What I have noticed most since HF19 is that many people have gotten stingy with their upvotes

Absolutely! I think this is what I have noticed most. Before HF19 I was able to give out multiple awards of 5 SBD from one post! Since then, rewards are declining drastically.

Being able to see things from a minnow's perspective, I'm sure you noticed that even the minnows are not voting on each other much any more. It seems they are all trying to impress a whale or 2 instead. I honestly believe the reduction to 10 votes has really hurt the platform a lot. Yes, I've read about how some whales write that they are not bothered by it because they simply adjust their sliders to get more votes. That's like a billionare adjusting his tip from a quarter to a dollar (or more accurately, the other way around). Of course its no big deal. But the minnows don't have a slider. Even if they did, what good is it when their 100% vote is only worth 1 cent anyways? Reading that sort of comment just makes the minnows feel worse. Now if they had 40 1-cent votes, they might feel better about themselves and start to hand more of those votes out! After all, 40 cents is a lot more that 10 cents.