At this time there doesn't seem to be such a feature
If you were lucky enough to be browsing the site at around 10am UTC you might have seen a down message!
I did notice that downtime for a bit, I guess I'm checking this website too much haha.
the dev is strong on the philosophy of keeping it free and open source. So it won't ever require subscription, which also partly what allowed reddit to give the exemption as a 'non commercial' app. As for how long it may last, I don't know, they were worried about this too, that a lot of 3rd party users would migrate to this app and reddit may change their mind.
I check reddit sometimes using RedReader which got an exemption from the API policies https://www.reddit.com/r/RedReader/comments/145du4j/update_4_redreader_granted_noncommercial/
Still though, who knows how long that may last, I can't imagine using reddit without 3rd party apps otherwise. I'm loving Lemmy so far and even RedReader seemed to have plans to support other platforms including Lemmy someday, so that's exciting.
I rarely downvote unless someone is being a literal idiot, and I like to see those comments being down and hidden with downvotes instead of letting them stand out like a normal comment. But that's for the really stupid comments.
There still are other valid scenarios like disagreeing on an opinion, helps to see where the majority are. (Imagine people not wanting downvotes so they downvote this post. haha)
Personally I'd advocate for downvotes to be there but it's also not the end of the world to not have them.
well now it's truly abandoned, isn't it?