Downvoting need 'not' be the mirror of 'upvoting', there is no economic reason for it to behave  similarly, albeit oppositely, to upvoting - ie. the more STEEMPower you have the more damage you can dish out with a downvote.   Harm to reputation 'and' to a post's rewards seems correct to me, but giving individuals the ability to 'wipe out' smaller members is the 'real' reason people do not like the current state of the thing.

We need to have a way for bots to be made unable to engage in flooding posts with downvotes but at the same time, take away the ability of a Whale to annihilate users.  One suggestion I made in a recent post was to make downvotes COST its wielder,  STEEMPower - to disincentivize abusively frequent use - the more powerful the downvote, the greater the cost.  Whether the revenue from this is burned or re-distributed is another thing ..

Alternatively,  make the option available to those with min 300 SP and 40 reputation - newbs (and bots) should not be allowed to use this weapon (and a weapon it most certainly is).   Add to that, a maximum amount of harm that can be done with a single downvote, no matter how powerful the user - this would require a more democratic mechanism of dealing with anti-social behaviour ... more people would have to agree 'and' take action in order to have an impact - not just one person's opinion - this would require a case be made against a user or specific post.