If I could choose a social media with no downvoting, I would. It always starts with good intentions and ends up with "this comment pisses me off and rather than reply I'm going to pretend this is a distracting take".

Off-hand downvoting seems to simply double the popularity effect of voting and exacerbate reduction in diversity of opinion. Daily I see flagged comments where I can't think of a single reason why a comment was flagged outside of unpopularity. Daily, posts that flagrantly violate the rules hit the front page. Plus, I can't say the ranking of comments actually does anything positive for the site. Ordering by most responses would likely be as effective. After twenty years of trying to justify scoring commentary I simply give up.

This isn't a commentary on moderation, btw—dang is excellent. this sort of forum is just essentially broken at a community-consensus layer. I have just come to seriously resent downvoting. I don't think it does anything positive for the site and mostly acts as a wet blanket for opinions unorthodox in silicon valley. I certainly don't see it as the bulwark between us and civility.