The measures unfortunately all have downsides that increase as you tune up the dial. Curation leaves less for the author, Free Downvotes increase toxicity and at high levels open abuse to collusion, Superlinear leads to inequality and at high levels collusive abuse as well. Using a combination of these measures allow us to minimize the dosage of each poison individually while still having a sufficient enough impact to turn this completely failure of a content discovery and rewards system around.

Yes, I agree that downvotes suck. To say they'll be used selfishly is ambiguous, because unlike upvotes, modest amount of free downvotes cannot be used to direct value towards something, only away from something. That is to say, it's harder to profit directly from them. But if you mean selfishly as in some will use it with reckless abandon to bully and keep a stranglehold on smaller players that they dislike, and this would definitely increase toxicity on the platform - yes. Hopefully that's not the only way they'll be used, but an increase in toxicity is a considerable and expected downside. Again my intention is to use as little of these measures as possible, especially this one, but I'm afraid some is likely unavoidable if we're to have any hope turning this place around.

But look at the platform overall today my friend. It's complete trash. It doesn't work at all, there's no correlation between content appeal and rewards because the incentives are badly aligned. Our price and alexa rank are in free fall. If we don't attempt economic reform, we're going to just die out.

I don't think this is going to delay SMTs. It can likely be coded in a week. But it's the fundamental core to our value proposition and if we stick with the status quo we're doomed. SMTs can't carry a disfunctional core system, nor can Communities.

It's like if the house is on fire and we're still debating about whether to put it out or to go purchase a new couch to put in the lounge room that's burning down. Half the people are like 'aww but I've been looking forward to having a new couch' or 'I dunno, we've been saving a long time for a new couch and almost have enough money and now you want me to spend a bit of it on an increased water bill?' or 'bahh how sure are you that putting out the fire will increase the resale value of the house more than getting a new couch anyway?'. It's sort of insanity :p