Huge thanks for the advice! Hopefully I will not encounter such problem but if ever I encountered it I am now aware not to be upset, so steem on!

I think it's something about the fork that happened with Hive and those days of contrast, especially reading the names of the witnesses.

You are absolutely right that the negative vote does not affect our reward since these users have very little SP, but something if I have noticed since it happened to me, when I had 1 day to expire a publication I received a negative vote from an account I only had 3 Sp and I don't understand why my reward dropped a few cents. by logic these should not happen but did happen.

thank you for this very important information, hopefully this can be useful for many people who will know what kind of mistake is like this.

Nice write up, I wish I don't come across them because am new here. Wouldn't want anything to discourage me. Thanks for the write up once again

Recientemente me pasó en una publicación, un usuario me dio voto negativo pero este usuario si tiene un SP bastante alto De 17.500. Y me sale en el steemworld -0.40

Gee, thanks friend @stef1. It is good that you clarify this, I hope this does not happen to me, or to anyone else, but in any case it is good to know. Because it is sad that someone who strives to do their publication well has a negative vote, because it is an energy and a time that is used, to try to do something respectable. Thanks for sharing this post.

**Уважаемый @stef1.** 
Совсем недавно у меня появился ученик, вот его пост https://steemit.com/hive-185836/@pegarissimo/following-a-tutorial-to-make-portraits он очень старается, я хотел мотивировать его из собственных средств но к большому сожалению перевел все средства в  STEEM POWER не могли бы вы номинировать его пост в Программу поддержки сообщества «Wold of xpilar», голосование за аккаунт @booming. Заранее благодарю за себя и за него.

I think they purposely created the accounts for downvoting, my some are fake accounts.

Ah yes, the obligatory *"mosquito downvoters."*

My husband knows more about this than I do, but it seems it all dates back to sometime in early 2018 where there were some *"whale wars"* and one particular person got *really angry* at not being free to engage in a particular type of toxic bot behavior — something to do with "reward pool rape" as I recall — and retaliated by creating literally *thousands* of accounts and using the initial 15SP Steemit delegation to put downvotes *everywhere.* 

As I understood, it's all completely automated. The three witnesses voted for were chosen only because they used to send 0.001 Steem as a "thank you" for voting for their witness, which would all be funnelled back to a central account. 

The point, evidently, was *not* to actually affect people's *earnings,* but to contribute to the *failure* of Steemit by focusing mostly on newer accounts with lower SP would wouldn't understand why they'd been downvoted, feel demoralized and quit.

I'll ask @denmarkguy to come look at your post and fill in the gaps, if you like.

Thanks for all your work and Bright Blessings to you and @myskye!

i think it's from some of the hive inner circle tbh, thats my guess.

Really interesanting. That people Is so rare. Thanks for sharing this.

Jika saya dapat downvote. Saya fikir mereka tidak suka dengan my post. Seperti yang disebutkan tadi, jika komunikasi kita bagus dan kita aktif, harusnya kita tidak dapat downvote. Tq for sharing 😀🙏

Downvote is a poorly thought-out tool.  In my opinion it is not fair to give a "downvote" without giving a justification. Your downvote research is very interesting, you have been very precise.  You worked like a real detective

Dear @stef1

Interesting choice of topic. 

Recently our Project.hope community had a very stresful experience. @acidyo (Which is managing ocdb account) together with few other friends decided to target our entire community.

Every single day, for already over a month they used large amount of voting power to downvote pretty much anyone who dared to post within PH. They found some false reason to justify their actions and within a month time - our members received over 350mln hp in downvotes!
Not 1 million. Not even 10 mln. 350 mln .... could you possibly imagine level of hostility we've experienced there?

> You just became a victim of a user who simply wants to spoil our day or maybe to wake up our curiosity.

That's also a good point. Receiving small downvote could bring some attention and make us curious.

Yours, Piotr

Dear @Stef1.
I too, for some time, wanted to make a post on this topic. I am visited almost daily by these downvoters and therefore I am intrigued.  I too have lined up dozens of names of these accounts and I too have seen that they have the 3 Witnesses you mentioned in common.Witnesses well known for their activities on Steemit and who are now, thankfully, elsewhere.  I think this downvotes is a way of certain characters to remind everyone that they can always come back and take matters into their own hands.
A sort of notice in the mafia mold, we will say in Italy. They are the usual bullying.
Unfortunately, even though many things have improved on Steemit, strange things happen. And not just these downvotes. Ciao Ciao