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.

  • I think it also fundamentally changes the conversation. Valid but “unpopular” comments can’t get buried in downvotes. The voting system on Reddit was based on a sane logic that totally neglected to consider how people actually behave… the idea of up and down votes to crowd-source relevance and quality of content makes sense, but all anyone did was use it as an agree / disagree button which broke the idea entirely.

  • 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 ) 
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      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.)

      • 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.

      • 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.

  • It’s kind of unrelated but I think the lack of downvotes pairs well with lemmy’s lack of vote counting (a.k.a karma score). Counting your internet points always feels so performative to me and kinda ruins the point of upvotes in the first place.

    •  ampcold   ( @ampcold@beehaw.org ) 
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      211 year ago

      I think that will turn out to be really important in the long run. The gamification aspect of karma score let to posts and comments leaning more to the quick and funny, and less to long and thoughtful. Especially in bigger subreddits. And then bots started to just repost and reuse previous highly upvoted stuff to boost their numbers even further.

      • I’ve mentioned my thoughts on this a few times now, but you’ve summed my opinions up nicely! I tend toward longer, overly-drawn-out comments and replies, so it was kind of pointless for me to comment on stuff on Reddit. It went entirely against what was promoted by the culture on Reddit, which developed as a result of turning comments into a popularity contest. If you didn’t have a gimmick (ShittyMorph, poem_for_your_sprog, shittywatercolor, etc.) then you were basically stuck using jokes, references, and acerbic jabs to try to get attention (as evidenced by karma). Even downvote farmers fell into this pattern, they just did the opposite of what the typical person would do, which resulted in even more toxicity.

    • Yeah it’s the lack of vote counting, more than the lack of downvotes, that I really appreciate. (Not to say I really miss downvotes or anything, I just really don’t care either way.)

      I’m also on Tildes and they also lack downvotes, but once you’ve been on there a week you get the ability to label things (noise, jokes, malice), which sort of functions as a more nuanced downvote button. But they share the lack of overall karma score, which keeps that same nice non-performative vibe.

      • once you’ve been on there a week you get the ability to label things (noise, jokes, malice), which sort of functions as a more nuanced downvote button.

        I’m glad to see other platforms doing this, it worked pretty well on Slashdot for a while.

  • The initial intent of reddit was to have downvotes be for off topic stuff, and yet most people use it as a silent “your opinion sucks” button. That stuff just adds to the hivemind feel of reddit. I wish there was a way to have an alternative system of weeding out misinformation or rude stuff without having to deal with something like downvotes. I suppose moderation could serve the purpose of weeding out the bad stuff instead, but then each community would need to be moderated properly.

    • An old forum I used to frequent had a downvote system that required you to specify a reason for why you felt that post or comment required a downvote. That reason (and the account that submitted it) was visible to the person whose post got downvoted and to the moderators, but to no one else.

      It still worked well for filtering out troll posts and spam, and legit posts were almost never downvoted as you couldn’t do so fully anonymously and moderators could take action when you abused the system.

      I could see this becoming highly impractical when communities become as huge as on Reddit though, but for a smaller forum that one had a few hundred active users it worked really well.

      • That… Sounds fantastic, actually. Although I could see people just generating puppet accounts to send harassing messages that only the victim and mods see, and switching accounts when they get banned. Could go especially bad in situations where the mods are also kinda in on it, as can happen (see also: organizations that turn out to have been “secretly” openly racist all along, in a way that was invisible to white workers but blatant to black workers, and that kind of thing).

    •  Hexorg   ( @Hexorg@beehaw.org ) 
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      81 year ago

      Your text is almost exactly my thought process too. But unlike Reddit if you don’t like how a community is moderate you can go start the same community on a different instance and lead its moderation efforts the way you think is appropriate. Then the communities will follow natural survival prices where whichever community is liked more will attract most people from the other community

      • Yeah. And I love that the people who think beehaw is “too nice” or “too anti-tankie” or whatever can just… Continue on elsewhere that they like better, leaving this place bee.

  • Honestly I like the idea of downvotes, but the way the reddit community has implemented them is just toxic. But that’s the great thing about Lemmy and the fediverse: Don’t like it? Go to an instance that’s disabled it!

    • If downvotes had been used as originally intended, they would be perfectly fine. But the cultural shift over time on the site from “downvote things not adding to the conversation” to “downvote what I don’t agree with” made their existence more toxic to conversations. Weighing down unpopular opinions in the sort feed made it even easier for echo chambers to build up. Having a way to give comments that are productive a bump is enough for effectively sorting things.

      • I don’t think it helped that there were incredibly salty people (or even bots) in some of the smaller subs that would just downvote everything.
        I frequented a few subs where honest questions or helpful answers would sit on 0 votes.

        • I think nobody has the same feeling for how much a downvote or upvote weighs, too.

          One might person might think, hmm, I disageee mildly = downvote, and the downvoted person might see that and think “oh, they hate this, why are they so mad?” and then you get the useless little argument about votes after that sometimes.

          Especially with negativity bias making 1 downvote feel worse than 1 upvote, to most people.

      •  fcuks   ( @fcuks@lemmy.world ) 
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        1 year ago

        I was on kbin for an afternoon and got downvote brigaded for calling out a highly updated post for spreading false info. I probably I could’ve worded my comment all fluffy and nice, but I was frustrated at the op for making things further confusing for everyone and the tone of my comment reflected that. I since deleted my kbin account and hoping that downvote brigade trend and hivemind stays on kbin.

        •  lwgrs   ( @lwgrs@beehaw.org ) 
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          21 year ago

          off-topic but since you mentioned kbin: I’m using both platforms right now (beehive/lemmy and kbin)…from what I’m seeing so far I really prefer lemmy’s implementation of pretty much everything. Kbin itself is not any more or less complicated to sign up and start posting, but its organization is definitely more convoluted. Speaking of threads vs. microblogs etc. I read a FAQ posted there and it barely cleared things up for me.

          • When I looked at it briefly, I saw so many posts with no comments at all. Maybe I just didn’t know how to search it? But it felt dead, compared to here. I’ll try again though.

            •  lwgrs   ( @lwgrs@beehaw.org ) 
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              11 year ago

              There are a ton of comments there, but I guess it depends where you’re looking. To me, it seems like it’s defaulting to “threads” - which are roughly equivalent to posts, as near as I can tell (they have subjects and a body). Whereas Microblog seems to be like posting to Facebook/Twitter/Mastodon. Where I see little activity are on Magazines (their version of communities or subreddits). E.g. kbin.social/m/ELI5 has 4 threads. The default home page shows many, many threads, and some have comparable comment replies to lemmy here.

  • The lack of voting is why I still prefer forums over reddit-style sites. Voting, both up and down, stifles discussion and encourages repetative meme comments for upvotes.

    I remember a reddit thread from years ago where a guy was trying to deal with a spider infestation in his car and almost every reply was a variation of “kill them with fire” or “it belongs to the spiders now”. Many comments were made by different people at the same time with the exact same wording. The guy got almost no serious replies. I don’t think that would have happened without the culture created by the voting system.

    •  XpeeN   ( @XpeeN@sopuli.xyz ) 
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      1 year ago

      Did we already forgot about YouTube that literally mask shitty videos because of the no downvote counter? Or Facebook that can spread fake news and shit because of it? Downvotes can be bad but imo only upvotes can be worse.

        • If people are spreading conspiracy theories or harmful content, we do remove it of course. I think the example of Facebook is exactly where moderation is important. Not where downvotes are important.

          Because to put it simply, conspiracy theories and harmful content usually get posted in echo chambers where people will agree anyways so a downvote does nothing to solve the problem imo.

      • Reddit also spreads fake news and shit, though. The communities you participate in determine whether you see it, to a degree, but nonetheless. Like, when Bernie was running for Pres, the Bernie Sanders subreddit had everything that looked good for his chances upvoted, and everything that looked critical of his opponents (including the same accusations of Biden being a pedo that the far right likes to make) upvoted, and comments or posts that were like “… Wait a minute this doesn’t seem to be true” or “this over here isn’t a good sign” or “Bernie isn’t popular with these Black voters for xyz reasons” or whatever would get downvoted to the point people didn’t see it. Voila, echo chamber. I say this as someone that voted for Bernie.

        That said, I do wonder if a system that eschewed votes altogether might be better. Like old forums.

    • Having only upvotes is still a bit of an echo chamber, but it’s moreso affected by how many people have seen the post (and in a related fashion, how early a comment was made in a thread), not whether people agree with the post. As someone mentioned, youtube’s dislike scenario is a good example of this in the real world. Downranking harmful/unhelpful videos is important for users on youtube, and it’s still useful on a platform like this. Without downvotes, if I came across a comment with 12 upvotes, I would have to mentally weigh how many people I think saw that post, and how many thought it was bad information.

      I’ll note that I fully agree with almost all the points in favor of having no downvotes, but I think the utility of downvotes is just more important in my opinion.

      • Right there is inherent inertial momentum with upvotes.

        I’m still on the fence, because understandably the potential (and actual) for abuse makes downvotes very unproductive as a feature, but there are also situations where they are very powerful.

        It takes significantly more effort to refute a wrong position than it takes to make it. Downvotes serve as an explicit balancing point against that in ways that a well written response does not. Additionally, nested comments usually get less upvotes than their parent comments.

        It is what it is I guess.

        •  Pigeon   ( @Lowbird@beehaw.org ) 
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          Does that really balance it out, though? A downvote or pile of downvotes won’t persuade the person who made the bad argument that they’re wrong, nor will it persuade any lurkers. The bad argument can stand without an explicit refutation, or without the person who made it even knowing why they were downvoted (always a frustrating experience).

          Here, you can still see which argument is the most popular, because you get the initial argument A, then because there are no downvotes we’re more likely to get a counter argument B, and then you can see easily which of the two has more upvotes.

          And if people keep talking, there be more nuance this way, I think. It’s not limited to a binary option of bad vs good, and you can maybe more “I agree with x, or think you might have a point about y, but I disagree with z because…” Vs someone with a nuance opinion instead just deciding if they think it’s overall more bad or more good and voting in a way that erases the nuance.

          Edit: also, people arguing in bad faith because bigotry can just be reported and booted altogether

  •  Hammy   ( @Hammy@lemmy.one ) 
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    211 year ago

    I guess I’m the only one that misses downvotes. I don’t take offense to being downvoted - the points/karma is completely irrelevant and I feel like it helps keep unhelpful or irrelevant comments and content at the bottom and out of my feed.

    •  bug   ( @bug@lemmy.one ) 
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      171 year ago

      Yeah, my concern is that the trolls will be just as visible as the recent comments, and that we’ll get overloaded with “take my upvote”, “this is the way”, and “nice” comments which are essentially spam

      • Presumably those wouldn’t be as upvoted so they wouldn’t sort with useful content but I do think someone might go on forever posting like that with a 0 score where a -1 might give them a moment of reflection.

      • No one will have any reason to actually make those comments other than intentional spam though. And I’d much rather filter trolls myself than let a hivemind decide for me who is worth talking.

  • I agree wholeheartedly. I didn’t like downvotes, but I didn’t realize how terrible the concept of downvotes really was until I lived without it.

    Here’s my comment from another thread:

    I wasn’t a fan of Reddit’s downvote system. It was a pointless, vague way to show displeasure without actually providing any useful information. I never knew if a downvote was because I made a comment that was factually wrong, the reader had a differing opinion, or simply because I made a grammatical error. Plus, there’s brigading. By itself, a downvote doesn’t really tell you anything.

    I’m sure that in at least some cases, a genuine discussion (rather than a simple downvote) would have been more thought-provoking for everyone.

  • This is one reason why I like it here. What annoyed me on Reddit sometimes was discussing “unpopular opinions”.

    For example on my local subreddit people would constantly argue for more housing density, which is great for affordability but any mention of “but what about transportation infrastructure then” got mercilessly downvoted. I really don’t mind people disagreeing in replies but having a whole conversation downvoted and subsequently hidden is annoying. It generally made me not want to comment on Reddit, and just let the hivemind be.

    • That sounds kinda awful to me, because it could be used to just disappear unpopular comments complaining of racism or transphobia or whatever, or even just to disappear a comment saying “I hated this really popular game actually because xyz”. It sounds like something that would exaggerate the hivemind effect of downvotes rather than alleviating it, and probably be used to silence even justifiably angry or emphatic comments, if now you can’t even see the few comments that disagreed with the majority in a thread.