It begs the question, why isn't there a curation reward for down voting? It's the same mechanism, requires the same voting power, and adds value to the network by adding your opinion to the consensus. But, it invites getting flagged into the ground and has opportunity cost. The risk/reward is asymmetric which is why the vote buyers will win.
@flagawhale rewards downvoters of our star analyst, pretty cool.
Thanks for speaking out against this, I hope to see more large accounts/influential users doing this as the year progresses.
I'd like to see max bids across the larger bots, that when combined cannot beat the likes of @steemitblog to the top.