When I first found out it was an interesting concept that I was pretty neutral on but the more I engage/lurk with the community the more I enjoy it.

I generally don’t post/comment much on Reddit because I tend to be extremely sincere and that’s not always well received. Usually I don’t get much hate, but what I do get is a lot of non-interaction mixed with downvotes. And it’s just really discouraging when I’m just trying to share my thoughts.

But having no downvotes here is so nice because I’m not afraid that I’m going to get silenced into oblivion. Either people will actually engage with me (and maybe disagree, but in a meaningful way), or they’ll move on and not randomly share their disdain via downvoting.

It’s such a small change but makes a big difference. I bet a lot of people feel the same as me - it’s more comfortable to engage here.

  •  awfulsystems   ( @awfulsystems@beehaw.org ) English
    41•1 year ago

    I’ve already seen (and reported) some anti-trans bigotry on here, but it had more upvotes than the posts calling it out for what it was because the bigotry was of the “polite and pretending to be well-researched” variety

    without downvotes as a tool against crap like that, what have we got? is it against our instance’s “be nice” policy to tell nazi punks to fuck off?

    •  alyaza [they/she]   ( @alyaza@beehaw.org ) English
      29•1 year ago

      without downvotes as a tool against crap like that, what have we got? is it against our instance’s “be nice” policy to tell nazi punks to fuck off?

      nope! we’re not going to ban for telling a TERF or nazi to eat shit or whatever. we as admins do try to be nice where possible, but you as a user really aren’t obligated to be because that’s dumb lol. you can also report it to us and in general we dispatch users who are like that as possible (although sidenote: if it’s a post off-instance and you report it, unless the user is really, really bad we probably won’t do anything immediately because we just can’t keep an eye on every possible bad actor.)

      •  meteorswarm   ( @meteorswarm@beehaw.org ) English
        9•1 year ago

        Thanks for clarifying!

        I’ve been super impressed by moderation so far. This morning I saw a post justifying sexism because of Bible verses and by the time I’d mustered a reply it was gone, to my delight.

      •  jrubal1462   ( @jrubal1462@vlemmy.net ) English
        3•1 year ago

        That’s nice to see. When I first saw the policy of having no downvotes, I wondered if that would leave no recourse against trolls and scumbags, but I guess strong moderation is the key.

        I probably wouldn’t want the entire internet to be so strongly moderated, but I’m really glad there are some popular places that are. Thanks for doing that.