Downvotes are dang near a placebo here. Yes, technically they do influence the way posts and comments are sorted, depending on the user.

However, the average Lemmy user seems to vote emotionally and often vindictively. The good news is, it practically doesn’t matter. It’s just an impotent misuse of the platform.

The users that know how to (and want to) make the platform work for them will instead leverage the block system. I’ve got a large assortment of users, communities, and instances blocked in order to curate my experience. And in doing so, I find myself using downvotes pretty sparingly.