I know cases of users who had to witness how their reputation was decreasing more and more until they practically lost their accounts due to the flags. We can even find user accounts with a negative reputation.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons to feel rejection towards the use of flags (Downvotes) is that in most cases the affected party is unaware of the reasons why they became deserving of this "award." For this reason I have participated in certain debates of ideas where we have agreed that there is a need to include in the coding of the Blockchain, a space where the grantor of a Downvote, has the obligation to express (Perhaps with the use of a few characters) the reasons why he made the decision to assign said flag.

"Perhaps this could open the doors to a friendly debate between the parties, where there could be conciliation and at the same time a growth of the participants through a healthy debate and exchange of opinions".

The Good

The negative votes serve to clean the platform of those shit publications that only seek to milk the cow and those users with great VP who incur autovoting.

Downvotes is a great tool to combat collusion groups.

With this we can give a better image to the platform and thus investors would be encouraged to bring their resources with the conviction that the value of their investment will increase. This does not mean that they will have more tokens, but that STEEM itself will be more valuable.

The Bad (Downvotes Gangs.)

The main value proposition of STEEM has been curtailed: "Economic freedom".

The new Downvote Power bar has skewed this in the wrong direction. When used excessively, an incorrect message is sent to potential investors and new Steemians. Who wants to be in a social environment or invest their money where Armed Gangs can hijack the system?

The possibility of knowing new great authors has been diminished. It is a fact that negative votes are being assigned many times without real reading or analysis of the post-punished. New authors with great inspiration who approach the platform with the hope that their talent is appreciated give us the best of their muse and their effort to then receive a lot of downvotes (Where these are performed as a blast in the same space of time, giving the feeling that they were issued by an organized group) that decrease their possible reward to zero. They will simply leave.

The Ugly (Account creation for Downvotes.)

I have witnessed first hand and victim of the creation of accounts which are being destined exclusively for the granting of downvotes.
These are precisely accounts with creation date very close to the effective date of the last HF.

The most amazing thing about all this is when we review these accounts on Steemd and always get the same scenario:

Here I leave just a few as an example:

https://steemd.com/@yaluma
https://steemd.com/@termium
https://steemd.com/@minchew
https://steemd.com/@dentbos
https://steemd.com/@kievcrow
https://steemd.com/@camillesteemer
https://steemd.com/@islore

These accounts do not publish. They have not given a single positive vote since its creation.
Its only activity is to issue downvotes.

What may be behind all this that Steem's authority has not noticed?

What benefit can the owner (s) of these accounts get so well organized?

What is the reason for the existence of Downvotes?

The use of negative voting to keep people from abusing the system leverages the crab mentality that many people have when it is perceived that one individual is profiting at the expense of everyone else. While crab mentality normally refers to short-sighted people keeping good people down, it is also what allows good people to keep bad people down. The only “problem” with crab mentality is when people wrongly believe someone is profiting at everyone else’s expense.

Right, just like that. The creators of STEEM assumed that the Negative Votes (Downvotes) were going to cause problems.

In Steem blockchain there is no censorship. We are all free to express our ideas. Of course we must maintain an ethical and respectful behavior towards others. The rewards are distributed through the positive votes given to quality publications.

Then, as a control measure, it was placed in the hands of all users the possibility of punishing those publications or those authors who only intend to obtain benefits from the rewards group without having made a valuable content contribution. Plagiarism is one of the main "crimes" committed that merits the allocation of a negative vote.

"But why are we witnessing an indiscriminate use of this tool and nobody does anything to control it?"

It is the same community that is misusing the Downvotes. We have been granted that great power, but we have not known how to use it properly.

---

@juanmolina

---

Vive la experiencia BraveBrowser. Navegue rápido y seguro mientras gana tokens BAT.
Por favor descargue el navegador Brave usando mi Enlace de Referencia.

---

I invite you to support @Yehey as a witness.

He is doing a great job for this blockchain.

You can get more information on how to support him here:

BLURT Witness Server is UP. Please vote @Yehey as one of your witness.

Vote @tomoyan as Witness