That article was the main one I read before my other response to you and formed most of my opinions. I was surprised the article itself was better and more helpful than I'd have thought from the source it came from. The blame is on the Lemmy users, not you, for that. They're using Lemmy wrong, not you.

People have a bad habit of downvoting communities they see in the All feed, when they should either just block the community or scroll passed it.

Fwiw, I'm on an instance that doesn't permit and can't see downvotes and it's pretty great. Makes the whole lemmy experience a lil better