2 small theories as to why this could be:

1. Down vote count is shown. On reddit, a down vote, unless it put total karma from a comment into the negative, was imperceptible. I felt less bad about abusing the functionality and downvoting opinions I disagreed with

2. Lemmy is a lot smaller than Reddit. Whereas on Reddit I might see a low-effort post and go “get this garbage off my feed” on Lemmy I’m like “YEAH! Way to populate my feed!”