Usually it’s a “you’re an asshole” button.

When content is low quality, posted to the wrong community (usually intentionally), trolls. Basically anything that I feel shouldn’t exist. The content that I believe takes value from people’s lives instead of adding it. If I find content that I dislike but believe adds value to other people, well that’s what the block/ban features are for.

These days, mostly for reddit mirror bots.

I dunno what people’s obsession is with Lululemon, and I really don’t care, but that fucking bot alone is like 5% of lemmy/all, these days.

For me it’s “this comment shouldn’t exist” button. Sometimes it’s because it makes the experience of reading worse, regardless of the content of the comment. Sometimes it’s because the content is so bad.
But i don’t just downvote something if I just disagree with it, it should be bad

The downvote button is the disagree button

Bad faith arguments or inflammatory nonsense. We can disagree and I’ll upvote if you’re actually speaking in good faith.

Pretty much any form of, “Whataboutism” gets downvoted. No one was talking about C, why are you acting indignant about C when people were discussing A and B, you know?

I disagree, so I downvoted you. Guess that’s my answer.

It’s not a “disagree” button, but it is a “you’re wrong” button. They could be wrong by trolling, spreading misinformation, spamming, being disingenuous, refusing to understand the topic or engage in good faith… None of those contribute to the conversation.

Silly OP, I don’t even have a downvote button (idk if it’s the instance I’m in but I don’t particularly mind ngl)

Whatever I want.

I have no obligation to downvote consistently.

I do what I want!

To add a little colour to my front page.

“Disagree”/“its bad”/“eww”

To order a delicious sorbet.

“This”

Not your post, but anything that’s just an upvote in the form of a comment.

Also anything that’s egregious misinformation or bad faith posting.

Or anything that’s just spammy or bonkers crazy. I’ve blocked more people in my 1-ish year on Lemmy than I had in something like 10 years on Reddit…it definitely feels like Lemmy is the haven for Reddit refugees, including those who got banned for not really understanding how to engage in this type of space.

Also, any post that really doesn’t fit the community. Like NoStupidQuestions posts that aren’t questions or are really just AITA or DAE (social validation) posts in disguise.

I know that sounds like a lot, but for the most part, I don’t vote on things. I upvote most posts that are cool/interesting enough to get me to go to the source or read through the comments, as well as any good comments. And pretty much any comment that engages in discussion with my own comments without being annoying or rude, lol