help to keep the lights on during times of low Steem price performance, we are literally on the bones of our bum
We all are, but it also makes the challenges of trying to do something systemically good with the reward pool being directed by proof-of-brain and not milked by self-voting and vote selling all the greater. Every bit of payout is precious at this juncture.
I'm not really familiar with some of the other services–some may be close enough to a public service/public good they would be good candidates for SPS or upvoting of posts about them–but steemvoter specifically, I see very much as a service which offers 90% or more of its value to its customers and its customers should be the ones paying for it, not the reward pool. Others may disagree, and they are free to organically upvote your posts. But my guess is that few stakeholders in fact do disagree, or your wouldn't need to rely on the condition-of-service upvotes.
A business especially is more vulnerable because it has fixed costs in USD for infra, if a user is on the bones of their bum on Steem and not earning what they used to is different to a business which can go into the negative profit due to infra cost obligations. Atm our team is dissillusioned that we are being targetted and it is serving to re-inforce that Steem is not friendly for business, we are not in the business of milking the rewards pool for frivolity, we provide value, employ developers, many well known names on Steem started out with the support of BuildTeam.
I also don't believe downvoting bodes well for user retention, if my first encounter with you was a downvote, instead of encouragement and support. I likely would not still be here on Steem today.
Also, I cannot take stakeholders' objections seriously unless they take action against the greater problem, which is Steemit inc's systematic selling. Targetting smaller users and businesses is the easy way out to not have to tackle the real problem head on.