Let me start by telling you all that I was once very skeptical about HF21. I raised my concerns multiple times and the more I talked about this with great Steemians I started to realize the amazing potential it would give us. It was a chance to bring back manual curation and to bring back the charm with Steem. HF21 could bring back what most of us loved about Steem during the early days. No matter how much I talked with others, I continued to be somewhat skeptical.
I have seen too much crap during my time on Steem, so I just can't believe things blindly. After the release of HF21, I quickly noticed many different amazing things and I started to truly believe that HF21 would make Steem great again. The #newsteem hype was effective, but I also noticed that some people quickly started to have weird mindsets in terms of downvotes, and I raised my concerns about that too.
Flag-groups or downvoting-circles seemed to appear quickly and I noticed how some users quickly became a potential target for future downvotes. You could (can) delegate to bid bots to help them to counter bad behaviour such as bid-bote abuse. If you delegate to 
However, when downvotes occur in an attempt to reduce vote-trading, or circle-jerk, things seems to quickly escalate. We all know that we have a bunch of users here who truly deserve downvotes for their selfish behaviour, and I have seen the potential rewards from some of these users decrease rapidly due to downvotes.
That is obviously a good thing and I could mention these users by name, but it's not about these specific users as much as this is about the actual downvoting behaviour.
I heard that vote-trading undermines proof of brain, and I agree with that. But I am worried, because this can and likely will escalate. I don't understand why anyone would go after long term users who does good things, and who have spent time to build an audience when we have others who deserves to be punished instead.
Once again, it has started to look like it's totally fine when user A does certain things, meanwhile it's the opposite as soon as user B does that same thing. I don't like that at all, because it looks biased and it's wrong.
Also, if we are supposed to downvote users who "trade votes" with other authors, I think we are knee deep in shit. That goes against everything that Steem is supposed to be about. Steem or #newsteem is about rewarding quality and to reward users for their efforts. The more effort and the greater things you do for others and for Steem, the more rewards you will get. That seems to be the mindset and the new approach. That is why newsteem has turned out great so far.
We encourage users to put in effort and hard work to establish themselves and we want people to grow an audience. We want people to understand that they are influencers, and we want to reward people while they grow their account, reputation and we encourage people to build their brands.
- A superb idea.
However, if we downvote user A because they vote on user B and C while user B and C support user A as well, we have destroyed the entire concept of social media, influencers and audience, which obviously goes against our primary intentions and goals. So that would definitely be counterproductive.
I have long-term supporters and I support many of those users as well. Should we start to downvote my content because I support the audience that supports me...? - That doesn't sound healthy.
What's worse is that this actually seems likely to happen in the near future, but it will not affect many of the greatest authors and users we have... So, once again, it's different rules for different people.
Even though manual curation is awesome, and many people seems to favor manual curation more than anything, we are far from having 100% manual curation. We will probably never see 100% manual curation. To vote on content automatically is great for many users, and accounts of various size will use auto-votes. Minnow, dolphin, whale and everything between.
Some people does it in an attempt to maximize their curation rewards and others are using autovotes because it makes things easier. By using autovotes you don't have to sit on Steem 24/7. I have dozens of accounts on auto, and I know that many of them have added me to their auto-list too.
- Are we supposed to be downvoted because of that?
I really love many of the things I have seen so far, and I appreciate all of these downvote-initiatives, but I am concerned. Honestly speaking, I am extremely worried that this will escalate and turn into a real shitstorm.
I saw patterns and signs of this just ~12 hours after HF21 had been launched, and even though things seems to have worked out very well so far, I am concerned... Some of the things I am able to read between the lines so to speak, worries me.
- Who decides what others should downvote?
- Who decides the value and quality?
I don't really like "circle-jerk" but vote-trading is basically what Steem is all about. I would love to see all the bigger accounts reward lesser accounts instead of the same users they have been supporting for ages, but that is not likely to ever happen...
Where are the rewards supposed to come from, if not from the audience we have gained through hard work and effort?
I guess this is more about the bigger accounts, and that we want to see a change in their approach and mindset... But when and where do we draw the line? Will we ever?