My instance has downvoting enabled, but I’ve learned that some other instances do not. Do the vote totals look different to users on different instances? It seems like some users on instances that don’t allow downvoting are unaware that it’s not the same lemmy-wide. It would be pretty confusing for them to see their vote go down.
I looked at the relevant code while checking how the voting API works, and part of it is that it checks if the instance has downvoting enabled. So, it doesn’t bypass it because the instance wouldn’t accept the downvote.