But I don't believe for a second that an Immortal told you to stop spamming hide. Literally every hiding character that has ever been created does the same thing. Including every hiding character created by every Immortal ever.

Spamming tells? Sure, because that actually DOES spam other people. But hide and sneak? I'd put a decent chunk of money on that never happening, unless you were doing something utterly silly (like spamming hide/vis so you'd repeatedly pop out in front of other people and spamming them).