Why are they disallowed? And more importantly, why is this not transparent in the pinned post about Lemmy.one as a rule?
I was blindsided by this when I saw another user mention it, and while I enjoy Lemmy.one very much, I’m considering moving on because of this. I rarely, very rarely, down-vote, but at times it’s handy to push down misinformation or adverse content.
It feels a bit too much like YouTube and the removal of the dislike button to me. What are other’s thoughts?
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It feels a bit too much like YouTube and the removal of the dislike button to me.
That was a crucially different situation. On Youtube, users didn’t control communities or make the rules, so disliking, even though it had many issues, was the only way to discourage bad content. Things are different here. Individual users have much more control so downvotes aren’t needed like they were on Youtube. You don’t lose much except the downsides.
There’s been an influx of downvote brigading across instances, it’s a way to protect users from getting instantly buried.
Or maybe the admins just don’t want downvotes.
Downvotes seem to only spread negativity and discourage contribution. as others have said, you can just report posts if they’re breaking the rules, so I don’t really get the point of downvotes anyway. Better posts will rise above it even when downvotes are disabled.
Downvotes are strictly unnecessary. If you see something that breaks the rules you can report it. (I imagine that covers “adverse content.”) If you want to downrank something, just upvote something that’s better than it. That has the exact same effect as a downvote.
In Reddit only time I downvoted was when somebody was clearly trolling and trying to get a reaction.
Btw. In Reddit I witnessed couple of times suspiciously quick downvote influxes in political discussions. Could bot accounts be used to achieve this, to bury opposing arguments with ton of downvotes?
Downvoting is a very standard bots or troll farm tool.
Wouldn’t you just be giving the trolls what they want?
I prefer the lack of downvotes, personally. As others have said, they usually just turned into a pile-on, and trolls/bigots are better dealt with by reports and moderation.
I figured it out when I tried to downvote a post with racist language and opinion. In cases like that I would like the ability to downvote, but I understand how it can be abused. I ended up just reporting the post because that’s probably the better way to take out the trash. The mods at lemmy.world probably didn’t notice, but it made me feel a little better.
@TheSageRedneck I mean, this is one of the main goals with the disabled downvotes in the first place actually, which makes me think the system is working. I’d much prefer actual racist posts be reported rather than merely downvoted.
That makes sense and works for me. I’m easy. I really appreciate you hosting lemmy.one!
Your message is similar to the one where I learned about the restriction. I can imagine this will occur more over time.
Downvote devolved into a Fuck You button. That’s all it is anymore. So if you wanna say Fuck You, just reply with it. If a post is actually problematic, report it.
While I tend to disagree with your assessment of the situation of this…I can understand your stance
It is possible that people can and do abuse the downvote button. I actually intentionally chose this instance because of that. It prevents the trolls and hateful people from having an easy thing to organize around and abuse silently.
I’d rather people comment if they have a disagreement with my words anyways…because it’s not anonymous. I can address their concerns if they are valid and ignore them if not.
While I do miss the ability to downvote things; it does improve things when used correctly. However if a userbase is simply too juvenile to use it correctly; it quickly becomes a senseless signal that’s better off ignored.
I genuinely wish Lemmy had a “Hide” button though. There are posts I feel are deeply problematic that another moderator may not.
If people could simply behave themselves and use things in the proper way, it would be a much nicer Internet. Unfortunately, we have to take people as they come and account for how the preponderance of users are going to act.
