Where shall I start? I did allow myself to get sucked into this mess, but I was not the one doing the downvoting.

No doubt you have heard tales of haejin who managed to get a big stake and control of the ranchorelaxo account. I don't know the full history of that account got so big, but some account claimed to be owner and that he had lost his keys (!!). So haejin has a big delegation despite powering down himself. He was making hundreds of dollars each day by churning our short posts and self-voting. Now he amuses himself by making something by curation by voting up various people. I've no idea what his criteria are, but I doubt he reads them.

I believe (making assumptions) that smooth aims to redistribute rewards so as to reduce the impact haejin has. If haejin had used rancho too the rewards might have been too much for even smooth to remove. We can each only do about two full downvotes per day and recharge by tomorrow. We can do ten full upvotes in the same time, so it would take a massive account to undo all haejin can do.

This does mean some people will get a big downvote, but they will still make something on the post.

So UVM (as I will abbreviate her) got a haejin vote (over $7) as well as a much bigger one from trafalgar (a whale who never comments these days, so we don't know his motives). smooth noticed this in his browsing and voted to cancel the haejin vote. He could have taken off more, but didn't. So the post still had $40 on it, which is a nice amount.

Then UVM kicks off that smooth is ruining things. No mention of the $25 trafalgar vote or all the appreciator votes she's had ($25 or more).

So did she lose or gain overall? Looks like a gain to me, even if it was not as much as she hoped for. Complaining about it will attract some unwanted attention, but that is typical.

Here is another account who gets haejin and rancho votes with some downvotes from smooth and ocdb. She still makes $30-$90 per post each day. Given how much people make generally that is pretty good. I think she is in Ukraine where that will go a long way. There are others who also benefit if you check Trending and many have not been downvoted. Perhaps the whales ran out of DV power for the day.

UVM has referred to some other people 'suffering', but has not specified them that I have seen. She and those I have found are not doing too bad really compared with the unwashed masses.

I get that a lot of the 'old guard' get huge rewards regardless, but their votes tend to come from other big accounts who appreciate what they have done for Hive. I cannot pre-judge everyone's motives.

I do not think it is as bad as UVM makes out. She is also earning on Steem and Blurt.

I just think 'the lady doth protest too much' after getting one downvote whilst still earning well.

I don't think smooth was singling her out. He could leave a comment to explain what he is doing, but he did respond to her in here. She accused him of being self-serving when you can see he is supporting the efforts to stabilise HBD. I know he has done a lot for the platform that may be invisible to most.

I am not sure most people really do understand how Hive works. It is a 'magic money tree' for many. If they are lucky to get a big vote then it's a miracle! They may not think that others make less when they make more.

No, Hive is not 'fair', but it is doing a lot of good on the whole.

I think I've said enough.