RE: I'm going to do a little investigation into the down voters who do so for purely dislike, and other reasons as well as their connections to other accounts and popular "services".
Good luck, and best wishes. They do downvote as a group, sometimes simply because 'everyone else thinks its spam, so I just go along with them'. Sorry, that is a paraphrase from a recent post that I read where the person engaged in a mass down voting of an undesirable steemian, then begged the community's sympathy when he struck back at her. I only have sympathy for someone who has not down-voted other people if and when they are attacked. If they join a group attack, well, what goes around, comes around, and I don't care if the person you hit first was a nasty snot-hole.
I imagine you will get hit hard for doing this, @dwinblood, because that is the form censorship takes on Steemit. Again, good luck. We'll be here to re-upvote you and restore your reputation if needed.
So far I am fine as my reputation is better than theirs. They can only steal my potential earnings. They have to have a better reputation than me to damage my reputation and so far that isn't a problem.