They ended up removing the downvotes because the mods there spent all their time inspecting who left the downvotes and it resulted in several extremely embarrassing meltdowns. You can imagine how ludicrous this was, as people don’t always downvote stuff they have some vehement ideological disagreement with. They might just not like spam, or feel like a bit of an asshole towards a person (I mean, nobody ever followed reddiquette anyways, so that’s fine).
While I agree with removing downvotes in principle, as I almost never vote on anything in anticipation of when certain people finally add “RSS feeds of what you have upvoted, saved, & downvoted” as a feature, the principle being explained here by others is not the real explanation.
This might sound harmless but the site mods (I get it, it’s funny to go full censorship on people who sideye your friends) have actually spent several years claiming that democratic party Zionists are leftists, & painting anyone who disagrees with them as a chud. They still maintain that burning the Israeli flag is vaguely antisemitic (which is itself antisemitic, as Israel is not intrinsically tied to the fate of all practicing Jews, that’s ethnonationalism dressed up with woke.) Just be normal and hang out.
If you’re bewildered by the flag thing, consider an American who gets mad at you for burning the US flag. You’re like “wtf man I was looking at pictures from Vietnam and I’m pissed off”. They’re like, I totally agree with you maan, Vietnam was fuucked, especially how US soldiers had to go there, but you’re setting ALL 50 STATES ON FIRE. You can’t just burn the US flag because it physically represents America. You’re actually burning indigenous land.
This is how they explain that burning the Israeli flag is antisemitic. Because they slapped a star of david on it, you’re burning the jews. In fact, isn’t it kind of antisemitic to attack a nation flying this flag, thereby setting it on fire? 🤔🧐