on somewhat of a crusade against downvotes
It's true. For me, to downvote an opinion (and this is what the vast majority of downvoting is) is the virtual equivalent of slapping someone in the face, or telling them to shut up. We don't do it in person, we shouldn't do it virtually.
in places like France and Japan
This is completely wrong.
You talk exclusively about Japan, so even if your anecdata is representative, then my point is not "completely" wrong. Let's begin by using language correctly.
I'll be honest, a quick review of this thread did not clearly reveal who was downvoting who for what. My position, and this other person's, is that downvoting opinions is bad manners and toxic to healthy discussion. If there was genuinely harmful advice there, then OK, downvote away.
(Obviously these days the word "harmful" is thrown around liberally so this probably just puts us back to square one.)
Freedom of speech as an absolute
Of course it's not absolute, where did I say otherwise? Straw man.
paradox of tolerance
This just feels like a fancy reference deployed to back up intolerance.
Exactly my point. The virtual equivalent of taping someone's mouth shut because you happen not to agree with what they say.
Their original staff was a bunch of pretty serious journalists sourced from the BBC.
Similar to: chough
It's a type of bird but good luck knowing how to pronounce it. Ahh, English.
A few years ago I considered learning Greek. Abandoned the plan because Greek has the triple whammy:
So: good luck.
Rigth - and downvotes fixes it? This is lunacy and detrimental to discussion/sharing.
Thank you. But anecdotally, it seems there are few of us who think this. I still don't understand why.
Interesting anecdotes! There's actually a bit of truth in the last one, I believe. Bodily fat is more evenly distributed in Inuits and even Europeans than it is in, say, west Africans.
Egregious straw man, obviously I don't think that.
Says who? You? What if it were you "misunderstanding" this? I know your version is the majority one, but there are plenty of people who agree with me that downvoting is toxic, hence the existence of downvote-free instances.
The big difference, to bore you with what you must already know, is that a downvote affects in most default configs the visibility of the comment. So it's effectively a mild form of censorship, which IMO is not "softer" than a negative reply. And it's certainly not better than than a constructive negative reply, which, believe it or not, is possible to do.
The best argument I have seen for your case is that downvoting provides an off-ramp for potentially sterile conflict. I.e. people hit the downvote button instead of replying with rage. That's a decent pragmatic argument. But whatever reason I personally manage to control my rage at other people's "wrong" opinions, so I don't think it's too much to ask them to do the same.