Yes Americans participate, but the person who posted 'politics," is something we all have in common I believe was saying it as in all humans need air, prefer to not drown, appreciate love and have politics in there life. Whether they choose to ignore the politics or not.

So politics. Like when I see people arguing about whether to keep the king around

Do you come from a country with no politics?

I disagree with the decrease in discussion quality. Votes inherently create echo chambers. We have low effort conversations where we all downvote someone whose opinion is different and it makes them feel whatever kind of way, and they act accordingly. Whether it be leave, lash out, or discuss. If it wasn’t built in and someone wouldn’t already know I would say it is a bad idea, but since it will exist, making it so people learn to be civil is probably best.

It is information provided to the instance runners, mods, and other fedeverse platforms such as mastodon. It inherently tracks such to know if a user has previously liked/up voted an entry.

So you may have a conversation on here, and some users will know who is downvoting, some will only know who’s upcoming, and some will know none