I haven’t experienced downvotes myself as well, but I’ve seen people being downvoted for dubious reasons, there are pretty wild stories out there, if you dig a little bit.
Just today I’ve noticed that a post by one of my favorite people here got downvoted by an account that is financed by one of the top witnesses. It was neither spam nor plagiarism, and no reason for downvoting has been given. The post had quite a large payout though.

I’m not a fan of the downvote function, I don’t think a community actually needs that and it can too easily been misused to censor people.
Hive is not the impeccable place I thought it to be in the beginning, but I’m super grateful for everything it has given me and I love the good people here so much.
I’ll still be here, but I did get myself a Blurt account recently, I guess I’ll just give it a try and see how the vibe is over there :)