Never mattered to me and I don't like to use them. I only downvote in extreme instances where like I don't anybody really wants to see that. Usually people just being mean with swears or slurs or such. Its kinda the same with upvotes where I feel wow. I can't see anyone not wanting to see this its so amazing or oddly in some cases its where my only comment would be like yeah I feel the same or such and Im a bit to lazy to write that out. See Im here for conversation, communication, collaboration, and such. I actually try to make it a point to not comment on links where the person who posted does not put in a body starting the conversation. With the fediverse I have come to the conclusion that I will no longer give the internet special consideration with interaction and am going to treat it like meatspace. Shoving a magazine turned to the page of an article is going to be treated as rude. Let me know why you think this means anything or is worth my attention. Anywho the funny thing is now I upvote most things but that is just because of this interaction with settings that take things out of my feed if I interact with things and I don't want to arbitrarily downvote. And this is the problem with up/downvotes as some folks will ignore the whole thing, some will be super picky like I am normally, and some will upvote practically everything for some reason and maybe some troll likes who downvote almost everything and every behavior up, down, inbetween, and sideways of that. Personally I avoid feed views that use the up/down votes.