I will admit that debating freely is not a universal concept. I did include the come to express themselves piece for that reason.

I can appreciate that in many countries debating openly can be dangerous.

This dates back to 2017 when the #spanish tag was created and the only project that voted in Spanish banned topics related to politics, religion, and controversy.

I am not surprised this goes back so far. It does seem like users who have been here the longest tend to have really strong opinions about downvotes where as newer users don't really understand what the big deal is. I have heard stories of "downvote wars" and those days seemed to have left its mark on a lot of people.