You're probably right.

As embarrassingly as it sounds, I feel less worry about posting anything now than before. I've been on GOG much longer than my account creation date would indicate and I can tell it wasn't as bad even a few years back. Sure there was Tauto, probably the first victim of mass downvotes, but you generally could post anything without worrying about getting targeted too much. Recently though, it got really crazy with completely legitimate posts getting downvoted to hell and back simply because the poster had negative rep, sometimes without even that.

Anyway I guess I just wish they deleted rep system completely, both upvotes and downvotes.