it, that's OK" combined with "I still feel that people are unnecessarily hostile to each other" is your way of saying "I get to decide what's acceptable and what isn't" which is diametrically opposed to "personal content isn't a sin". It's content. It's personal. You've created a space for people to create it. You've now decided that you're going to put a morality code in place, not because everyone is spamming each other with torture porn but because we're in the midst of a pandemic, a depression and a slow-motion coup. Your response? "Beatings will continue until morality improves."

9) If you're "still ok with experimenting with the medium" why don't you go the other way? You were entirely too ready to go "stop being mean on my toy" but I haven't seen you try anything to make people be nice. Put a time limit on mutes. Let anyone badge 90-day-old content to bring it back into the mix. Give Pubski a rotating owner. That's off the top of my head - positive behavioral shaping, as opposed to negative.