It's a really complex question isn't it? I mean, we can shout out all of the logic behind the reason for downvotes to exist, and as you say, we've been over them over and over again through the years.
For most of us, getting a payout of anything over 5 Hive on a single post is still something that eludes us, even when we collect 100s of little upvotes, so to have one big stakeholder able to come in and nullify the entire payout with one click can be really disappointing. It gets a little more unnerving when those stake holders only turn up in your posts to downvote, and you never see an upvote from them on good content. It can certainly feel like bullying.
But when you look at it analytically and recognize that the prime driver for a downvote is a "dispute over reward value" and you truly understand the DPOS system and that this is a part of making it work, then you have to accept the possibility that your content just isn't good enough.
I spent a whole lot of time in my early days trying to get the attention of big stake holders and earning some good upvotes, it is really disheartening to come up with content every day trying to show you bring value to the chain only to have some young woman posting suggestive pictures of herself getting $45 payouts versus my short story that took me hours to compose and edit earning $2-3. That's part of the reason I gave up posting for the most part.
This is a whole lot of rambling to say I see both sides of the issue. It is an imperfect system right? Every vote, up or down, is generated by a human account, and humans by our very nature are flawed. So the reward system really won't ever be perfect.
I do see how downvotes can be a hinderance to adoption. People don't like being downvoted, and could leave the platform, and spread the word to their social network not to join. That matters a lot more for people who "influence" thousands of people versus people who influence a dozenish.
My son follows that "Ninja" dude, imagine getting him on Hive, bringing his hundreds of thousands of followers with him to the platform, only to leave after a week because someone downvoted him. There are some major stakeholders on the platform that I could see running someone like Ninja off with downvotes and comment bullying. I would not compare the current downvote situation to a Ninja level influencer, but I can see disturbing parallels.
If the platform wants to grow, and bring more value to the Hive token, then we need to encourage new users, not bully them off the platform. Downvoting plays a big role in that. They need to be used with a level of wisdom that we may not have at the moment.
I hear you and know exactly what you’re talking about. Thankfully I’ve never been the subject of a significant downvote but it is indeed a bit of a crazy system where people post pictures of small things and get big upvotes but people who put hours of effort into theirs, get almost nothing. I’ve put more of my energies in commenting and looking for new people to the platform and getting them situated and familiar with some of this stuff. No one likes getting downvoted away but if someone who’s been here for a long time can at least explain it to them, and what to do differently, they have a chance of making it longer on here.
One of my least favorite things lately is this kind of bogus ‘decentralized blacklist’ feature that’s been started. I get the purpose of it but I feel like this will be extensively abused by some and that’s sad.