Hi my friend,
I wanted to write a post on the subject as well but finally left it be... Thanks a lot for picking this up. What we live on steem at the moment is simply sad...

Downvotes give power of the powerful

These free downvotes are like the oppression tool of bigger accounts over small ones. Small accounts are too scared to downvote anybody having more SP than them.

Downvotes are not necessary

Among the powerful accounts I see this belief that these downvotes have to be used. It is seen as a kind of responsibility to protect steem. There is no such responsibilty if there is no abuse! Downvotes should only be used when there is abuse.

Bid bots try to adapt but they are shot down

Bit bots try to change. I just wrote a post and got a manually curated upvote from smartsteem. I was very happy about it but within seconds I got a powerful downvote from another whale. Bit bot services that try to change their business model are shot down by others.

At the moment it is like the far west where the one with the biggest gun wins. In the end these downvotes will make people leave the platform. There will be less content and in the end there will be nothing to upvote...

We had downvotes before HF21 and seldom used them. Even though there are some free downvotes available we should only use them when we see real abuse.

If we start to downvote because we don't like the content of posts, we will soon land in the same world than youtube where only the most popular contents gets visibility. Steem is/was a wonderful world where there was place for everybody and it would really suck if this plurality was lost.