With the exception of when a small group of whales was downvoting posts because they had some other whales upvoting them over a certain amount... or whatever their reason was for their 'experiment', I have rarely seen large stakeholders downvoting maliciously.
Even that is a stretch to call that malicious because the whales intent was to try to distribute the reward pool more.. it just had the unintended consequences of hitting some people who had rarely had a good potential payout and they lost some or all of it.
I have seen them take down some nasty, lying scammers which is a public service.
I can think of one person who was being regularly downvoted and some behind the scenes discussion ended that. The person being downvoted wasn't a bad dude.. just the two didn't know each other and had a misunderstanding. Crap like that happens.
As long as you behave like a reasonable person, respect others and don't try to scam, you can pretty much post what you want.
I think most of the activity of the other kind was many months ago now. I do think it is improving.
Perhaps I spoke too soon. :) Though I've been waiting to be down vote dogpiled. I finally had it happen.
I don't recognize the names that downvoted you.. who they heck are they and what is their problem?
A down vote trail... bot action. I'll provide more info in the future.