I really wanna know the answer to the downbears. For such an insignificant back-end change, I think removing them did a lot to shift site culture for the better.
hexbear
Now that the old Hexbear fork has been officially abandoned, this community will be used as a space for meta-discussion on the site itself.
I believe the way it works is that on lemmygrad if this comment got 400 downvotes it would show up at (time of writing) -395, but anyone viewing from hexbear would still see +5
I think removing them did a lot to shift site culture for the better.
What is better about it, though?
They didn't really help filter out low-effort content and we're mostly used as an "I disagree" button. Removing them meant it took a little bit of effort to dogpile someone and the site seemed much friendly after they were removed.
Of course, it means we can no longer down vote wreckers and trolls to hide their comments, but the mods usually ban them pretty fast anyways ( to our mods )