I see downvoting (AKA flagging) as a valuable part of Steem, but I would not generally use it just because I disagree with the content of a post. I use it as I think it was intended in the white paper to deal with those who abuse the concept of Steem to enrich themselves whilst adding nothing to the value of the platform. I can give plenty of examples of accounts that do this. There is a particular one I have been dealing with in collaboration with the cool people at Steemflagrewards who just posts ripped off content and junk comments whilst buying big votes. He persists in doing this despite losing most of his reward profit.

I feel a lot of the responsibility for this situation lies with the vote sellers. Some do operate blacklists and show some responsibility, but others refuse to do this and there are few consequences for them.

There are those who have enough SP for themselves or as part of a 'guild' who also just take. Flagging them does risk retaliation. I have been flagged back plenty of times, but I tend to go for those who are not interested in powering up and so they do little damage.

Adding this downvote pool may not make much difference to how I operate as I am prepared to take the hit of losing some voting power. However Steemflagrewards has compensated me for what curation I would have lost. They have switched to a token now.

It is up to us all how Steem continues. If you do not want to downvote directly then you can delegate to those who will. You may not profit from it, but you can help make the Steem economy function better. We want rewards going to good content and not just those who 'play their games'.