Binary social feedback systems often run into the same issues - people game the system and people use downvotes to disagree. There's no nuance in positive sentiments either - people conflate upvotes with reputation.

It makes me feel like early experiments with multi-variate moderation deserve a second look. I know that simpler systems generally increase engagement, that's probably why everyone (even Netflix) converged to a simple up / down model. But there might be simple ways to split out the types of feedback we're always worried about conflating. You could add little emoji or stickers below each post that are default grayed out, as an option instead of replying.

One of them could be a "this makes me angry because I disagree"-sad-thunderstorm sticker. Another could be spam. That approach would funnel downvotes into separately bins for spam, low effort, and controversial. That sorting could nudge the crowd into providing much more useful feedback. People wouldn't have to ask why they were downvoted.

Gaming would probably happen, but it'd be more diffuse. If there are multiple positive bins, not everyone is going to be gaming in the same way, they won't be comparable.

Allowing this to be customizable on each subreddit could allow for some really crazy experiments. The unpopular opinion reddit could create a user interface that actually encourages the sort of voting they want, as opposed to constantly complaining that people are voting incorrectly.