Didn't Ned speak in favor of vote selling in the past?

Indeed. IIRC he called it an interesting business model or something to to that effect.

That, my friend, was a catastrophic fail of both leadership and ethics imo. He could have readily nipped that problem in the bud long ago.

Tbh it is one of the single greatest reservations in investing in the platform. @ned giving vote selling a nod and now their kind are basically running the ship.

I don't know what kind of cognitive dissonance some of these stakeholder must be experiencing. They have been selling votes for their financial interest instead of fostering an economy that encourages meaningful contribution. Now they suddenly think 50/50 is going to change the dynamic?

No. The incentives will still favor vote predictors / curation snipers over people actually evaluating content.

And free downvotes? Don't get me started. The most vocal advocate for this is one that self votes his alts all the time. Now they want free downvotes? Why? So they can downvote competitors bid bot posts and not lose the opportunity those precious proxy self vote opportunities? Or maybe they just want to downvote actually trash to virtue signal while proxy their trash.

Bunch of damn hypocrites if you ask me.