I do not really like downvotes but I see it as a necessary evil.
Simply because in economics, the rational man is expected to be profit maximising and thus, there will always be people trying to game the system. That's what downvotes are for and how I will wield mine.
Go ahead and self upvote (within reason) or upvote controversial content - that's all fine by my own standards. But when it comes to bot farms/bad actors out to maximise extraction from the ecosystem, I'm adding my (albeit small) downvote into the mix.
It is absolutely a necessary tool for responding to spam and other blatant abuses. Like any other feature here, including comment spam and plagiarized posts, it can be abused, but misuse by some does not negate the purpose for everyone else.
I think even referring to a downvote as “evil” is way out of line.
You are being rational and just speaking your mind with emotion.
But someone sees “attack” or “evil” and then they use it to justify terrible on chain actions.
I’m not even sure downvotes is necessary but it’s a functionality and not using it because of the way people have framed downvotes is a mistake in my opinion.
Thanks for the last part about downvoting extractors. That's usually where I stand with some exceptions.