Every comment in this post got 1 downvote for literally no reason. Like... it's a post about cats, nothing controversial at all. Do people just go around downvoting every post? Why?
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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It's a hangover from Reddit culture. People think that the ALL page should be curated for them, not realising that it's for everyone and that downvotes are for wrong content, not what they consider bad content in respects to their personal taste.
A downvote isn't "I don't think this should be here". It's just "I don't like this", don't agree, thing it's bad/wrong, whatever. Up/downvote systems work under the process of the wisdom of the crowd, and as a result, works under the assumption that while the ways in which people use these tools and the reasons may be different, having a simply up/downvote system means they'll average out into something more useful. It doesn't work all the time of course, but it does work generally.
I think you're wrong. Downvotes are literally meant to be to provide a community powered mechanism to push irrelevant content into out of view, as per the community's purpose. They are not going to be used as part of an algorithm to push more relevant content to you specifically. Of course, that's not how a lot of people end up using them, so whether it's an effective mechanism is another question.
Meanwhile, I'm on an instance that doesn't federate downvotes, so they don't affect ranking here, maybe for the better?