It'll be tough to normalize downvotes when they're being used on normal people for doing normal things. Normalizing a downvote means folks should feel comfortable using downvotes to help combat abuse. Nobody here posting legitimately is in control of who votes or how much they earn yet in this case and many others people are being penalized, again, for something they had no control over. If a downvote removes $1 from a post, the difference between downvoting abuse and downvoting something normal is downvoting abuse removes toxicity and downvoting something normal creates it. The reward pool still gets its dollar back regardless. Why not make it normal to remove the abuse and toxicity? Look at the reason given here for the downvotes. It's pathetic. Then that member came here to act like a bully afterwards. How is that even cool? It's not. Go bully a plagiarist. Get applauded. Be normal.
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The reward pool is a common. Stakeholders can use their vote to express an opinion about whether a post is currently under-rewarded or over-rewarded. That should be normalized.
The highly-rewarded people whose posts get downvoted are a diverse bunch in terms of how they react to the downvotes. Some take it in stride. Others start whining and complaining at the first downvote making a huge production out of it. It's the human ego at work. Those people should grow up. It's always a huge source of second-hand embarrassment when people one of whose posts goes, say, from $50 to $35 throw a fit.
Far more humorous watching people pout about others earning, and throwing a fit.
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.
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.
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.
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.