I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree
that was technically wrong, wasn’t it. downvotes were not intended to be a sign of having a different opinion. but of marking posts that were negative or not adding to the discussion in any way.
I obviously know that this ideal does not reflect reality in any way.
But honestly, this is why I think, over all, social media has probably been a net negative for society at large and political/social discourse. Discussions became binary. Upvote vs Downvote. Like vs Dislike. Nuance seems to be less important. It is all about quick snips and outrage these days.
This behavior of just quickly downvoting differing opinions into oblivion (assuming of course it isn’t a hateful opinion) discourages discourse, and it discourages people to voice even mildly differing opinions. Which leads to echo chambers and this weird public opinion of averages. That in many cases are plain wrong. Almost everyone encounters this when a discussion suddenly revolves around a topic they are well-versed on - much more than Joe average. Then consensus settles on this very mid, tepid kind-of right, but not really.