You should be proud of your accomplishment, er... sacrifice. 50 upvotes or however much is a small treasure to these people. Bright’s day would have been ruined over the drop in stock, were he around to show it.
If you hadn’t have vandalized the article, your complaints of it on Discord and other places would have done nothing. Not one downvote. You would have been censored anywhere it potentially had relevance to anyone who cares. No one would have noticed you. The only reason anyone did was the disciplinary response. S_D_Locke carries a hoard of vote mimics with him in any decision or comment left on the site. He is someone who wields his influence effectively and mostly wisely.
The site members reengaged the article to criticize it only because of Shaggy, who only noticed because of the splash you caused by being discipline-worthy. Believe it hat you want to about it, but thems are the sad facts.