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.
If you’re bothered by social media votes, you need to go outside more.
Social media isn’t real. It’s a poor simulacrum of human interaction. Find real human beings to interact with and whatever they think of you, tell you, or how they treat you in your face matters.
But whatever people become and how they behave once they hide behind a screen and cast simplistic one-bit click-clicks to express complex human feelings and opinions doesn’t.