I remember back when I was in middle school I started to realize the friend group I had carried over from elementary school wasn't exactly the best fit for me. It was hard, but eventually I found a new friend group that I carried with me on through high school.
I mention all of this because in my three plus years here on Hive, I have found that a similar pattern holds true. It is safe to say that I have drifted in and out of countless communities here on the blockchain in that time. I think many of us have.
One of the cardinal rules in crypto is DYOR (do your own research). If you do not, you have no one else to blame but yourself when you jump all-in to some crap coin or project. On the same token, I feel it is important to follow the same principle when you are considering joining a community.
As I said, in 3+ years, I have had plenty of opportunity for missteps on Hive. I can count on at least one hand (if not more) the number of times I have started supporting an individual or group only to find out that they weren't exactly what they seemed.
In some cases it was as simple as the leader of the group being quite mentally unhinged. In more obtuse cases, it has to do with someone doing something with their account behind the scenes. Those are usually the ones that get me. I don't typically take the time to do a deep dive into the voting or wallet habits of the leaders of a group or community.
I would venture to guess many of us don't do that when we are kicking the tires on a new community.
Unfortunately, not doing your due diligence can have serious repercussions on your future Hive success.
Like I said, I have had a ton of hits and misses over the years. I can recall a couple of cases where I was regularly upvoting and commenting on a couple of accounts. Their content seemed pretty top notch, it didn't appear to be plagiarized and they were actually response and would engage back with you in conversation if you commented on their posts.
Come to find out, they were doing some voting that other members of the community didn't agree with. Suddenly I find my self in a very sticky situation. Do I keep supporting them and therefore become guilty by association? After all, if they are inspecting the account so closely, they will surely see I have been voting and commenting on the account. In turn, they may also see that the account has been upvoting and leaving comments on my posts... Does that now make me collateral damage?
Now, this is the point where I have to do a little confession and be brutally honest... Many of the instances that have put me in this precarious position were thanks to my own greed. Does that mean I deserve whatever consequences may come my way?
Here is one final example:
So I noticed members in a certain community (shall remain unnamed) were getting pretty decent upvotes. It seemed to be a fairly catch-all community so I felt my ever changing content would likely fit well in there. I joined the Discord and submitted a post or two only to be addressed in a DM on Discord that I wasn't following the beneficiary guidelines.
Fair enough, you have your guidelines, I don't necessarily agree with them, so I will stop posting via your community. I failed to leave the Discord server, but I had by all rights washed my hands of said community.
Then the kick in the gut came...
Said community came under direct scrutiny over the same policies that led me to cut ties with them myself. Unfortunately, because I was still in the Discord or because I had posted on the platform in the past (who knows) my account got tagged in the back and forth between the community and the people calling them out.
This led my account to be muted by 
I reached out to
Of course then there is the debate about who is actually right in the whole situation. The community or individual usually claims they are being bullied and what they are doing isn't wrong. Is it wrong? Is it frowned upon? Who is actually right? If you really care about the community shouldn't you support them in the face of the accusations?
This is getting long, so I will leave those questions for another day or the comments if you so choose.