Yesterday I was reading this post by 
The use of negative-voting to keep people from abusing the system leverages the crab mentality that many people have when it is perceived that one individual is profiting at the expense of everyone else. While crab mentality normally refers to short-sighted people keeping good people down, it is also what allows good people to keep bad people down. The only “problem” with crab mentality is when people wrongly believe someone is profiting at everyone else'sexpense.
The 'crab mentality' refers to a metaphor of crabs in a bucket pulling back any who try to climb out.
That post above has comments from people saying they never downvote. It is a personal choice, but it depends on what sort of future you want Steem to have. If we allow abuse to continue unchecked it will just get worse.
The reason I downvote is to reduce the rewards of posts who I think are abusing the concept of Steem, which is to reward good content. In some cases a post that is okay may be massively over-rewarded by buying votes. Those rewards come from a pool that is shared by us all and if some are taking more than their share then the rest get less.
By the way, I do not accept the argument that buying votes guarantees more 'exposure'. I see posts with $50 or more of paid votes and no comments apart from those of the bots saying they voted. Maybe if you get on the first screen of Trending then you will get a few more comments, but most experienced users do not go there looking for worthy posts. That is done more via re-steems and building connecting by engaging in comments.
A prime example of abusing the Steem platform is the user 
He does this on his comments too.
My own voting power is a bit low at the moment or I would have downvoted all of these.
He must have hundreds of dollars in pending rewards from these posts and comments. He has other accounts such as 
Now you may be worried about downvoting in case of retaliation, but he only has a few cents of voting power across his accounts and he tends to use it up so it has even less effect. He keeps his liquid Steem to buy votes and I expect he will sell it the moment the price goes up.
What is interesing is that he has bought a lot of Steem. He recently added about another 16,000 that has been moved back and forth between some of his accounts for no obvious reason. If he were to power this up he could downvote around 30c, but I doubt he will do this. He has downvoted me many times to little effect.
There is plenty of strange behaviour on his account. He will sometimes send Steem to those bots that still support him with messages in Chinese instead of a URL. Of course these get rejected and it is a shame he gets full refunds. Then there is this, which is a text he often puts in replies to my comments where I say I downvoted him.
He has been blacklisted by at least three vote sellers, but unforunately some still accept his money. It looks like he is intent on continuing this behaviour despite losing lots of rewards. I can only take cents, but the good people of the @SteemFlagRewards community have been dealing with him and taking dollars away.
So can you see why I suggest you send him some downvotes? Of course that has a cost to you in lost curation rewards and you cannot vote on others (or yourself) as much, but by reducing his rewards you make more available.
By acting as part of #SteemFlagRewards you can downvote whilst being rewarded. Previously this was via votes from the main account on comments left to say you flagged, but it has recently changed. Now you do not have to once the 
There is a lot of abuse of Steem that is harder to tackle due to scale and the risk of real retaliation, but this (ab)user can be used as an example to others that the community will deal with those who harm the platform. This may discourage others from trying the same thing. That said, there are lots of others doing similar things and many are being dealt with by SFR. I just choose to concentrate my limited efforts on one of the worst. If hundred of others join the fight then we can have a bigger impact. Even one downvote per day can help.
Many of us have done very well from Steem and I think we have some responsibility to give something back to make it a better place. I want to see it reach its potential and this is part of my effort to that end. Of course I am also helping small accounts to grow at the same time via 
Will you join the cause?
The geeky guitarist and facilitator of the 10K Minnows Project.
- I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
- Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
- Get some passive income with Mannabase
- Get paid to search at Presearch
- Battle for cards on Steem Monsters
- I have Steem accounts to give away to worthy people!