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.
I didn't say it was or say anything that sounds like I said it was, so I'm a bit confused as to where you are coming from here.
That's exactly what I said in the comment you are replying to here, but in different words.
I suggest rethinking the maths involved, I've already made clear that ALL accounts benefit from the downvoting - that is by design - but the 'benefit' of downvoting is stake weighted, meaning that the biggest accounts have the most to gain in terms of pure 'revenue' increases.
Biggest accounts stand to gain the same percentage as the small accounts. And yes. It's common sense, if one owns more stake, they stand a chance to earn more, and lose more.
So what's the problem?
The gains from downvoting are small compared the perceived risk of downvoting someone and starting a flag war with someone who can do you more harm than you can do to them. Therefore, the vast majority of downvotes with any value at all come from a few whales with high enough stake and reputation that they feel untouchable in their downvoting. This, combined with the actual amounts gained by downvoting being significant for whales means that it becomes financially worth their time and any 'risk' to go around with downvote quotas, aiming to downvote as much as possible.
Once you have enough stake, you can possibly make enough money from the downvoting to cover the time cost required to do the downvoting. This has the combined effect of netting payouts, plus allowing you to remove those ideologically opposed to you - who might reduce your ability to spread ideas that the others disprove - thus protecting your own content rewards too. Finally, all of this accumulates to more reputation and more power.
And then?