I just want to shout out ReddThat for their lack of downvoting. It’s so refreshing and positive to not have people downvote you for random stuff. It’s so refreshing compared to Reddit.
Downvoted. This is a low-effort, low-quality post. Sometimes downvoting can serve a positive purpose, such as keeping junk out of our feeds that wastes everyone’s time, as can be seen here.
Hexbear.net has downvotes disabled as well, both to encourage discussion over silently downvoting and to protect minority groups from harassment.
It’ll be interesting to see how it plays out, if instances with downvoting disabled become popular
Personally I think downvoting is important, it’s like micro-moderation, in a democratic fashion. Sure it doesn’t always work out well, but it can be good for keeping spam and malicious posts at the bottom.
although their purpose is very confusing without an argument statement, the anti spam and malicious could be automated, i don’t see the full purpose of a voting system just to copy a simple internet mechanism that orders things based on subjective democracy that can be manipulated or corrupted very easily
we can solve algorithmic manipulation when it actually happens
It’s also really easy to weaponise against minorities
But anything can be weaponized against minorities. You could say that we should ban social media, or even kill off humanity entirely, because it tends to be weaponized against minorities. The solutions are not to get rid of the tools themselves, but rather to use the tools correctly as much as possible.
In your analogy, downvotes aren’t the tool. Social media is the tool. And turning off downvotes is how we use that tool to match our needs.
No, no. I was drawing a parallel between downvotes (a tool) and social media (another, larger tool that encompasses the smaller tool of downvoting), and I was saying that downvoting is a neutral or even generally positive tool, and not inherently bad. My point was that you can take any neutral thing (such as social media or even humanity more broadly) and see how it is often weaponized against minorities, but that doesn’t mean that the thing itself is inherently bad – it just means that, in those contexts where it is being weaponized against minorities, it is being used incorrectly or in a bad way. Does that make sense?
Turning off downvotes can meet some needs, but it also fails to meet other needs. For example, a racist cannot downvote a person of color, but it’s also then the case that the person of color cannot downvote the racist. Pros and cons. Expressing disapproval of a post or comment is not an inherently bad thing at all, it really depends on the context of the situation.
Downvotes aren’t how you address racists and bigots. Banning them is.
Downvoting is a tool that racists and bigots use when they’re trying to avoid getting banned though. On top of that, most targetted groups are minorities, which by definition, have small numbers. All off which means that the impact of downvotes hits vulnerable minorities harder than it hits bigots.
To you, this is some sort of hypothetical ideal that you’d like to see. In your mind, if things “worked the way they should”, downvoting would be a useful tool. But things don’t work the way the should. They work they way they are used, and in this case, that means they often hurt vulnerable groups more than they help them, despite how it ‘should be”
Yep, hence why Hexbear removed them.
Same with b.zone
Tbh, it matters a lot less here on lemmy. No karma, so you aren’t screwed over by down votes, it just effects visibility of posts, really.
With that and the venting benefit of a dislike, in neutral on it being toggled on or not
Currently a community can do nothing against people who mass downvote their posts because they arent interested in the “niche” topic, which imo sucks
Down voted.
