How much SP does that whale have in total in your estimation? Is he capable of following through on his threat? Is this potentially a battle that should be fought on a larger community level to force some of the largest investors or miners to rather curate than post shit in order to farm their own votes? Why does not someone with > 500,000 HP understand that positive price action due to better user retention and encouragement of good content creators is a massively more effective way to increase the value of their own holdings than some pitiful farming rewards "earned" at a low price level? If any such stakeholder does not understand this matter, is there enough power available collectively to rein that person in - for their own good.
I've seen large stakeholders who must have bought STEEM probably with Bitcoin when STEEM was > $1 become very bitter at the price action during the bear market. Some of them may be trying to recoup their losses by farming. But that's a losing proposition. The only way forward is to focus on Hive fulfilling the original value proposition of Steem.
He wouldn't destroy it, but he can seriously influence delegator returns. Which is unfortunate timing, as we just started marketing curangel as an investment to the outside world.
Much more worrying to me is the prospect of a war being fought out on the back of all the people we vote. Our 2-3 downvotes a day may hurt retention (not that I'm aware of anyone stopping what they do because of us), when that escalates there would be 70-100 downvotes on small users, wonder what that'd do. And the whale in question is known to escalate. I don't really want to risk that...
Well, maybe downvoting can be left to certain groups dedicated to it and a lighter approach to it could be taken by @curangel. Good thing is that it's always possible to revise one's approach.
I agree. Aside from the delegator returns, there is a more serious impact on on the people you upvote. If he follows your upvotes and wipes them out (or takes more) it hurts the very people you are trying to help. Having someone come along with a large downvote on a quality post really hurts content creators (it has a bigger - negative - impact on motivation than a large upvote).