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Despite the mantra, the downvote button is pretty universally used as a disagree button on Reddit: I think the main reason the mantra exists is as a push against the clear regular use.
It's a good question to ask what the intended use here is. I vaguely recall a discussion where it was useful to have a button to push as a way to let off steam in response to a post that you dislike: instead of writing an angry retort that drives down the quality of the discussion, you just push your dislike button and move on to a conversation you can productively engage with. I don't know if mods were involved in that discussion or what their thoughts on that philosophy were.
Certainly with our aggressive modding of tone and the community moderation effort, there's a question of whether downvotes meaningfully imply "this shouldn't be on here": that's what the report button and janitor duty are for, and downvotes seem rather redundant with that.
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