I think downvoting was intended to be innocuous

I actually agree. I have spoken with Dan, the genius who created the platform. He had a misunderstanding of what DV's are. He thought a downvote was the opposite of an upvote, and didn't conceive of the incentives that would prevent the platform from growing if downvotes enabled that growth to be suppressed. It is my understanding that they are taxes that explains why this has happened.

Let's compare another industry to Hive. There are creators posting on Hive, and there are auto manufacturers making trucks. Toyota makes great trucks, but has to break into a market Ford dominates. When Toyota makes a sale, that's the same thing as a new user getting an upvote on Hive. People that like Toyota trucks buy them, and people that don't like them don't buy them. The opposite of a sale is no sale. It's the same thing on Hive. People that like your post upvote it, and people that don't like it don't upvote it. Except for taxes. Imagine what happens to Ford and Toyota when they can tax each other to the limit of their stake. Ford is an established manufacturer, and has a lot of stake. Toyota is the new kid on the block and has only ambition and talent in their pockets. Ford will eliminate Toyota from the market if it has the power to tax Toyota 100% of their profits, and it doesn't matter how awesome and popular their trucks are. That's what happens on Hive too.

Every sale Toyota makes takes money out of Ford's mouth. In terms of Hive, upvotes that go to new users don't go to established authors. So, Ford has a financial incentive to prevent Toyota from profiting from truck sales. IRL if Ford has government contracts to make trucks for the military, then Ford taxing Toyota 100% of their profits provides more money to the government to pay Ford to make trucks for the military.

That's exactly what downvotes on smaller accounts do on Hive. Not only do the downvotes prevent inflation from going to new users instead of whales, returning the rewards to the rewards pool enables the whales to get them, because they capture 90% of rewards. The opposite of an upvote is no vote. A DV isn't the opposite of an upvote, it's a tax that removes someone else's upvote and the creators income. If Ford had this power IRL Toyota would never have sold any trucks and ISIS would be driving Fords.

Toyota could have made fidget spinners or phones, but they liked trucks, so they went into the truck business. People could make Christmas wreaths, but they like posting blogs, so they come to Hive. If Hive enables them to get paid for it, and other platforms like X do not, then Hive will take over social media completely and crappy censorious platforms that take all the value bloggers create will die out. Why hasn't that happened? Because Ford taxed Toyota 100% of their profits, and Hive wasn't better than X, Meta, or Reddit. Because being taxed 100% of your rewards is unfair, people didn't just leave, they ragequit and complained to everyone they could that they'd been censored and all their rewards were stolen by whales. That makes Hive look really bad in the market for new Hive users. That's why onboarding never again repeated the influx of users that came after April 2017. That's why people that have been traumatized get so crazy about being downvoted.

This platform was once #3 on coinmarketcap (before the fork). It's now <400. This happened while the social media industry became the largest sector of global financial markets, more valuable than mining, manufacturing, and transportation. Hive could have captured all that growth - all that money - but instead taxed it's value out of existence, so the whales could maintain control of Hive governance and maintain their maximum ROI.

"...larger stakeholders are more sensitive about how the reward pool is allocated."

That's just the same thing as Ford being sensitive to how truck sales are allocated when Ford is granted government contracts to provide trucks to the military. Toyota providing trucks to the military is bad for Ford. Many creators being rewarded for content on Hive reduces the portion of the inflation the whales receive. The more lesser staked users that are flagged off the platform, the more of the inflation the whales get. This is why a growing user base increases decentralization of stake, and a shrinking user base increases centralization. What is best for the platform isn't what is best for whales, either as a group or individually, because cash is king, not risky growth and capital gains if things don't go sideways. And they are at high risk of going sideways, as Sun capturing Steem showed. The very plutocratic stake weighting mechanism that enables the whales to maintain control of governance is the greatest threat to their continued governance, because all it takes is more money than they have to capture total control of governance. If Hive starts growing as a plutocracy, and becomes a valuable token rising in price, a real IRL megamouth shark will gobble up our little whales like a snack and turn Hive into their personal property.

This can be solved, but Hive would first need to not be a plutocracy that any passing megamouth shark that can gobble up the little whales on Hive could buy total control of and eliminate the present oligarchy. The whales have to be willing to lose control of governance in order to enable Hive to dominate the social media industry. Instead of taxing users 100% of all their rewards and driving them from the platform to keep their control of governance, they have to encourage new users to stay on the platform, and brag about how happy they are to be creating content on Hive. They have to risk a lot to profit a lot. If they don't Hive will continue to decrease in value, until it follows Golos into the void.