Because Admin Gaylord wants to hide the conversation. No, you damn well haven't properly explained it. I, for one, fully stand behind "it's not the disagree button". On Voat I constantly ranted about abuse of downvotes. Furthermore on Voat I never downvoted anything. But downvoting for other reasons is perfectly legitimate. A shitpost should be downvoted. A super weak argument can be downvote-worthy. A meanspirited insult isn't worth most users time to read. And extremely repetitive posts can also be downvote-worthy.* Now we have a downvote button that is in actual use a "flag post" button. At BEST that's a poor interface choice. If each post can be flagged, that's fine. Put a "flag post" button for abusive or illegal content. As for the rest of the legitimate reasons (and yes there are legitimate reasons) people downvote, remove the button entirely if you're deadset on not having it used at all. If you insist on this poor user interface at least put in the FAQ not that it's "not a disagree button" but that it is, in fact a "flag post" button and should ONLY be used for abusive content. You can't have it both ways. *yeah yeah, you're so clever to think to point out this is also a redundant post