There was a time when none of us could downvote because none of us had the points. No one on the whole site. The site functioned fine. Then a few of us got downvotes but a limited number and you had to think if something was really worthy of downvote. It was reserved for false information and spam. Then everyone could downvote, with an unlimited number, the place turned into a circle jerk, the majority of people left, the alexa rank started going down (alexa rank is logorithmic), and the subverses began to come into disuse because every thinks the same so lets just use /v/whatever. Most subverses died at the same time and there is a reason.

Voat thrived while under attack and down half the time, yet we lost people when it was running fine. Something changed that was more damaging than 50% uptime. Downvote restrictions were the best thing to happen to the site because it forces people to consider other peoples opinions and forces you when you disagree to articulate a better position if you want to negate them at all.

The sad thing is that the shills are almost necissary. What we really should have is the ability to invite people with oposing views that don't need to manipulate votes to express them. I'm against shills but we could have opposing views from regular users but we don't. There's a reason. If you are downvoting 30 things a day you are doing more harm than good, just as the shills downvoting 100 things per day are doing more harm than good.