Comment by martin-t
14 hours ago
Who knows? Votes should be public, otherwise this is an easy way to make opinions less visible without having to provide any justification.
Sometimes very similar comments in favor of protecting producers get upvotes on one post and downvotes on another. I also started seeing a pattern - even if a particular comment ends up downvoted in the end, there's usually a few upvotes first, sometimes with comments, then downvotes quickly to get it negative and there's never any comments justifying it and few if any comments after it gets negative. This indicates downvoting works well to silence the discussion.
When you think about it, it really doesn't make much difference if it's a downvote-a-bot or not.
If it acts like a bot, walks like a bot, and quacks like a bot, it might as well be a bot.
Nobody's comments are read only by humans any more.