I do like to know how the person(s) behind [the @smooth] account make their decisions

I have a mental framework that Hive as a blockchain is a business and if it pays out more in post rewards than it gains in exposure, marketing, word-of-mouth promotion, external attention, etc., then it is losing money and the value of the blockchain will ultimately decline over time. As a holder of a good number of HIVE tokens (mostly staked as HP), I obviously do not want to see it decline in value. Of course, value can fluctuate in the short term for good or bad reasons, but over time I am confident that my mental model is correct.

As such, I use my downvoting power to nudge down rewards that I see as costing us more than the value the post is likely to generate. These are mostly highly rewarded posts that are, for lack of a better term "cookie cutter". In that category I would include cooking, travel, personal blog, photography, etc. These are content categories that are a dime a dozen on the internet, and Hive content is usually no better than average when it comes to being truly compelling and attention-getting (often worse).

I make downvotes that are small relative to my voting power because experience tells me that the negative response and community conflict that results is much more severe when it is perceived that one large account is unilaterally "taking away" a large part of rewards (though in theory one could certainly argue that any stakeholder is "entitled" to vote their stake as they see fit). So I hope that my own downvotes serve as a nudge, and others who likewise agree that these (or other) posts are a drag on the value of Hive (which I'm sure we all want to go up) will either follow along and also make small downvotes, or reconsider whether to upvote such posts so much in the future.