Hello, I also have been getting downvoted by malicious actors, some people on Hive have a political agenda to quiet adversarial minds on Hive, if he posted about covid or anything that deviated from mainstream narratives it is very likely that the downvote mafia on Hive targeted him. One ways to combat this is to support witness gtg's proposal #0. Let your friend know that he is not alone and many people have been impacted by downvoting on Hive. I encourage him to come back and post even more because while he may feel as if it is a fruitless effort, to stop posting is giving these cowards exactly what they want. Downvotes can be done for a variety of different reasons and most of them aren't because they dislike the content, some may feel it is overvalued and downvoting adds rewards back to the reward pool to spread out the rewards among Hive users posting. However, there is small powerful group of bad actors who seek to downvote just because they don't like the content or feel like throwing their weight around, this small group has one goal, to weed adversarial voices they don't agree with out of the Hive ecosystem.

Please tell your friend to come back and continue his post there are far more people on Hive that appreciate truth tellers than there are people who seek to silence them.

Peace and love
-Joziah