I used multiple social media platforms and I can say in medium confidence that downvotes are almost useless to see for users.
They are made to influence the algorithm and that’s it, if you are really bothered by them it’s because you saw something you were never intended to see.
Reddit try to communicate this by showing you only one number for the total score and they are trying to not show you if your post score became in negative.
Matter of fact, I personally find downvotes pretty refreshing for me because I expect to hear something I don’t know or a passionate criticism on my opinions or posts.
I think what could discourage me from posting is the lack of comments, not the downvotes.
Note: If you are really bothered about downvotes, you can disable showing down votes on the web client and in the mobile clients by changing that option in the settings.
Downvote if you agree.
Create a browser extension like return YouTube dislike, but for Lemmy.
Pay someone to downvote my post.
Get outside your house at night and scream “I hate you Joker!”, hopefully the local news will cover it and then I would hear it and I would know that was you.
Fourth option.
I mean it was very ironic to put “Downvote if you agree” in there while downvotes are disabled
;)