OK, two examples.
Trump vs Hillary. You don't want to vote Trump but you want to cancel out the opinion of people that voted for Hillary, hence you should be able to downvote Hillary, not because you want to censor Hillary, but because you are against the ideas Hillary propagates.
I have seen some people comment on my articles with straight up radical right comments. Now you know my position on nationalsocialism and such but i don't want to be associated with "actual nazies", so I would want to downvote their comments if I see too many of them or even downvote their posts. Not to censor their opinion, but to show that I and we as a community disagree.
The devil is in the detail. If I see a new User I dont like and auto downvote him so that he can never have a voice on Steemit, then that is bs. If you see content that has 100$+ rewards while you think it does not deserve that high of a payout since the content is mediocre at best, then that is something different.
I dont think Bernie ever planned on systematicly downvoting you. He would be insane to try. It would be a war and I would fight on your side. That is what I meant to say initially. If worst comes to worse, my ideas of voting are not as important as the well-being of my friends.
As long as there is money involved in the voting process and it is visible then when a person down votes they are also cancelling out what other people wanted to pay that person. This can be perceived as a form of censorship, but if people do a semantic dance they can say it is not.
I don't think Bernie was necessarily the person that down voted me on that post. I am still digging, but most of the accounts I am coming across that are directly linked to him are not in the list of people that did the down vote. If Bernie had down voted me I'd likely still be $0. :) Whomever owns steemed and all the accounts linked to it is the culprit here.
I told Bernie I'd not accuse him of things without pretty strong evidence in my investigation and I mean to keep that word. As such, I still may be one of the few people he hasn't downvoted. My investigation will show more.
The problem here is the person gets to decide what is "mediocre". I think Caviar is a shitty taste so I don't think it is worth paying that price for. :) So should I now be able to drop it to $0.
I believe if we want to include reward pool as a justification for a downvote that it should only be tied to gaming the system. If someone is obviously exploiting something in the system due to us not having found a programmatic way to protect against it without introducing new problems then that is about the only time I'd support such an action.
I do have an idea, I don't think anyone would go for it, but I am kicking it around and may write about it at some point.
I actually thought it would be strange if bernie was the culprit. He said "nothing to downvote here" in the comments. It also does not fit into the typical bernie downvote.
He and I were going back and forth in comments right before the down vote hit. I wrongly assumed they must be affiliated with him.
I also think much of the statement he made is true about himself. I mean he got his account downvoted because he could not stop bitching.
And I mean a pay4vote system is something you would rather see from a bitter old man, then from someone who still believes in the platform.
Oh and btw, didnt think you are 47. I only assumed you are about 60, because you are a grandfather but that always bugged. Thought you are about 40 when we met, don't worry and thanks for the clarification :D
I'll be 47 in November. :) I guess I am technically 46. I was born November, 1970.
Hey, a completely off topic thing:
I have come up with an even better way to be an provocative a-hole towards you. There is this .odt file in my Steemit folder named "Deva Winblood The Vampire". I mean you really should not have taken "Winblood" as your mortal name. Obvious much?!
I want to integrate you "stealing ideas", which is actually taking inspiration from dialog - something all good philosophers do.
I want to make it a very negative tainted comedic over the top thing, with some true and some false criticism written in between and of course I would also state exactly that at some point, maybe after it in a seperate post just for the shock effect. :)
Hehe... go for it, but thanks for the heads up. ;)