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. 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. 101 honest folks, just using the platform and their stake, wiped away. Meanwhile there are instances of abuse going unchecked. The reason why Steem at the time hardforked to offer free downvotes was because abuse was running rampant and nobody could stop it without losing potential profits. They were not interested in cleaning the place up because they were not interested in losing potential profits. So now why should these content creators who are doing nothing wrong be interested in losing potential profits? I wrote quite a few thoughts on this subject recently. Often the actual content creator's perspective is ignored in all this. I've noticed most of the time, if someone disagrees with a downvote, they're labelled whiners, regardless. It'll be tough to normalize these things when only one side gets to express their view.