I have done a LOT of contemplation about the various issues related to on-chain abuse and past and current anti-abuse efforts. I have also dialogued a LOT with a lot of great Hivers about this issue, many who generally agree with me and some, like yourself, who have generally expressed disagreement with my points of view.
Despite my situation, I still believe downvotes are needed. My situation is very rare and is a tiny fraction of typical downvotes. There are only so many childish whales available. As I said in private a few times there are far more malicious upvotes than malicious downvotes, at least to a scale of 10,000:1 or even 100,000:1. Most "solutions" to this issue are easily countered by just making more accounts. Finally there are already tools available to counter this type of abuse, they just frequently are not used.
I respect that perspective (even if I am not fully convinced regarding the relative scope or impact). Even so, I believe there are some better methods we can employ, that will get us much closer to a both/and solution to help mitigate both types of abuse.
You should start a discussion with your ideas in MM with the devs. A lot of ideas have been brought up before, but most are very easily circumvented.
Fair enough. I’ll do that.