I always had mixed feelings about downvoting. On YouTube, dislikes were very useful, on Reddit I feel downvotes are just used to bring down dissenting opinions, regardless of their merit, so in a community like this it makes sense to disable them.

I see this less as a damage to Reddit, and more as an opportunity to diversify, make people aware of the threat of centralised corporate-run platforms, and to build the federated internet alternatives a bit more, to give them momentum.

Already pre-ordered lol