Hardfork 21 introduces free down votes. That is to say the first several downvotes an account casts will no longer reduce that account's voting power. Another way of saying this is that one particular disincentive to casting a downvote has been removed.

Image courtesy Christian Dorn from Pixabay

The idea here, I suppose, is that people will more readily express their disapproval of whatever they happen to disapprove of―spam, NSFW, competing opinions, vote selling, photos of underseasoned steaks. What have you.

The question to my mind is whether users have really been refraining from downvotes that they really, really wanted to cast but didn't based on a cost-benefit analysis that included the impact on their voting mana?

So here's the poll:

Once you can downvote a few times daily without impacting your ability to earn curation rewards will you downvote more, less or about the same?

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I will downvote about the same and currently I never downvote or only rarely. (60.0%) 9 / 15 I will downvote more and currently I never downvote or only rarely. (20.0%) 3 / 15 I will downvote less and currently I never downvote or only rarely. (13.33%) 2 / 15 I will downvote about the same and currently I downvote quite a lot. (6.67%) 1 / 15