I used multiple social media platforms and I can say in medium confidence that downvotes are almost useless to see for users.
They are made to influence the algorithm and that’s it, if you are really bothered by them it’s because you saw something you were never intended to see.
Reddit try to communicate this by showing you only one number for the total score and they are trying to not show you if your post score became in negative.
Matter of fact, I personally find downvotes pretty refreshing for me because I expect to hear something I don’t know or a passionate criticism on my opinions or posts.
I think what could discourage me from posting is the lack of comments, not the downvotes.
Note: If you are really bothered about downvotes, you can disable showing down votes on the web client and in the mobile clients by changing that option in the settings.
Downvote if you agree.
THIS is the reason.
Downvoting is literally a form of censorship. It’s the virtual equivalent of shouting someone down.
Yeah but if bots are not used and people feel like downvoting it is fair.
Some hot takes deserve to be downvoted at least person gets the idea that opinion is in fact unpopular.
It does get problematic where people down vote in bad faith ie a verifiable fact is provided that they don’t like. Which does happen a lot on here and reddit. People care more about their politcal narrative over fact based analysis.