I don’t subscribe to the idea that tweets or message boards or ideas or ‘silence’ is violence.
The upvote system was invented to put relevant discussion to the top, and hide irrelevant discussion. What people have done with it is use it as a like/dislike button.
If that’s what it was, that’s what it would be called. Like Facebook, which has an actual ‘like’ button
But I do think people who even interact with the system are losers. That’s my personal, anecdotal, opinion of them