I heard downvotes expressed a consensus that a comment or post does not hold value in the context of that community. It's not "shut up" but more "well that's not relevant".

[–] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Unsure if you're even being serious here. The relevancy of the subject matter is not in question. The issue at hand is that people are downvoting opinions. Forgive my directness but if an opinion does not hold value in the context of the community, that seems to me just a waffly way of saying that the opinion is not welcome in the community without actually saying it.

[–] lemmyingly@lemm.ee 1 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately people don't see voting systems as a method to highlight the relavency of a contribution. They see it as a like/dislike system, and so I see as shut up signal used by most because downvoting a contribution buries it to the bottom where few people will see it.

If it was used for relevancy and quaility then communities would be self regulating by the users. I believe Reddit's guidelines state(s/d) it's voting system was meant to be for relevancy, even though most people use it as a like/dislike system.