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The thing is that the downvoting mechanism obviates the need for throwing a fit. One can just downvote.

People still use them as a weapon, scare tactic, bullying. Anti-social behavior on a social network will be difficult to normalize. I believe in honest curation. If it takes 100 accounts to raise $15 and one to knock it down $15, that's one speaking for 100 people, negating their efforts, saying they were wrong. 101 honest folks, just using the platform and their stake, wiped away. Meanwhile there are instances of abuse going unchecked. The reason why Steem at the time hardforked to offer free downvotes was because abuse was running rampant and nobody could stop it without losing potential profits. They were not interested in cleaning the place up because they were not interested in losing potential profits. So now why should these content creators who are doing nothing wrong be interested in losing potential profits? I wrote quite a few thoughts on this subject recently. Often the actual content creator's perspective is ignored in all this. I've noticed most of the time, if someone disagrees with a downvote, they're labelled whiners, regardless. It'll be tough to normalize these things when only one side gets to express their view.

People still use them as a weapon, scare tactic, bullying. Anti-social behavior on a social network will be difficult to normalize. I believe in honest curation.

I fully agree and I do not condone such behavior. For the victims of serious abuse, healing upvotes are something that should be considered. On Steem, one TA "specialist" did a lot of damage by abusively downvoting people.

If it takes 100 accounts to raise $15 and one to knock it down $15, that's one speaking for 100 people, negating their efforts, saying they were wrong.

The issue in that is stake distribution. There are many ways to remedy that including reward earners powering up their rewards, buying more HIVE and powering up, and other stakeholders taking a look at the situation and using their votes to correct it. I recall one instance where someone expressed disagreement on how HDF funds were being distributed in a post that got downvoted heavily by one large stakeholder. The upvoters doubled down their efforts and the post ended up earning reasonably well considering how controversial it was.

I feel that's a waste of resources though. Recently I was getting slammed hard with a large downvote, automatically. As the value of the token plummeted I think those downvotes ranged from $60 down to $20 before it stopped. People invest in my content, this is a business I'm trying to run here. More work goes in when more money hits the wallet, certainly don't want to do less for more and take it all for granted. I told folks on the first day though don't worry about countering those downvotes with upvotes. There's a trickle down effect. If someone is helping fix my problem, someone else down the line is earning less. That's not cool.

I prefer to see the downvotes being used to counter abuse. I realize we all have our own opinions and I won't try to convince you to see it my way. I respect the reward pool as much as any stakeholder here plus I'm a seasoned veteran, been around forever. I get it.

I don't have much to add to the rest of your comment but I'd like to say something about this.

If someone is helping fix my problem, someone else down the line is earning less. That's not cool.

Downvoting power is limited, too, and once it's been used up, downvoting will begin to eat into the downvoter's upvoting power. How all votes are distributed is never one user's problem. Everything affects everyone. If you get hit by downvotes that are clearly unreasonable and have nothing to do with the quality of the content being downvoted, that's everyone's issue because it sends rewards that should land on good content back to the pool from which curators will have to allocate them again. Abusive downvoting wastes every curator's time.

Abusive downvoting does waste time and it also pushes away potential new investment. One of Hive's easiest selling points that often gets overlooked is the fact a consumer gets paid to consume. They must have HP though. If this platform somehow attracted a true big name who understand the economy here, that individual content creator could attract thousands upon thousands of small valuable votes. If these consumers are donating or subscribing someplace else, Hive offers them a far better deal since that consumer no longer throws their money away. That content creator would receive those votes daily, plus these thousands of consumers have nine more votes that trickle down, spilling over onto other interesting content of their choosing. It's a win for everyone but if that effort to attract thousands just gets downvoted because "too much", we'd never be able to attract another one who then attracts thousands more. Content is a product. Buying Hive and staking it is how this content is sold. Those consumers are important and these downvotes negatively affect far more consumers than just the one content creator taking the hit. Each post becomes its own reward pool for hundreds of people now and hopefully thousands into the future. Start chipping away at legit content and even those consumers have no reason to be here, yet they're the most important. Often in cases of abuse it's only a handful of people with multiple accounts farming rewards. Sorry for the wall of text; was in a hurry.

It's a win for everyone but if that effort to attract thousands just gets downvoted because "too much", we'd never be able to attract another one who then attracts thousands more.

You're talking about a big name on Hive. Big names rarely become big names by posting valueless crap. So, odds are a big name who brings thousands of his or her followers along with him/her will most likely post the kind of interesting and engaging content that won't be downvoted too much and will most likely be rewarded well. And if it does get downvoted to some extent, so what? The rewards are going to be quite large if experience is any guide. Remember when one big YouTuber came to Steem in early 2018? His name was Pete something. He instantly earned hundreds of dollars per post each containing one of his YouTube videos. He eventually left but that certainly wasn't because of any downvotes. He was the sort of content creator whose videos got millions of views on the regular. I doubt very much too many of his followers found their way here. Onboarding still needs to be improved.