EDIT: Maybe just for comments? Downvoats may still help with content quality control
There is some good in the concept of downvoating however in practice we've seen and continue to see the primary use a downvoat button will be an "I disagree with this person" button.
Removing downvoating entirely will not negatively impact the site. Misinformation will still be called out and not upvoated, spammers should be reported(hoping for that report button one day), ass holes will be called out, irrelevant posts and comments will be ignored/receive very few if any upvoats or get reported.
Removing the downvoat ability would also deal with any future issues with brigades, which was a big issue on that other place.
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[–] Dissident_Aggressor ago
Upvote brigades are still a thing. Get a bunch of nutters or false flag dickasses upvoting their zany lizardman conspiracies to the top of every comments section. Not to mention the waves of spammers from SRS or wherever. That said, I'm all for putting up stricter limits on the numbers of downvoats you can use per day, or per # of upvoats, or something similar. They shouldn't be dropped all willy-nilly. Would be interesting to tie a downvoat to a comment, come to think of it. Like, you have to at least reply with something. Would mess with the "top comment" algorithm potentially, though, I'm not sure if that runs purely on the voating or also on the comments.