First, they get quite a bit of financial gains from these downvotes, as all rewards removed from posts by downvotes are added back to the rewards pool, thus given to the top posts on trending (and their curators - who happen to be the downvoters)
I'm really confused by all this talk of knights and evil and covering sides? What the heck are you talking about?
What he has created is a tool that allows anyone to track downvotes easily - something that most certainly hasn't been easy to find for the last 6 years.
I could be wrong but I don't think that's how it works, as you describe it. The downvote would deduct potential rewards from what was downvoted then disperse them indiscriminately across all posts including posts that had been downvoted, comments including yours as we speak, post with only one upvote nowhere near trending and so on. One cannot direct where the downvoted rewards go after the rewards have been downvoted. It's equally dispersed across the entirety of the platform. It's not directed at specific posts or wallets.
So if someone is out there downvoting away instances of reward farming low effort drivel or asinine behavior, that money goes back to everyone, not just those who downvote. Equal percentage across the board.
Those with largest capacity as upvoters are also the largest downvoters, by default. So the rewards that the largest downvotes return to the pool are highly likely to be redirected toward the largest upvoters - who are also the downvoters in enough cases for this to be relevant.
Sure, those with more stake stand a chance to earn more with their upvotes. Percentage stays the same across the board. Upvotes also affect the balancing act, pulling rewards away from posts with pending potential rewards yet to be paid out.
Like one big spider web. Pressing the vote button, up or down, is like a bug landing on the web. That action sends ripples throughout the entire web, shaking a little bit of dust off here; dust that has to settle anyway and eventually lands, there.
See what I'm sayin?
All the votes affect the outcome for everyone - yes. However, since downvotes are 'free', in the sense that they don't have any cost to the downvoter, they can either be used as intended - to prevent spam/plagiarism/bots - or they can be used to downvote purely to maximise personal gain. This is a huge flaw in the system and yet it has always been hand waived away as being too insignificant to be relevant by whales (who are big downvoters). Marky claimed recently (just before HiveAlive went live) that no-one makes more than 0.1% gains from downvoting - yet HiveAlive has shown that the actual amount is closer to 4%-5%. If you are a whale that is trying to maximise your returns, an extra 5% is surely attractive! This also applies to non whales, but their impact is very small compared to the whale downvotes, in the sense that whale downvotes offer a massively centralised reduction in rewards for whoever is on the receiving end. If you have a quota of downvoting to get through, it's much more efficient to just nuke a few accounts that you invent reasons to justify your actions (to yourself) for.
In simple terms - downvote quotas being set by some here may be the issue.
Maybe just show me the gains. Pick a name from those downvoting and show me the 4-5% gain.
The 4-5% boosts the entire reward pool, which is then paid out on a stake weighted basis. It isn't possible to show exactly how much each whale benefits since we don't know which accounts might be their sockpuppets, churning out content behind the scenes. However, since it is very clear that stakeholders MUST vote in order to protect their investments, however they do that is being boosted by 4-5%.
The 4-5% isn't deducted from the reward pool. That's 4-5% being spread around the 100% indiscriminately and equally based on percentage. It's spread around, like I said, and reaches an equilibrium.
If that's the case, why act so confident? If you want to convince me this is a problem, I'll need proof. Surely you'd have evidence before making a claim so show me at least ONE account benefitting from what you see is a problem.