Every now and then I come across opinion pieces on Steem where the free downvotes afforded by EIP to everyone are considered to be a bad thing. Some people say there there is a brigade of downvoting vigilantes on the loose on Steem, sowing chaos and mayhem left, right and center. Or that's how it seems when I read some of the posts. There was even an open letter published a few days ago with a long list of active downvoters mentioned, including myself.
None of us on Steem have a complete picture of what's going on in the whole ecosystem, far from it. But it seems to me that purely reactive downvoting has died down somewhat. Of course, some of the biggest trolls who were persuaded to stop their farming have targeted certain individuals in their ongoing campaigns of harassment. But to confuse that with some kind of vigilantism is totally mistaken. Large accounts controlled by people who used to shit post who have focused all their energies into abusive voting (up or down) are a very different kind of phenomenon than a group of "concerned citizens" picking up pitchforks to go after abusers. I make no bones about having taken up policing the chain on behalf of the community in the last few weeks. I have never downvoted any posts to satisfy a personal whim of any kind. I've got a little bit of flak for it but nothing major.
Have you seen downvoting get out of hand to the degree it would seriously upset newbies? Like you, I'm looking at a limited subset of Steem, but I can tell you that I haven't seen a single thing since HF 21 that one could reasonably expect to scare a newbie. The typical newbie makes very little per post like we all did in the beginning and has absolutely nothing to fear from the people who downvote over-rewarded content. Do you think Steem is the only platform in existence that has downvoting in use? Think again. It's a normal feature of most platforms where a user feedback system exists. On Facebook, you can respond to a post or a comment with an angry face or a sad face. I would think posting something upsetting to a public Facebook group and getting a few hundred angry faces in response would be scarier a prospect than getting a few pennies removed from pending rewards by a downvote or two on Steem.
Another type of criticism of downvoting comes from larger accounts that typically get double digit bucks for casual posts about friends drinking beer. I wouldn't say well-networked long-time users who have bought massive amounts of Steem getting the kind of rewards most users would have to write a quality piece for for casual posts like that a huge problem so long as such posts do not occupy trending or get posted several times a day. If you think you're presenting your followers with a dilemma by posting about barbecuing with friends, you can set beneficiaries to direct your rewards for that kind of posts toward some worthy cause that you think will help increase the value of your investment. If you're a large orca or a whale, it would make sense to be more concerned about the external price of Steem rather than amassing more tokens. That's because you already have enough for the price to make you a millionaire - or leave you a bag holder. Hoarding more at the cost of the health of the ecosystem makes the less sense the more you already possess. It's simple mathematics. Incidentally, this is something that I don't get about the largest troll account(s) on Steem. It's way cheaper to be two on a chain you don't own a large piece of.