the problem with not having downvotes is when people don’t have the energy to voice their displeasure with something, they’re entirely robbed of their voice. The majority of users on any given platform would much rather just downvote something and move on, and it’s important that they have the ability to do so. Because if someone posts some dumb shit but no one’s got the energy to dispute them, the poster is never forced to realize that they said something stupid.
Removing downvotes could be argued as being ableist, in this regard. Some people just don’t have the mental energy to type out paragraphs to explain why something hurts them or is wrong. Some people simply can’t type, or use a voice to text. These users deserve a voice, no matter how small.
Go look at a place like hexbear and you’ll see why downvotes are important. People can post the most ridiculous liberal and imperialist or deviationist nonsense crap there and because there are no downvotes at most people use the inline image-memes at them and move on but that doesn’t hide their text or its position in the thread and in fact engagement of that kind often makes it look more important and stand out and if they’re engaging in liberalism or counterrevolutionary behavior that has wide support (among lurkers, trolls, etc) they could be upvoted to the top of a thread while actual effort replies are scattered among several comments none of which may get as many upvotes.
It allows a community to police itself, to silence problematic behavior without mods, to mark someone’s comment or post as bad without having to explain why. This is helpful to both seasoned comrades and newcomers who might be misled by something that on a site without downvotes (and full of people too tired to argue with every potential troll) has 9 upvotes but on a downvote enabled site would have 9 upvotes and 40 downvotes and thus be -31.
Downvotes are the answer to bad faith gish galloping debaters, trolls, and operatives seeking to disrupt.
That being said they can be used by those same groups which is why I think having a system that analyzes the signal to noise of downvote/upvotes, looks for those who consistently downvote things the rest of the community upvotes and and starts weighting their downvotes to only count every fifth time or something like that. But it’s a minor issue as long as you have good moderation and an active community.
Edit: You could remove downvotes and prevent the infiltration of liberalism and deviation by having very vicious moderation and bannings tossed out for so much as glancing at others wrong too many times BUT downvotes are better because they’re soft moderation.
They don’t remove someone with one bad take (or a few) permanently from a community but allow people to grow while showing that they’re clearly at odds with the community which may cause a reassessment of their incorrect ideas (peer pressure from the community writ large versus a faceless moderator who is easily dismissed as a fed, an uneducated person, a singular person with an agenda, etc). You still need bannings but it’s kind of a soft moderation system that nudges posters rather than going straight to banning and it gives legitimacy to the moderators. If someone has been downvoted repeatedly and is then banned, well the community clearly stands behind the mods in that they’ve repeatedly shown this person is posting bad.
If the mods just go around banning people for their interpretation of behavior that would normally be resolved via downvoting then you get drama, claims of persecution, of moderator misconduct, of witch hunts, threats that the punished represent some portion of the community and must be given voice to air their grievances (something which cannot be debunked as without downvotes you can’t know how much of the community agrees vs disagrees). Which can also spiral into actual moderator abuse and excess because of the latitude granted and the perceived mandate to keep spaces clean of any whiff of liberalism, reaction, or ultra-ism which would normally be kept in check with downvotes.
So, are downvotes perfect? No. But I think they’re better than the alternative of not having them.
Regarding the majority of users acting a specific way, I question how conducive that is to a true social space. That behavior almost entirely exists because of the way social media is structured and it’s not really social as much as there is no way for me offline to downvote someone. I might make a facial expression, but I’ve also assigned an identity to the displeasure that can continue into an interaction for better or worse. When I deface a flyer, I can be spotted and engaged. Downvoting has no equivalent and I wonder how much a numerical tally of anonymous opinion (almost like we are having a plebiscite every time someone speaks) is healthy. It can in fact silence people in a new way, probably part of what influenced a lack of total karma in Lemmy’s design akin to part of what is wrong with Reddit.
Regarding ableism, I feel like that’s a stretch. I don’t know that I can agree with any right to comment on social media. If people want to run shitholes, they can and do, and people leave them for other communities which results in division that doesn’t always exist offline in other social communities with less permanent insight (comments last “forever” and can be searched on the fly). It’s like saying I have any right to exist in the house of someone who hates me. I don’t.
Additionally, as pointed out above: downvoting is anonymous. I’m reluctant to assign agency of voice in that because of how flippantly it can be done and how unimportant it is regarded, unlike voting for presidents. You can recall a downvote; you cannot do so with a ballot. I am also not getting a real perspective out of it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the livepolling they do during some debates on-screen, but it turns them into a spectacle. I feel like the same occurs here and Reddit with dunking and disbelief. I generally like to avoid that sort of thing. I want to hear from a disabled person to actually believe I have seen their voice in use, not a temporary feeling that can go as far as misunderstanding to hating one detail strongly.
EDIT: Also man, I hate to say this because I generally feel like it’s low-hanging fruit, but “stupid” and “dumb” are ableist terms. I just find it ironic to have to jump on the front of defending against ableist accusations when I’m seeing that in the same breath. It’s silly as all hell. I feel like ableism here is a crutch to lean on. Anyone, not just the disabled, can be so mentally exhausted as to not want to engage, so just…don’t. Hell, I am even sometimes. I’d wager to say we all agree on more things than not, so if something is small enough to not delete the comment or ban someone but egregious enough to evoke a response? It’s probably not that bad at the end of the day.
It feels disproportionate, and I want to clarify this particularly because you’re a mod and I am not, and I’m being told my position is ableist while you’re actually using ableist terms. People have made minor agreement with me and haven’t gotten downvoted, but every comment I’ve made in this thread has been downvoted twice while your comment is upvoted more times than mine has votes period. This shows more people here engage than not (as in, they tend to avoid the downvote in favor of a comment), yet downvoting is still generally used for less prosocial purposes. It feels disproportionate because it is and no one else is regarding the actual terms in context of the accusation. It’s a method for shutting down discussion, not a useful tool.
the problem with not having downvotes is when people don’t have the energy to voice their displeasure with something, they’re entirely robbed of their voice. The majority of users on any given platform would much rather just downvote something and move on, and it’s important that they have the ability to do so. Because if someone posts some dumb shit but no one’s got the energy to dispute them, the poster is never forced to realize that they said something stupid.
Removing downvotes could be argued as being ableist, in this regard. Some people just don’t have the mental energy to type out paragraphs to explain why something hurts them or is wrong. Some people simply can’t type, or use a voice to text. These users deserve a voice, no matter how small.
Hmm, I see what you mean, thanks for your thoughts on this
This is very much why I’m in favor of downvotes.
Go look at a place like hexbear and you’ll see why downvotes are important. People can post the most ridiculous liberal and imperialist or deviationist nonsense crap there and because there are no downvotes at most people use the inline image-memes at them and move on but that doesn’t hide their text or its position in the thread and in fact engagement of that kind often makes it look more important and stand out and if they’re engaging in liberalism or counterrevolutionary behavior that has wide support (among lurkers, trolls, etc) they could be upvoted to the top of a thread while actual effort replies are scattered among several comments none of which may get as many upvotes.
It allows a community to police itself, to silence problematic behavior without mods, to mark someone’s comment or post as bad without having to explain why. This is helpful to both seasoned comrades and newcomers who might be misled by something that on a site without downvotes (and full of people too tired to argue with every potential troll) has 9 upvotes but on a downvote enabled site would have 9 upvotes and 40 downvotes and thus be -31.
Downvotes are the answer to bad faith gish galloping debaters, trolls, and operatives seeking to disrupt.
That being said they can be used by those same groups which is why I think having a system that analyzes the signal to noise of downvote/upvotes, looks for those who consistently downvote things the rest of the community upvotes and and starts weighting their downvotes to only count every fifth time or something like that. But it’s a minor issue as long as you have good moderation and an active community.
Edit: You could remove downvotes and prevent the infiltration of liberalism and deviation by having very vicious moderation and bannings tossed out for so much as glancing at others wrong too many times BUT downvotes are better because they’re soft moderation.
They don’t remove someone with one bad take (or a few) permanently from a community but allow people to grow while showing that they’re clearly at odds with the community which may cause a reassessment of their incorrect ideas (peer pressure from the community writ large versus a faceless moderator who is easily dismissed as a fed, an uneducated person, a singular person with an agenda, etc). You still need bannings but it’s kind of a soft moderation system that nudges posters rather than going straight to banning and it gives legitimacy to the moderators. If someone has been downvoted repeatedly and is then banned, well the community clearly stands behind the mods in that they’ve repeatedly shown this person is posting bad.
If the mods just go around banning people for their interpretation of behavior that would normally be resolved via downvoting then you get drama, claims of persecution, of moderator misconduct, of witch hunts, threats that the punished represent some portion of the community and must be given voice to air their grievances (something which cannot be debunked as without downvotes you can’t know how much of the community agrees vs disagrees). Which can also spiral into actual moderator abuse and excess because of the latitude granted and the perceived mandate to keep spaces clean of any whiff of liberalism, reaction, or ultra-ism which would normally be kept in check with downvotes.
So, are downvotes perfect? No. But I think they’re better than the alternative of not having them.
Regarding the majority of users acting a specific way, I question how conducive that is to a true social space. That behavior almost entirely exists because of the way social media is structured and it’s not really social as much as there is no way for me offline to downvote someone. I might make a facial expression, but I’ve also assigned an identity to the displeasure that can continue into an interaction for better or worse. When I deface a flyer, I can be spotted and engaged. Downvoting has no equivalent and I wonder how much a numerical tally of anonymous opinion (almost like we are having a plebiscite every time someone speaks) is healthy. It can in fact silence people in a new way, probably part of what influenced a lack of total karma in Lemmy’s design akin to part of what is wrong with Reddit.
Regarding ableism, I feel like that’s a stretch. I don’t know that I can agree with any right to comment on social media. If people want to run shitholes, they can and do, and people leave them for other communities which results in division that doesn’t always exist offline in other social communities with less permanent insight (comments last “forever” and can be searched on the fly). It’s like saying I have any right to exist in the house of someone who hates me. I don’t.
Additionally, as pointed out above: downvoting is anonymous. I’m reluctant to assign agency of voice in that because of how flippantly it can be done and how unimportant it is regarded, unlike voting for presidents. You can recall a downvote; you cannot do so with a ballot. I am also not getting a real perspective out of it. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the livepolling they do during some debates on-screen, but it turns them into a spectacle. I feel like the same occurs here and Reddit with dunking and disbelief. I generally like to avoid that sort of thing. I want to hear from a disabled person to actually believe I have seen their voice in use, not a temporary feeling that can go as far as misunderstanding to hating one detail strongly.
EDIT: Also man, I hate to say this because I generally feel like it’s low-hanging fruit, but “stupid” and “dumb” are ableist terms. I just find it ironic to have to jump on the front of defending against ableist accusations when I’m seeing that in the same breath. It’s silly as all hell. I feel like ableism here is a crutch to lean on. Anyone, not just the disabled, can be so mentally exhausted as to not want to engage, so just…don’t. Hell, I am even sometimes. I’d wager to say we all agree on more things than not, so if something is small enough to not delete the comment or ban someone but egregious enough to evoke a response? It’s probably not that bad at the end of the day.
It feels disproportionate, and I want to clarify this particularly because you’re a mod and I am not, and I’m being told my position is ableist while you’re actually using ableist terms. People have made minor agreement with me and haven’t gotten downvoted, but every comment I’ve made in this thread has been downvoted twice while your comment is upvoted more times than mine has votes period. This shows more people here engage than not (as in, they tend to avoid the downvote in favor of a comment), yet downvoting is still generally used for less prosocial purposes. It feels disproportionate because it is and no one else is regarding the actual terms in context of the accusation. It’s a method for shutting down discussion, not a useful tool.