Whether they intended it this way or not, users will now be worried they're upvoting the "wrong" thing and will be less likely to vote unpopular opinions and political views, just in case.
Arguably in 2020, you should be very careful about expressing any opinion that is in any way unpopular. Or that even could be construed as such.
I feel like people have forgotten what free speech is.
I grew up in a very fundamentalist (Christian) area, so the lack of it feels very familiar.
Wrongthink is becoming a reality.
I imagine this is reactive, since they can't proactively moderate their content. When they do get around to moderating (like checking reported comments), they can then penalize people who promoted the unacceptable content.
I think there should indeed be penalties for upvoting e.g. death threats.
Leaving the content up allows Reddit to track users' engagement and categorize/map their viewpoints.
They are trying to train their user base to moderate content correctly. If it's against the sites policy, users should down-vote the content and report it.