I have skimmed this post as it is pretty long. I have made a lot of use of my downvotes over the last few years as I feel they have been needed. People will argue that we are free to do what we like, but with a finite reward pool some controls are required. I have seen people give themselves a fat vote on every post and comment the put out as they feel they 'deserve it', but the community gets a say in that. The extreme cases will pump out junk just to vote on. A lot of people will not even see that and not realise the scale of the problem.

If people are fraudulently earning by plagiarism and/or impersonation then that needs addressing too. Those activities will harm the reputation of Hive. Checking for these activities can be a lot of work, but those who do it may not get appreciated.

I do think that downvoting to limit excessive rewards can be justifiable to spread the rewards further. There are some large accounts that do not seem to care much about Hive, but will try to reap curation rewards. I do feel for those who see a big reward on their post wiped out, but in many cases they can still do pretty well. Bear in mind that many people struggle to get even $1 from a post even when they have good content.

Some will say it's not up to me to 'police' Hive, but as a decentralised platform there is no 'official' authority. It is up to us all to do what we can to make things better. I know people fear retaliation, but we can work together to counter that. I have had all my rewards for a week wiped out by a large troll account, but others rallied around to undo the damage.

I really do care about Hive and will defend it as far as I can. We do have people who will get vindictive, but that can be counter-productive.

I do think we need to be having these discussions. Hive is an experiment and there are no 'rules'.