Hello Dear Friend, I would like to thank you for writing this post. It is as if you and I share a the same inner thoughts, the way you verbalised it is actually far better that I could have. The imagery you created is spot on, as someone who originated from Africa and was constantly having to be worried for myself or my family that we could be attacked at any point, I echo the sentiments that Steem should not go that way.

Putting downvote power in the hands of people who have money but may not be qualified to be objective or to contain their emotions is highly dangerous. I am on Steem today because of the positive sentiment I received from whales in the beginning for my ideas and not because I was met with a hostile downvote, I certainly would not be.

I understand the need to prevent abuse and think it has its place, but the same as the law prevents vigilantism, there should be rather one accountable body that to the best of their ability evaluates posts against properly defined criteria and not just give a gun with daily free bullets to everyone who has an opinion of who should be shot at for whatever reason they personally decide.

If you look at the latest buildteam post, we have started to give away 20% of post rewards by setting @null or @steem.dao as beneficiary, this is likely to give users some reprieve from being downvoted and some immunity when promoting their posts, but not guaranteed, especially if post quality is dubious.

However one member of our team members who relies on income from translating a weekly a weekly post for us had this to say:

i feel like we are giving away our meal to the bullies at school while doing this

Also my team reports that alot of users are leaving Steem, I personally fear this will become a policed state, I came to Steem because it embodied the spirit of freedom which is what crypto is all about, I now feel that it will become a place where bullying will become rampant and many lives will be destroyed, I now live in a country that has very low violence but workplace bullying is very high, which leads to emotional damage and high suicide rates, this is a massive social problem and by going this route of empowering whales with downvotes without evaluating their character and ideals to wield such downvotes is highly dangerous.

I will continue to monitor the situation and receive feedback from users such as yourself.