I am not downvoting you but your reply here is not very well thought out. Perhaps it is just your presentation.

It reads like a "you should smile more, because I am such a nice man" Reddit-esque position, where you should have all the freedom to do whatever you want - e.g. downvote people - but then others should not have the freedoms to respond to your actions in whatever manner they decide is best for themselves?

Perhaps indeed you would be happier at an instance - such as reddthat.com - that disables downvotes, rather than the freedom-loving anarchist lemmy.dbzer0.com. But that would be YOUR choice, you do not get to make MY choices for me.

Also, you are factually incorrect: downvotes are in fact public information, despite how the web UI client and most apps do not provide an easy means to disclose them. e.g. your last downvote (that I can see) was on July 27 for https://lemmy.sdf.org/comment/21688252. Anyone at any time can see these, with a tool that discloses that info, and it has always been thus, from the very beginning of Lemmy?

Although I hope you choose to think that thought through more deeply: why should anonymous voting (as you seemed to think it was) be allowed, and also end-users prevented from being able to do anything in response to it? How is that in any way "more" (rather than less) free, when one under-class of users is subject to the nonconsensual recipient of e.g. voting barrages - i.e. you get what you want but neither the recipient nor any innocent third-party bystander is free to do the same? In a truly free society, people need to be able to make choices for themselves - which PieFed provides to end-users in that regard, whereas Lemmy provides that choice only to admins and mods.

Do not gloss over that latter point: there is an enormous distinction between an "institutional(-ized)" echo chamber, where the tools or locality themselves enforces it - an example being lemmy.ml that infamously site-wide bans people from communities that they have never even heard of for comments made in unrelated communities, if they are even slightly critical (or not support enough?) of Russia, China, or North Korea - and the choices of the end user. People should be allowed to dislike things, if that is what they desire, and they should not be forced into using 4chan, if they do not choose to, imho. I can see why authoritarians would want to literally force people into viewing content that they did not want to see, but why would freedom-loving people do so?

Again, do as you please, but I ask that you allow me to do the same (even if I only speak on behalf of those who may choose to use those tools, I am a HUGE fan of their existence, in offering that choice to people for them to make, as they please!:-). As an example, perhaps for 350 days of the year I choose to expose myself 100% to people's emotional vomiting, but then for a couple weeks I decide to take a break from (waves hands) all of this that is going on in the world - am I allowed to have desires, and to make that choice? PieFed says: ABSOLUTELY, here you are FREE! Lemmy: lol no bitch, you'll take what a mod decides to offer and like it.

Sorry if I came across too strong here - I recognize that you have been under the oppressive regime of Lemmy and Reddit for so very long, that your position of what "freedom" is (the ability to make choices) is likely very skewed, as mine was too, but the good news is that you do not have to remain under that yoke any longer than you want to: you too are free! Research how PieFed.(social|world|blahaj.zone|ca|zip|au|dk, etc.) works and you will surely stand in awe of it like me! But if not... then that's okay too, I support your right to do as you please - though I would hope that you would offer the same consideration to others too?