I use a Misskey platform to interact with the Fediverse as a whole (and especially with Lemmy and the threadiverse), among other reasons, purposefully because I can't cast downvotes onto others' contents. Even the "👎" emoji reaction, if I wanted to use it, doesn't count as a downvote from Lemmy's perspective.

Yeah, some things I see make me want to downvote, but I prefer commenting and replying as to why I'm disagreeing with that content, instead of treating human beings and their content as numeric computer variables (and as a former programmer, I'm well aware of how communication among living beings can't be replaced by zeros and ones).

The same applies in the other direction: I'm fond of people who disagree with me by actually stating what/why they disagree, instead of clicking a numeric button. If you ever disagreed with me and took the effort to try and tell me what you disagreed with and why, my sincere thanks for being a human being towards another human being!

After all, we're gathering on a set of social platforms whose main feature is discussion board and, IMHO, numbers can't possibly contribute to a discussion, especially open-ended discussions and artistic expression... if social interaction is to be replaced with numeric reactions, communication and content creation becomes pointless: why should I, as a content creator, spend the effort (sometimes I spend literal hours on the same reply/post/comment) composing something if the reaction will be numeric?

!nostupidquestions@lemmy.world