/kbin meta

While that's definitely a notable downside, I think the upsides outweigh it.

For one, being able to see upvotes & downvotes seems to have made a lot of people a bit more thoughtful with handing them out. This obviously isn't the case for everyone — there's still a good bit of downvoting people for disagreeing with the hivemind — but I and others have observed that downvote quality is a lot better here on kbin.social, and I think that vote visibility is a big part of that.

Also, it's also just transparency on kbin.social's part. If votes federate, anyone can set up an instance to view your votes or just go to one that shows them. Someone could literally make a website listing downvotes throughout the fediverse, and there's nothing stopping them. Kbin.social is being transparent about the fact that votes* on the fediverse can be accessed by the public, and I have no issue with that.

Didn't you just see the upside too, though? You can see who's downvoting all your comments and call them out on it. Someone could downvote stalk you on Reddit (quite sure that has happened to me before) and it would be invisible and unprovable.

Counterpoint: it makes it even more apparent when terrible alt right trolls like AnotherAttorney post and we can see they're the ones upvoting and boosting their own terrible posts, and ridicule them til they quit or switch sock puppets

This is an obvious downside. I've experienced a similar thing but being a lemmy user I don't know who I pissed off. Which is for the best. It was a one off. Ignore it and chances are this one will be too.

stop caring about votes like they mean anything.

Somewhat off topic, but I'm tired of people who can't argue properly.

@billothekid2 honestly, it's not an uncommon phenomenon, it has nothing to do with seeing your downvotes.

Over the years on reddit, where votes are anonymous, I would sometimes notice all my comments being downvoted (usually after some kind of altercation, my favourite was the guy who singled me out for criticizing Margaret Thatcher... hardly a hot take).

In fact iirc reddit had to change its interface so that voting on comments from a person's profile page doesn't change their comment count.

Some people are just petty. I think it's better to at least know when it's happening so I can avoid that person.

I'm okay with someone not agreeing with me. I'm okay with someone downvoting me.
Someone downvoting everything I have and will ever make? Well, there's a magazine I'd love to get more folks in and this behavior could cripple it badly, since I get next-to-no votes in there from others so it's already difficult to get more eyes on it. But other than that I think I get more agreements so I wouldn't care that much.

Therefore I'm happy that there's an upvote and downvote (and a reputation) system.

I don't see an issue here.

1. try to explain your downvotes, or, better yet, voice your disagreement and have a discussion without relying on downvotes to express yourself. Use your words.

2. when you feel it necessary and that using your words isn't working, upvote/boost everyone but the person in question. Realize downvotes don't really do what you'd hoped and are a poor crutch and means of expression. Elevate what you do agree with. Worry less about what you don't.

3. just don't care about internet points. As others have said and covered extensively.

Hopefully, what remains is that conversations are important. Having an outlet for undescribed/unformed/ambiguous disagreement/dissent really doesn't add anything to anything for anyone. Making a point or saying something correct is more valuable than shooting down those you find to be incorrect. And, ultimately, it's not just what you think that matters. The consensus of the group and the conversation that gets them there, the experience and the interchange and the community itself are all much more valuable than the destination of a single conversation.

Edit: (And, for the record, while I disagree with your assessment, I've boosted and upvoted your thread, because I think the conversations being had here are valuable and worth seeing by more people.)

Is this really an issue for people. Lol.

The same thing happened to me. The downvotes don’t bother me nearly as much as knowing that trolls can stalk us like that. It’s creepy. That’s the real issue.

Everyone telling you not to care about downvotes is missing the point.