As the creator of a major subreddit, I can say that the collective masses can absolutely not be swayed from whatever the zeitgeist is… ESPECIALLY if the action is secret.
So, with that: since Lemmy is free and open source, I think bringing that discussion and possibly systemic solutions there (GitHub?) Would be the most practical way to affect tangible change.
Part of the solution might be to just accept that behaviour, and instead focous on how to mitigate the practical effects. User downvotes without corresponding comments maybe don’t effect the “net upvottedness”. Maybe sorting options that don’t include downvoting at all. If the concern is how naked downvotes affect visibility, maybe the resolution is in the visibility algorithms themselves.