I don’t see how downvotes help filter content. It makes sense at first, but either people are sorting content by New, in which case votes do not matter, or they are sorting by Top and will get only the “good” content.

Think quantitatively. Ideally "meh" content should still be easier to see than the bad one.

lemmynsfw

In their situation (as admins of an instance where downvotes were consistently misused), I agree with their decision. However I still think something needs to be done on a software level.

Again, I’ve never seen users there complaining about being unable to filter good from bad because they can’t downvote.

Note this is prone to selection bias.

I’ve seen posts and comments with -100 votes often get lots of interaction from people who can’t stop themselves from arguing with a troll. Sometimes there’s only 1 or 2 comments under a post so the score doesn’t even change its visibility at all.

If it wasn't downvoted, you probably would've seen way more interaction with it.

(Additionally I think people who argue with trolls should get 1d~3d bans. Just a "stop it, you baka!". Including myself. But that's an aside.)

The way to say “I disagree!” is with the reply button!

I mentioned this in the other comment, but basically: if the reason you disagree is due to some issue in the content (e.g. it's an oversimplification, assumption, or plain bullshit), it takes more effort to address it in your reply than to generate that content with the issue. As such a quick-and-dirty way to voice "hey, something wrong with this" is necessary, even if some people abuse it.