Well and sometimes control is good, right? Like if it's an apartment building where the units are owned by the tenants or condos or even row houses it helps to have an established self governed organization of some kind to keep ground rules for shared walls / roofs at the very least. And even in fully separate housing it can help if there are shared community areas like a clubhouse, pool, playground, etc. There are two main problems though:

First of all, self governance requires active participation of at least most but ideally all members. You run into that same problem with any kind of self governance and that's how even very good things like unions can get a bad reputation. If you don't actively participate in union discussions they can easily be corrupted and wind up as an even more insidious control tactic by the employer.

The second problem is specific to the history of HOAs in the United States. The concept itself was fundamentally started as a way to discourage racially integrated residential areas, then extended to discourage other types of minorities. Yes you see HOAs focusing on petty things like door color but more importantly you'll see them pushing other, more insidious restrictions. When you place restrictions on outdoor decorations you're often restricting specific religious and cultural traditions. If you're only allowed to put up lights within a certain window surrounding Christmas, you're pressuring people to not observe holidays with light displays that occur at other times of the year. When you restrict the amount of unmarried adults in a house you're pushing out poor people who need roommates and and cultures that live generationally, as well as homosexuals in areas where they're not allowed to get married / claim marital privileges.

So while there are some practical benefits, the history of HOAs requires highly active and intentional participation from everyone involved to overcome the dark history of the concept and there are very few situations in which that's worth it, especially in a community where the houses are not physically connected.