RE: Why I Avoid "HF21 Flagging" So Far.
Downvotes, as with upvotes, are a personal choice. Of course some people vote strategically for profit, but others actually apply proof of brain to reward good content as Steem was intended to be. There are plenty of obvious abusers. Some will say they didn't think it was wrong to but lots of votes, but there are no rules here and the community gets to decide what has value. Now they have more power to do that.
I will continue to assess each case I see before downvoting.
What we need to beware of is ending up with a trending page that is just about Steem. It should have a good mix of content as it's the first thing new visitors see. The big accounts ought to reconsider giving themselves big votes.
I've already seen people crying that this is censorship, but it is just reward redistribution. They cannot make as much from buying votes now anyway. They should try building a real following. That takes work, but so it should if you expect to earn.
Well, I do agree with you. The idea is good. People shouldn't buy a shit ton of votes for crap...
But, I can honestly not understand how this is supposed to benefit any other accounts than the larger ones. Lesser accounts, (not established ones) already earns less nowadays, except from curation, but truth is, curation rewards for someone with ~100 SP doesn't yield much results.
However, each downvote, will free up some extra rewards that are being redistributed, so others can earn that piece of the pie instead. A good idea, but who will earn those rewards? - The larger accounts. Those with 20+ Steem rewards on their content already...
This is done to make a better looking trending page. - Sure. But I miss to see how that will benefit anyone but the already established accounts. Especially now when upvotes on comments seems to have decreased too. Feels like we're pissing on the poor once again, and that is the exact opposite of what should be done.
I might have missed things, and things might not have stabilized yet after the HF, but so far, it doesn't look good to me. At all. Not when a "witch hunt" has started to reduce rewards for authors who've been working hard for a long time. Regardless if they have bought votes or not, while doing it.
There's no perfect system and style will lose out. I do okay, but then I've put in loads of work to build up connections. It will be harder for new people, but that's inevitable. I do what I can to get rewards to smaller accounts who earn them. We need to give this change some time before we can really judge the impact.
That is obviously very true and I realize that I might not have stressed that enough. I basically judge the things I have seen so far (which isn't very long), and also based upon my own interpretations.
Hopefully, things will turn out okay and I also wish that I will see enough positive impact to reduce my skepticism.