Ironically, I wrote Down-votes: Steemit's Achilles' Heel? within a day or so before they announced the experiment. There are two points of view on the experiment, but it must be admitted that it has been disruptive, in either a positive or a negative way. Now, instead of two whales with good intentions but controversial methods, imagine that the downvote is wielded by a hostile multi-billion dollar competitor or censors from a repressive state - both of whom have plenty of money to burn if it will help them to eliminate competition or criticism...

No matter how it plays out in this particular instance, the experiment has more or less convinced me that as long as the downvote exists, it is a threat to the platform's long term survival.

median proposal, although I recognize that upvote and downvote are built into the blockchain, so some creativity would need to be applied.I think someone needs to find something more along the lines of @demotruk's