What makes Lemmy interesting is that you can see the combined upvotes and downvotes. It’s not a “net” votes system like some shithole site whose name I will not mention. So I think people can read into the voting system much more than they might have been able to do on some other awful and alienating place.

But, I too disagree with the conspiratorial comment that there are operatives downvoting people on Lemmy, as if that could do anything meaningful. I think the notion that Lemmy is being hacked because the major social media companies are afraid of it, is also very extreme and conspiratorial.

I agree we should support this community and people’s ability to react positively or poorly to a post or comment.