Downvoting and upvoting are really both about disagreement with rewards.
You do realize this is the narrative they push and that you have become used to correct?
It is not CLEAR at all to new people who use the platform. It is alien to the way the rest of the world works.
So while you see it that way, and a lot of the people that have been around see it that way, that is not the initial impression and without understanding that it can lead to a very bad impression of this platform.
Perhaps, but it isn't just a narrative, it is how this system is designed to work. It has been explained ad nauseum from the beginning of steem. Curation is a combination of upvoting AND downvoting and curation is about distributing rewards. The concept is really pretty straightforward and simple. I'm not sure how else it could work and I'm not sure what else can be done to educate new users. Sure, you can tweak the details but at the end of the day, if those with more HIVE don't have more influence with their votes then how would HIVE have any value? Those with large hive stakes act badly at the peril of that stake becoming worthless. Who wants to drive their own value to nothing? But like I said, not everyone acts rationally and even when they do, not everyone will agree on what is best for hive.
I'm not saying it is perfect but it will never be that. The question is, is it good enough or can it be made to be? I think it is... certainly similar systems that have removed downvotes haven't turned out better so far. The beauty of the platform is that numerous communities with other tokens can be (and have been) built on top of hive with their own tokens and they don't have to work the same way.
Downvoting is a powerplay justified by this its the system bullshit..
This is true. @logiczombie gave a good idea I think as a reply here. I think it may be one of the better ideas I've read. He talks about a method algorand is using to handle things like this.
The quote from logiczombie was somewhere else so I edited my post here and added it to the end.