Really disappointing decision. I'm tired of blocking so many niche (to say the least) communities polluting the local feed.

2 additional AI communities blocked since yesterday. What will happen when they will flood the instance?

I've just counted 100 communities I had to block to get a semi interesting "local" feed, in addition to 7 posters who were really not my taste. How many hentai/anime communities are really needed for example? So yes, downvoting makes sense as long as there is a local feed, that's how lemmy works.

And yes, I have witnessed a clear improvement since downvotes are back.

True

Well yes and no. Your are meant to downvote things you don't like to see, that's the whole point of voting.

I'm not downvoting a community but posts. AI community posts are not something I want to see and polute my feed. I block and/or downvote. Lately blocking has been very tiring.

And ... the local feed is back to unusable while the overall quality in subscribed subs is down.

Unfortunately very predictable result.