>>shill You mean troll? We used the downvote to manage trolls. Downvotes help you tell who is an asshole. The only people who were chronicly brigaded on voat were pedophiles and people commenting obscene abusive shit. The people here who are bullied the most are the Qanons. Is this system working for them? People post Q abuse on their sub and they cant vote it down. So in the end, the moderators just banned a bunch of people off their sub. Is *that* free speech? Frankly the front page of posts is just too sluggish, and I finally figured out why. No downvoting. On posts I used to read the comments with the most downvotes before reading the comments in the middle. Sometimes it’s where the best comments are. Its not like people cant read a downvoted comment. There are lots of different ways to deal with bad actors while still preserving the downvote. You could change the weight of a downvote. You could allow people to order posts and comments with or without downvotes. You could ration downvotes per account or ration downvotes directed a a specific user. At the end of the day, downvotes are really useful to me, and this site would be better with them. I feel hamstrung. I feel like my free speech is *hindered* by lack of downvote. *YOU* argued to *me* that Im really much better off with no downvotes cuz reasons. That I find flimsy. Im not. It sucks. I am putting up with it.