Darkscribes Community

This sounded off, so I checked the docs.

...downvote posts so that they are less likely to be seen.

https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/03-votes-and-ranking.html

It promotes downvoted posts?

As much as I wish votes could be private, obfuscating them would make troll instances harder to notice. I think I hate it the most that the current model gives the illusion of being private, when it isn't.

They aren't shown to users, no, but because votes are federated, they're freely accessible to anyone willing to put in some effort. Set up a server and you'll get access to the data.