Hi Justin,

Please do not listen to the other responses to this comment regarding downvotes. Spam was well-controlled on Steem before Hard Fork 21 through Steemit delegations to spam-reducing initiatives like @steemcleaners and @mackbot who had well-defined rules for downvoting. (And I hope you will continue those delegations.)

Independent downvoting introduced in HF21 has primarily allowed users to define "abuse" based on however they feel at that particular moment, and has led to an environment of uncertainty and conflict. Users who just want to post and earn no longer have any confidence in whether they will be redefined as abuse at any given moment, and this has driven away thousands of legitimate users and drastically reduced the amount of worthwhile content produced for Steem. Despite this the users in favor of downvoting continue to believe they are somehow making Steem better; they are not.