What you mentioned about Circle Jerking can happen inadvertently due to sheer human connections and friendships.

Yeah and those are all great, after all it's a social media platform so no one is gonna judge someone for voting on their friends. There are though unfortunately "friends" that are only friends cause they own a similar amount of stake and enjoy getting the ROI and attention of trending posts no matter the quality/quantity.

I don't see it making a whole lot of difference, do you?

I think the downvote pool will make a big difference, I was not sure about it being that high to begin with (25%) but considering those that don't want to use it won't I think it could be a good number to fight all of what users believe is abuse of the pool.

As @tarazkp said though, there's so many different variables in effect here, the best thing we can do is try.