Flags as 'symbolic gesture'.

Some may have read the post in which I announced it, some may have noticed and wondered about my downvoting of trending posts. I know the effect of my flags is comparable small anyway, so more than to refill the rewards pool I wanted them to be a symbolic gesture to remind big accounts (early miners, former bidbot owners and many other 'dark creatures') not only to upvote each other mutually plus some 'top witnesses', friends and 'VIPs' but also not to forget all the numerous smaller bees in the hive. If the one or another started to think about the reason of these downvotes then they already have served their main purpose.
A few users also tried to punish me with retaliation flags, but altogether I was surprised in a positive way about the really moderate reaction of the people I 'dared' to flag. :)

"Dared? That sounds like past, @jaki01?" Well, right, today finally I decided to stop downvoting YOU all (at least for now). :)

Why I stop flagging YOU.

There are several reasons for my recent decision:

The HIVE price went up dramatically (and I really hope that's not only a flash in the pan), so in future more and more post rewards will exceed my flag threshold of 80 dollars - too many to flag them all, especially also those who aren't my 'target audience'.
This rise in price didn't happen out of thin air, but is also the result of the efforts of these red and yellow named users which I normally love to criticize (and will keep doing that in future if I have to!). :)
Aside from the fact that their blockchain knowledge and programming skills are the foundation of the funcioning of the HIVE blockchain they now also succeeded in getting HIVE listed on Huobi and MXC. That's just huge, and I would like to say "Thank you for increasing the value of my crypto portfolio!"
Some of the posts which I had to flag according to my own 'rules' were really good, so I had a bad feeling while downvoting them (sorry, @yabapmatt, @peakd and @theycallmedan!).
Apart from that, setting a 'rewards threshold' for single posts doesn't affect users who post often but always 'only' earn 40 or 50 dollars per post (that's what @alexvan pointed out from the very beginning).
The trending page still isn't as diverse as I would like it to be (also to attract users from outside of our HIVE bubble). It is still dominated by crypto, blockchain and HIVE related topics, but at least recently I also saw a few travel and food posts close to the top ... and I myself reached more than 30 dollars per post with the absolute 'top trending topics' "insects" and "clouds". :-)

In future I will ...

... stop to flag trending stuff in a systematic way, but that doesn't mean I won't flag posts in case I think they are over rewarded. However, just to make it clear, I don't consider these downvotes as kind of personal attacks.

Furthermore, I appreciate any suggestions on how I could use my downvotes in future, and apart from that will continue to support small users whose quality posts still aren't in the focus of the 'big guns'.

I wish you a nice Sunday, a rising HIVE price, many upvotes and only a few flags! :)