Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
So if we don’t like it . . . don’t . . downvote it?
Isn’t that, y’know, what the downvote’s for?
That’s cornfusing.
No? The votes are for what contributes (or not) to a conversation, and deepens the dialogue.
That’s why it’s infuriating when someone is downvoted when they have an unpopular but well-structured opinion, while a one-liner joke gets a million upvotes.
No, that’s never what downvotes were for. It’s not a ‘disagree’ button. It’s just that Reddit got a bit toxic as it grew and the masses started treating it that way.