That's actually surprising to me, because I'd think that down voting whack stuff would make things better overall. What was happening? It's not like people know who it was, or were down votes done out of spite?
I also couldn't help but notice some super conservative instances I've seen have down votes disabled.
My perspective is that without them bad takes get called out, and if the poster is redeemable they can engage with constructive criticism and learn something from the replies
Rather than people downvoting and moving on which can lead to resentment on a posters behalf if they don't understand why a position of theirs may be getting downvoted
Downvotes were disabled because posts that touched on trans issues were routinely downvoted, often by the same users. Those users were purged and downvotes disabled to good effect.
Uninformed posters are given information if they are sincere.
Malicious posters get dunked on before getting banned.