It has been almost a year since we disabled downvotes on HC. @Alice@hilariouschaos.com and I are interested to check in and read the room.
In short, downvotes affect how content is displayed here, and certain types of content gets reliably downvoted on Lemmy. For a comparison, look at:
https://hilariouschaos.com/c/Conservatives vs https://lemmy.world/c/Conservatives@hilariouschaos.com
Downvotes are often not used in good faith, and content will be buried at the bottom based on them. However, they are also a valid form of expression and I doubt anyone here is fragile enough to be affected by them.
What are your thoughts?
This is true, but it prevents external downvoting from influencing how posts are displayed locally on the instance (e.g. it prevents mass downvoted posts from being moved down the ranks).