Honestly I think we need more voting options. Some that I would think would expand on up/down votes:
I like this
I don’t like this but the content is good (think news articles delivering good journalism on bad news)
I don’t like this and don’t want to see more (irrelevant content to you)
I disagree with this post
Content is irrelevant to the community
Content is spam/harmful/etc
That’s obviously not what they would be called, but those are the feelings the votes should convey. And those can be expressed in a simple upvote downvote front to end users as well.
I like this and I don’t like this but the content is good both deliver upvotes
I don’t like this and don’t want to see more doesn’t do either, but tells the algorithm that you don’t want to see that stuff (I don’t even know if any fediverse stuff ranks with an algorithm.
I disagree and content is not relevant both downvote, and content is harmful both downvotes and reports in one action
I’ve seen this kind of cheesy thing as party favors for company Christmas parties. It’s a thing, but it’s almost never the ONLY thing. It’s more likely someone in management saw it on Pinterest and had to incorporate somehow to seem like the fun boss. The. Did some other lousy stuff to make it not seem so bad.