Yes, I know, ranting about downvotes, so 2019, eh? Well that's kind of a good thing cause it shows that we learned to use them somewhat well and they aren't as needed anymore because the community has formed a sort of consensus on when they are used and learned to accept them as a form of disagreement of rewards depending on the content. Of course there are other factors involved as well, popularity, effort and maybe history and experience of what the account does and if the rewards are deserved. In any case it should be clear by now that no one wants to use downvotes, there's nothing of benefit from using them to the downvoter except returning those rewards to everyone else who isn't getting downvoted. I don't want to single out @steemflagrewards but lost in translation I can see how that may give a bad perception of what the project does and that their users aren't really being rewarded for using their downvotes directly, more about finding content that many feel could use them. In any case it should be clear by now that the people downvoting are sticking their necks out because the consequences that follow are nothing but negative such as retaliation, which hunt and who knows what else we may see happening in the future. Let's just say people kill for way less. While I know that sounds scary/bad it's just the world we live in and considering the reactions of some accounts receiving downvotes due to disagreement of rewards it would not surprise me one bit. We've seen retaliation in so many forms happening, even when they can't directly retaliate to the downvoter because he doesn't post, they've instead been going after accounts associated with it or directly downvoting content the downvoter upvotes.

Anyway, as happy as I am that the EIP has been enforced more and it has pushed a lot of accounts to increase their quality not just out of fear of being downvoted but also since a lot more curation is occurring and they're starting to see that great quality does get rewarded more, even though some [accounts don't like to stack votes on already curated great content cause it could mean they'd be the last to do so and not get as much curation rewards which I talked about in this post.](https://steemit.com/curation/@acidyo/curation-and-trending-post-eip)

I'm gonna try keep this post short, not gonna go into how all this started and what it has resulted in. I'm under the impression now that these users who were signaling hard to remove downvotes after the EIP and that it will just cause negativity and toxicity and never used them on their own community which in turn forced other curation projects like @curangel to use them that they were just playing dumb and pretending not to understand the bigger picture. Of course I'm not saying all of them do this and there is curation and distribution going on there as well but with a few big accounts still mainly rewarding themselves and tricking others that they are the victims it has become really cringey. They openly post about who they will target with downvotes next and the smaller users attempting to get on their good side shout out comments such as "yeah, let's get them", "the war has started", "we will show them after what they've done to us", etc. The epitome of cringe is when minnows who post original content themselves and don't get curation join the downvoting witch hunts which is just sad in my opinion and does way more danger than the usual retaliation would have.

Their main defensive points from what I've read have been:
- you are downvoting posts you don't understand
- we have bought expensive steem 
- we will retaliate more than the downvotes you've given us
- other cult like behavior

While I agree with the first point and have made it clear to some english speaking users that just downvoting posts because they don't understand them is as stupid as upvoting random posts from the "new" list the problem here is that it's not all too difficult to judge some posts for being over-rewarded. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to judge the [rewards on this post](https://steemit.com/zzan/@swan1/6mxist) for instance and whatever curangel have been downvoting they are a curation project so excuse me if I trust their judgement more than investors lead by one of the biggest farmers oldstone/slowwalker/an army of other accounts people have easily narrowed it down to belonging to him. Excuse me for not trusting investors who's main projects have been front-ends ran by vote-selling which most definitely still occurs through their steem-engine token instead of genuine curation depending on content and other factors that I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Excuse me if you feel entitled to post rewards because you bought Steem way too high up on the charts the same way I did or didn't understand the difference between Steem and SBD.

When there's people who have countless of times attempted to explain why the downvotes have occurred and why instead of making it difficult for us they should be the ones "policing" their own community and using the downvotes for a healthier distribution and curation which would positively reflect on the value of their investments. Instead of just being completely against downvotes but using them well like the rest of us try and then apparently when you're fed up you start wars and go against all posts of random innocent users like taskmaster4450 just because you think he is transisto because he curates him or as you stated in your posts that oldstone "found him" and go on a witchhunt which does way more damage than any of curangels and ocdb's curated downvotes may have ever done. It is absolutely disgusting behavior and while you may trick your followers that you're the victim here and only defending yourself you should realize that there's a lot of others following what's going on and you're not doing yourself a favor. 

If ROI is really the most important part for you and you feel entitled to post rewards to maximize on it then I unfortunately have to tell you that Steem might be the wrong cryptocurrency for you. You may want to look at one of the other brainless DPOS or POS coins that just give you inflation based on your holdings and you won't need to waste time generating content on several accounts as placeholders for your upvotes without being social and using the platform the way it is meant to be used. 

Anyway, this is still one of those early days where the EIP can't be enforced too well because stake isn't distributed that good even though it's been one of my major attempts throughout this almost 4 year journey. The volatility in price may be great for the distribution but that's not going to happen if the majority goes back to other whales who then use it to only grow larger and dictate who gets rewarded and who gets downvoted based on their greed and emotions.

I have to agree though that emotions are normal as we're all human, I'd be lying if I didn't admit that seeing their downvotes on anything I post, whether it be cross-posts of other authors, especially new authors that get 90% of the rewards or other content I may put out there it does give me that urge to go on a downvoting spree but if I were to do that it would mean I'm being pretty unprofessional and going against the main points of the EIP. Not saying I haven't done that every now and then but the way some do is just really, really sad and makes me wonder how no one in their community speaks up about it. I'm guessing they just don't want to get involved as anything with using downvotes or going against those using them will put you in the wrong side instead of people realizing that you're just voicing your opinions and not letting that judge the way they curate.

Okay, this got way longer than I expected, so what I wanted to say still is that I'll be halting @ocdb from downvotes for now. This was not an easy decision but considering how little they've been used lately and that some of these consequences have gone way too far for what it's been worth the returns to the pool I would prefer it to not escalate even more. Especially since some of these retaliations are landing on innocent accounts and they don't seem to have any boundaries, I would prefer not to spend any more time on this and instead go back to focusing on curation, onboarding, retention and growing our community and assisting other ones as well. I guess I can say we did our part ever since the EIP was launched to attempt to push some of the worst vote-traders and small circle voters and vote sellers to give curation a try and I like the results it has brought so far. Of course we were just a small part of it all so I'm not trying to take much credit for it but I do think those who have been using their downvotes deserve more credit than they get while others have just looked away and avoided it altogether. I have a lot of respect for you and I'd understand if you lost some for us cause of our decision to stop the downvotes now.

Closing words, Steem is bigger than all of us here today and the rewards pool. Most people/investors have a price in mind and that might do more for distribution in the long term, the inflation period is still very long and ongoing and those who are here for that very long term will hopefully do well and try to make this place as fair and awesome as possible. Thanks.