All it does is discourage people from posting things they think will get downvoted even if some people would find it interesting.
I avoid registering at instances that have downvotes disabled. In fact I specifically joined lemmy.zip based on it having downvotes enabled. My question to you is why did you join lemmy.zip knowing that downvotes are enabled? You can see that downvotes are enabled before you make an account here :P
Can’t speak for everyone but for me I rarely actually downvote unless it’s someone doing obvious trolling/baiting. And usually when I see posts in the negative it’s basically a warning not to bother clicking the post.
Downvotes do not federate from lemmy to kbin, so I’m blisfully unaware.
Within kbin dowvotes are rare, because they are public, everyone can see who downvoted.privacy is lost anyway, maybe lemmy should show downvote users too.
I don’t know what other people downvote. Usualy i have far more upvote than downvotes for topic i’m interrested in. I usualy downvote only commend or post that are critical in their opinion or spread misinformation.
Thank you to the people that downvoted this to prove my point.
It’s nothing more than a lazy way to be negative. If you disagree with or don’t like a piece of content then comment as to why you feel that way or simply move on.
With downvotes disabled people are much more likely to comment without fear of being downvoted.
Personally I’d get rid of the whole upvote/downvote system as it’s completely unnecessary.