I can’t say I never downvote anyone but I get into these comment chains from time to time where really no matter what I post whoever I’m talking to downvotes every response but I generally shy away from downvoting even things I dislike. I don’t want to fall into an echo chamber where all I see are only the things I agree with.
I don’t think that’s true.
Lemmy uses vote counts to decide what content to show, just like reddit. The details are described here:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/contributors/07-ranking-algo.html
The main difference between lemmy and reddit regarding votes, that I’m aware of, is that the votes a user receives are not collated and shown on their profile.