If this is the way #newsteem is going to be then that is a pretty sad day for the blockchain.
Unfortunately the #newsteem has cleaned the platform of spammer and also cured bid bots of paid votes, but giving free downvotes to anyone it kind of ignited people towards using downvotes more.
No wonder investors are not attracted towards Steem. This platform sometimes looks like a kids playground with that much childish behavior.
Keep on steeming!
This I think is the major downside here. While I know that SBI is not the main draw for most investors (no presence off of Steem, not even a web-site yet, although we're working on it), these attacks are motivated by a hostility to delegation-linked upvoting.
Realistically, the long-term equilibrium of 25% DV pool is that most posts will have downvotes from 5-10% for one reason or another. SBI uses their stake creatively to allocate part of the reward pool in a way that takes power away from whales, so it's natural for it to be attacked a little earlier.
The most unfortunate part of the whole thing is that the attacker has no idea how SBI works and setup their downvotes in a way that hurts the wrong people. Most ardent SBI supporters (the people that attacker would want to stop from using SBI) have large enough SBI votes that this 'tax' is merely a nuisance, while most people that have their whole SBI vote value canceled out are people that were sponsored by others for various reasons. At least half of accounts that receive SBI upvotes were supported by others and have never sent SBI any STEEM at all.
#sbi-skip
What is your stance on Backscratching?
I'm not familiar with the term.