Great way to make enemies!

My opinion is more people are abusing downvotes than acting responsibly. Others might argue it equalizes things out to everyone's benefit in the reward pool, and we have successfully removed lots of the spam that used to exist frequently. I would have to agree with that.

The damage downvotes do to new/small users is somewhat unforgivable in my opinion. Many people get upset and quite when they feel they have been downvoted unfairly. They would be correct when they tell others that downvote trolls and bots exist on this blockchain for no good purpose other than to annoy people.

The fact that downvote rings exist has always worried me. They form their own rules for downvoting. Often they do not present any method to have downvotes removed. They create downvote blacklists with no options to be removed. If they have a public presence on discord or in a community, there is no guarentee users will be treated fairly when defending their actions against their downvote accusers. Some of the downvote rings are able to pool profits to reward their members for downvoting. This is a crisis for conscience. Police do not get paid on commission.

That being said, I am happy we have downvotes and I am very glad for the many people who use of downvotes frequently and fairly. There are a few honorable downvote communities extremely skilled at not only removing clear garbage and plagiarism, but also helping to upvote posts that have been subject to downvote abuse from whales and flag trails.

I would be in favor up solutions to improve the blockchain to prevent exploiting the downvotes for pointless, hateful, and harmful vengeance vendettas. I would like to encourage more of the downvote communities to talk about solutions. Witnesses and blockchain developers may be able to improve downvotes so they are less socially alienating.