pretty sure because there’s a bunch of amateur porn communities, and people generally stop posting pics of themselves if they get downvoted.

so, since downvotes literally kill those communities, they added the ability to not display downvotes.

my only gripe with this is, that it’s apparently an instance-wide toggle, which is a bit inconvenient…

I support downvotes too, even if it doesn’t look like it from the post. If it’s used correctly, it’s a really good system.