I also disagree. It is this community's fear of the downvote which is allowing the currently over rewarded advertising and spam to get to the trending page. The point of the downvote is not to censor, but to voice your disagreement in the value of the post to the community at large.
Consider what made people get tired of facebook. People who pay to reach their facebook followers get priority on your facebook feed. Steemit is rather similar, except that we have 2 tools spread across the stakeholders to bring the better content to the top. We have the upvote AND THE DOWNVOTE. And using the downvote to disagree with those who upvote something just to benefit themselves and nobody else, is what your downvote is for.
That might be the intended purpose.. but there are unintended consequences.
I think we need support for something like steem-communities (reddit-style subscribed content) to get people content they find appealing.
Could we have communities like /r/sandersforpresident or /r/thedonald if they are allowed to down-vote each other?
Sure. But their reward pool contribution will be negated, so why would they come here in the first place?
A valid point. And I think reddit-style communities are on the way but as far as I know they won't be preventing people from downvoting.