You know I do downvoting as it is necessary to deal with abuse and there is plenty of that. Doing it to adjust rewards can also be valid. It looks like Smooth just hit one of your recent posts that is still making over $40. Isn't that still good? A lot of people never make that much and there are finite rewards each day.
We have various people who can give out tens of dollars in votes and some of them may do it fairly randomly. Some people may feel that is excessive. Making anything here is nice. I get downvotes too, but it is just part of the system and I never take rewards for granted.
I think Smooth is part of the effort to stabilise HBD, so that explains the self-voting. They get downvotes too.
I do feel for you, but I wouldn't take it personally. Hive is the wild west and bad shit will happen, but mostly I think it's doing good.
RE: @smooth ruining this platform for all small content creators.