I agree a persons vote is a persons vote, and free speech is a thing that is generally only walked on by governments, however part of the Split from steem was to avoid having a central authority saying what can and can not be said.
In others words a part of Hive is all about free speech, it is how it is advertised and how the platform is being presented to the world as censorship resistant.
Blocking an individual is very difficult, driving a person away from Hive, turning Hive into another Facebook where only authorized type post are allowed is simple, just keep applying large down votes on content that does not fit the agenda of the down voter, reward those that do fit the agenda of the down voter, and soon you have carbon copy brain dead post from everyone because they are to afraid to stand up for what is right.
The majority of my Hive is from posting, voting and commenting rewards, I understand that some people who invested money feel that their opinion has a higher standing than the opinions of people who have only earned their HP via posting, commenting and curating (voting) on post.
I have no expectations of reward, in fact I am extremely surprised by the number of votes received. You may classify my post as a rant or however you wish, it still does not change the fact of the appearance of why the post was down voted.
One of the comments made was that the post was down voted because of a vote farmer, is that not what all curation projects do, they farm post, (look for quality post) to vote on. How long before the competing curation projects begin to snipe at post that were voted on by their competitors as was happening on Steem.
We are in full agreement then. I just checked I have voted many of your past posts. Hopefully there is no element of disagreement in future.
Sometime disagreement is healthy it gives us a new view to examine.
Not rewarding a post through your own account for whatever reason, I suspect few if any would have an issue with. Down-voting with a sum large enough to completely obliterate the up-votes of other members who were of a different opinion, is quite different.