I have serious doubts about the traffic light thing, any even remotely well designed systems would have interlinks that don’t allow green from multiple directions.

Shutting them down or changing the sequencing, sure, but not multiple greens at once.

rival to WhatsApp that critics say could be used to track users

What other reason could they possibly have for requiring this?

It also begs the question of why they’re even there in the first place.

There’s an argument to be made for banning people who consistently downvote content that’s a good fit for a community.