Running my own instance using AWS's free tier for now, though I think I'll keep it after. It makes scaling soo easy and simple if my instance ever takes off. Which I don't know if it ever will lol. The reason why I even created one is to actually use my domain name for something rather than keep paying for a domain that I'll never use for anything.
I personally feel like restricting downvotes is cutting off a vital voice that people may have so that's why in my instance I have them enabled. If there's something that the community disagrees with I feel like the community should be able to vote on that rather than only allowing upvotes and not allowing everyone to voice their proper opinion on something.
I’m using a t2.micro instance which I think is best for a small instance like mine, but I think there are other options you can look into with different RAM and CPU.