I do think downvotes are universally a terrible idea, but for the part about reposting from xitter, which is the only point you made with any small merit, that is only relevant to post downvotes.
If they got rid of comment downvotes and left the post downvotes, you’d still have enough data to sort. People could still vote for comments strategically.
Comment downvotes are a clear case. If you’re making a valid argument, and talking about the topic, then the only people who would downvote you are raging assholes. Here’s the list of people who voted for my previous comment. As you can see, it’s got the full public list of downvoters. Strange. One of those usernames looks familiar. One might look at that and come to the conclusion that certain people here are not coming to this discussion in an honest manner.
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
I disliked not being able to downvote when I moved to blahaj, but I kinda love it now. If I like the content I upvote, if I dislike it not I either respond (not for them really but for other readers), tag them or block/report. I upvote much more than before now.
If the comment isn’t deserving a block/report, is there any merit to downvote them really? If they are assholes just block/report, and if you just disagree, you can either respond in good faith or ignore them.
You either downvote because you disagree, which is a soft censorship since you are lowering the visibility of the comment you disagree, or you downvote because they are assholes, when you should have blocked/reported them to actually eliminate that comment if it’s actually bad.
Downvotes offer nothing of value.