I'd say that most people don't downvote a whale self-voting because they don't want their own posts to be revenge-downvoted. @haejin wasn't the only one, of course, but he must have destroyed a number of accounts and driven more than a few people off Steem himself.

My hope is that these potential changes, downvotes become a lot more common and the perception changes from a feeling of being personally attacked to an indication that the platform doesn't think the content and rewards line up.

I think these sorts of changes could improve the quality overall... so that's exciting!