I think that downvotes became so heavily used as a disagree button because they were linked to visibility and, especially in political forums, it was a way of burying your opponent's good arguments and then you could promote the weaker arguments. I sincerely believe that it's some poor fucker's job to go through and do this, although the whole chatGPT stuff means they're going to find themselves out of work soon.
So I see you've got 8 downvotes for saying this, that's because some people have a stupid personal rule that says if someone complains about downvotes then they should be automatically downvoted. This is a stupid redditism. Downvote me as well if you want but know that here we can see who you are if we decide we actually give a shit.
If you're able to follow instructions then you can set up a server. For the purposes of this conversation then, as things stand, anybody is allowed to set up a server and then an instance and then see that data.
Another thing to note is that downvotes are, in effect, public. One hopes that this will have a chilling effect upon individuals and groups who have been gaming the karma/visibility system over on reddit for years.
Can you give an example?
I sometimes will write in a 'telling a funny story' style that is a little more ornate than everyday speech to make it more comic in tone throughout.