...since it would be counter productive to the SP holder to do so...

This had been my thought as well until becoming a delegator to @freezepeach and following help requests on their Discord channel. There is a consciencous effort by some to flag posts not because of reward disputes or poor content but simply because they disagree with the poster (often from another post entirely).

In the following link everyone who made a comment was flagged as well as the post. You can see that the post has nothing that could upset anyone but a ghoul and you may well recognize many of the commentors as valued Steemian content creators.

https://steemit.com/palnet/@lyndsaybowes/oooooohhhh-pretties

Downvotes should cost more and not less in my opinion. Many are being driven off by these fiends. You know who it is. It is no secret.