> Downvotes don't mean censorship.

Good question. I think it does if downvotes result in inability to express an opinion (as opposed to simply having downvotes shown).

If downvotes are used to suppress freedoms then downvoting is a means of censorship. In other words, there is no big difference between prohibiting something by one person (dictatorship) or by 10 persons (collective dictatorship) (if it is not prohibited by law of course).

The problem is that downvoting alone doesn't really tell you anything meaningful other than someone didn't like your post. You can say something completely factual and logical but just because someone didn't like your tone, they can turn your post invisible. This does not promote healthy discourse. This also means that for any topic that is super controversial, the thing that determines whether the post gets seen or not is whether a majority group is able to downvote the post into oblivion early enough. Because once a post is greyed out, very few people are going to read it at that point and it will stay grey. At the very least, downvoting should require providing reasoning for the downvote so people can defend their argument.

What's censorship and what is not seems to always change depending on convenience https://i.imgur.com/xTCKWNM.jpg