It's a "touchy" subject, to be sure.
Should blatant violations — like phishing attempts, scam links and so forth be downvoted? Absolutely!
Should obvious plagiarism be downvoted? Absolutely!
I think these things happen, get downvoted, and then typically pass by without comment.
The actual controversy — in my opinion — arises as a result of a small percentage of all downvotes, most of them centered around what I'd call the "personal vendetta downvote" or maybe "retaliatory downvotes." These cases become quite damaging because of so0called collateral damage in which a creator/author who is not part of the fight suddenly gets obliterated by a downvote because they got an UPvote from someone someone else has a pathological hatred for.
Whereas I recognize that "we're all human" and blah-blah-blah it is really juvenile behavior most people outgrow in 5th grade of school...
As for "overvalued content?" That's a tough one. It is a slippery slope because there are multiple implications. What makes it tough (at least to me) is the fluctuating price of Hive.
On the surface I could agree with a highly rewarded piece of garbage getting downvoted a bit, particularly if there's something sketchy about where the upvotes come from.
Consider that your 32,000HP gives perhaps a $0.40 upvote. But that's with 23-cent Hive. Let's randomly speculate that Hive goes to $7.00 in an altcoin bull market. That's 30x from here. Now your vote is still the same number of "Hive rewards" as it was before, but the external value is now $12.00. If you were ready to give an excellent piece of content a 100% upvote at 23-cent Hive, is it still worthy of a 100% upvote at $7.00 Hive?
Let me complicate it a little more: We're supposedly trying to spread the use of crypto, and reduce the influence of Fiat money. So — philosophically speaking! — in the above example, is the content worth "X number of HIVE rewards" or are we still going to measure its worthiness in terms of fiat Dollars, Euros, Yen and so forth?
Let me complicate it a little more, no. 2: "Influencers" on external social media often make hundreds and thousands of dollars per piece of published content... which has historically been one of the things Hive could NOT offer. Is there "value" in having high quality content (in the case of having $7.00 Hive) being rewarded hundreds of dollars simply as a "draw" to get more external creators interested in Hive?
Certainly a worthy topic, and thanks for bringing it up @friendlymoose!
Yes, it is indeed a complicated and touchy subject.
I didn't even take the price of Hive itself into account, but that is fluctuating indeed.
And the different value of money around the world. 5 Hive won't buy me a coffee where in other parts of the world you can feed a whole family with it.