People still use them as a weapon, scare tactic, bullying. Anti-social behavior on a social network will be difficult to normalize. I believe in honest curation.

I fully agree and I do not condone such behavior. For the victims of serious abuse, healing upvotes are something that should be considered. On Steem, one TA "specialist" did a lot of damage by abusively downvoting people.

If it takes 100 accounts to raise $15 and one to knock it down $15, that's one speaking for 100 people, negating their efforts, saying they were wrong.

The issue in that is stake distribution. There are many ways to remedy that including reward earners powering up their rewards, buying more HIVE and powering up, and other stakeholders taking a look at the situation and using their votes to correct it. I recall one instance where someone expressed disagreement on how HDF funds were being distributed in a post that got downvoted heavily by one large stakeholder. The upvoters doubled down their efforts and the post ended up earning reasonably well considering how controversial it was.