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Why would you downvote something?

Sometimes people are mean about React and they must be punished.

And sometimes people say things that are unsubstantial, deliberately obtuse, and don't really contribute to a useful discussion.

When I disagree as a matter of opinion, I don’t have an urge to downvote. Sometimes I respond when I’m moved to, otherwise, like you, I just keep perusing.

Fortunately I don’t see many comments that are so wrong that I can say they are in fact false, but it does happen. In those cases, I think a downvote is valuable.

Silly replies (like you might get on many Reddit subs) get downvotes. But so do comments that contain factually wrong information. Particularly if the author uses the falsehoods to attempt to convince.

These posts typically have a top reply comment correcting the parent.

The downs help people reduce or avoid being influenced by even glancing at information that is no good.