I am predicting that before the company goes bankrupt, Reddit will remove downvotes in an effort to prevent users from expressing negative sentiment. This happened a few years ago on YouTube after YouTube Rewind became the world’s most disliked video, several years in a row. This was embarrassing for the company because it revealed the discontent of the userbase.
Since expressing discontent is bad for their reputation, and manually removing dislikes is a time consuming task, removing the downvote button altogether for the sake of “preventing bullying” is likely the next step for Reddit.
Possibly. But some Lemmy instances actually do that and they have their reasons. Guess it does depend on what you want the social to be. On some discord is part of the culture, elsewhere it’s about showcasing and showing support.
Or it can just be about showing a friendly rubber mask of a face spread over a soulless corporate shell, of course