Part of it I think is that different places in the world have varying expectations. As do different age groups. You could be talking with a 90 year old liberal woman from New York City who has been on Lemmy for years, or a 16 year old neo-nazi boy from Bangladesh where today is their first experience on any social media site ever. And then one of those two will downvote you, one will upvote you, and you are forbidden to ever know which is which (bc Lemmy does not show that information, despite it theoretically being public).

The downvote relationship is thereby inherently unequal since they know (a little about) who they chose to downvote, while you have no clue who downvoted you and can only guess at the reason(s) why. Which makes this place on social media capricious and unwelcoming, as people sling those around without bothering to offer an explanation. Kudos to helpImTrappedOnline@lemmy.world then for offering one possibility.:-)