As a individual on Steem with a personal account and personal stake, as long as ROI does not matter to you, you might feel free to downvote, but abstaining from downvotes is just something any business has to do though.

Hive account@heiditravels delegated her SP to some curation service, and then she had a bunch of complaints from her viewers about her SP contributing to downvotes toward them so she undelegated and apologized. Downvotes don't work for true professionals on Steem, just people here as a hobby will use downvotes long-term.

Why? Because business goes better the more you avoid conflict. This is why advertisers are concerned about what Youtubers say in their videos if their ads are in the video. Businesses want to make money and that means pissing off as few people as possible.

Downvotes are bad for business long-term. The investor argument that you are helping the network does not matter, because you're doing too much harm to your individual reputation. The idea that people will get use to downvotes is childish, it won't happen, and businesses will always be anti-downvote because it creates divisions.

Sorry, but this path people are taking Steem down is anti-business, which will only lead to Steem not becoming a hugely adopted platform.