Yea, .ml had defederated with it, but any instance can if they want.

Not always true, instances can defederate lemvotes so that it doesn’t function I believe.

As others have said, I think it should be opt in instead of opt out, but it is probably good to have as an option.

However, if the intent is to improve mental health - I would recommend making it an option to hide all votes in their entirety. One can hide their down votes, but that may just change some peoples perspective from “high number of down votes” to “low number of up votes” which to them may be functionally the same as far as mental health is concerned. Therefore I think that it would be good to have the option for each/both.

For me this would have another benefit as well - it would allow me to think about and respond to all content in a more objective and honest manner.

True.

Lol, the user doesn’t seem to realize that if everywhere you go and comment, if absolutely everyone is an asshole, then maybe it’s you that’s the problem…

Definitely. Everyone on Lemmy at this time seems very reasonable as well and I am finding that the discussion is typically of a much higher quality than on Reddit, so for those who don’t usually engage, try it, it’s definitely worth a shot here.