Why does it exist? I can only tell you what I use it for: For spam, for hate, for racism, for off-topic-stuff, for advertisement, for trolls, for “bad” bots, for people who ignore facts, …
A personal question: How exactly do you differentiate between a post that suggest to destroy country XY and a post of someone who thinks, that topping XY on a Pizza is good, although you don’t like it? IMO, one of these 2 posts is way worse than the other.
Sorry we aren’t saving you’re precious feelings
You don’t hurt my feelings. You hurt the platform (Lemmy).
I just want to make people think about it.
I hope, I did not hurt your feelings… I mean… You couldn’t even accept the existence of my post without downvoting it…
Imagine, you have an opinion and 30% support it and 70% don’t support it. Now, you post it, get 30 likes and 70 dislikes. You total score is now -40. What do you do now? Some people will think “What a stupid platform”. Some people will delete their post. Some people will leave the platform.
by using one of the fundamental features of the website
Ever wondered why Facebook, Twitter, … have no dislike button and why YouTube removed this “fundamental feature”? Because it caused too much negativity which is not good for the platform.