![3c7jsu.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQwR8gZ7v4JFs8qHaupMYUWQ6oDzeGzKEqLGNdtt7vyXC/3c7jsu.jpg)

Oh look at that, it's me in a Brazilian coffee plantation picking the ripest coffee cherries straight off the tree - that's unique content isn't it?

I declined payout on this post because...you can't downvote declined payout's - well not yet anyway....

So Hard Fork 21 came, played for a while and then turned into HF22 because of an issue that took a few days to resolve thanks to nodes needing to replay as well as Witness servers.

My last Witness update was way back in June, and while the proposed changes in post rewards from 75% poster to 50% poster were causing many of our long term established content curators to leave - I still felt the benefits to curation would make up the difference - you can read my thoughts in [this post](https://steemit.com/witness/@c0ff33a/witness-update-steemd-v0-20-11-mira-and-hf21-with-me-c0ff33a)

But with HF21 the downvote pool was also introduced - and on paper at least this was a good idea - to enable community control of post rewards - every stake holder on the the Steem Blockchain could downvote posts they felt had more rewards then deserved without affecting their upvote strength. 

ON PAPER - yes that is an emphasis, I'm old but I still remember being at school - Education systems are similar world wide you are given a task to do, and marked on the work done. During the marking you are told what you did correctly, or if you the work was incorrect you are told what you did wrong. Learning by mistakes is the most basic educational system - who knows of Pavlov and his dog's?

So we now have the downvote pool active, but as I see it there is no benefit and all it will do is drive the last few active Steem Blockchain bloggers aways. The screen grabbed comment is a perfect example

![Screenshot 2019-10-02 at 22.20.44.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQQ1ZRyLLr29V4uW9iwbHLq92TULuzMNsZpzrzK5Yud2P/Screenshot%202019-10-02%20at%2022.20.44.png)

First off, credit to @ocdb to bother commenting on downvotes - because most have no comments. How exactly are people supposed to improve their content if they are downvoted with NO comment explaining why??? When I joined the Steem Blockchain in March 2017 it was clear that you would upvote a post, and then leave a comment explaining why you upvoted - what you liked after reading the whole post. This was the process of community, of building a SOCIAL BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK. If in 2019 the decision is to make an ANTISOCIAL BLOCKCHAIN NETWORK then congratulations - downvotes with NO EXPLANATION are the perfect way to do it. 

When the Downvote pool was first introduced it made sense - reducing abuse of the reward pool which was mostly caused by the growth of Bid Bot's - which to be fair was totally allowed by the Steem Blockchain - let's not split hairs here - BID BOT's were allowed to grow so the biggest Steem stakeholders could get a passive return on their investment. 

After HF21 Bid Bot use significantly reduced because IT COST STEEM TO BID BOT POSTS - finally the bid bot's made sense as they were PAID FOR ADVERTISEMENT - you want to send a message to the Steem Blockchain community use the Bid Bot's and pay more Steem then you will receive back in rewards or Steem power - HELLO PEOPLE - Google Adwords is a thing because of this!

Returning to this comment

![Screenshot 2019-10-02 at 22.20.44.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQQ1ZRyLLr29V4uW9iwbHLq92TULuzMNsZpzrzK5Yud2P/Screenshot%202019-10-02%20at%2022.20.44.png)

Currently there are a lot of curation groups and whales curating amazing content? Really? Any proof of that because I know 100's of Steemians that were producing incredible posts with content that is beyond belief - awesome pictures, backed by detailed descriptions - and most have left because they got nothing compared to the work they put in.

The Downvote you received is to discourage you from buying votes from bidbots...SERIOUSLY @ocdb you have 64000 Steem Power and are backed by our top Witnesses - and still you can't work out who is putting money into the Steem Blockchain and who is trying to plunder money from it.

I love the Steem Blockchain, in fact I love it so much I pay out of my own pocket for a primary Witness server and also a Backup. You might ask why would I pay money to support the Steem Blockchain? We have around 150 active Witnesses - and every one like me has the WHOLE Steem blockchain on their server - every post, comment etc since the blockchain started. That is the amazing thing about a decentralised blockchain - it is community supported and will exist while every one of of us still has a server running. I still would like to set up a Full Node - just because with a full node and my two Witness Servers - if every other server was shut down - I could still run the Steem blockchain from the servers I had online.

Where we go from here is down to individuals -but right now I feel the Downvote culture is going to destroy what little Steem had left as community. I think @themarkymark was spot on when he said to me the Steem Blockchain will grow the most from gaming - @steemmonsters - @nextcolony - @drugwars etc.