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Yes, you are right!
These are good points. And a very interesting observation about the semantic shifts. On further thought I would say that in a corrupt society the evil will be powerful while in a fair and good society the good. And of course in reality most cultures are a mixture. At the moment I believe it is impossible to be certain about what our (or any other) society is really like cause the interpretations are conflicted and the sources quality ambiguous. Plus intellectually we can not define the good in any absolute sense (though we kind of know its characteristics in some sense). In any case let's avoid a political discussion, or even one of specific moral particulars for now since the point of the thread is more general.
One thing I would like to bring up is that, to me, it seems that it is not a matter of signalling to others (though that can happen to). I would be quite confident that in interpersonal relationships people tend to value the 'good' if the community is even relatively healthy. I am talking about people and societies that act and strive for the good [1] while intellectually believing in moral relativism or something akin to that. Hence the performative contradiction. This is an internal contradiction that I believe stems from our rejection of traditional wisdom (in the intellectual but not in the performative level for now) and its result in an incoherent theory of being.
[1] Even propaganda basis its ideals to a (twisted) conception of good.