Sorry pal I’m gonna have to give you a downvote for this, lol.

Downvotes are incredibly valid. They mean “not only do I not approve of this content, I think it’s actively bad”. Simply not upvoting and moving on is the shrug of the internet. I probably give out 50x the upvotes as I do downvotes, but when I do serve one up it’s usually because the comment outright promotes misinformation.

Look at the current state of YouTube sans downvotes. You used to be able to look at the ratio to tell if a video wasn’t even worth looking at. Now, you see oh, 100k people liked this. But what if 200k disliked it and it’s actually hot garbage? Oh, we’ll never know!

Removing downvotes is just an attempt to drive “engagement” over quality, part of the downward slide of the internet.

Note: I didn’t actually give you the downvote, lol. A valid discussion or debate should not earn a downvote. I don’t agree with your take, but it’s not trash.