This post was made by Fediverse gang.
Removing downvoting feels intuitively wrong to me (eg, I believe that dissent is a really important part of a healthy democracy). If all those mega-corp platforms are removing downvoting, then I'm pretty confident my intuition on this matter is correct
I suspect soon they'll remove voting altogether, replaced by a measure of how long it held attention.
Their ranking algorithm very clearly leans on a relative engagement metric pretty heavily, and has for a while.
The voting will stay but your homepage will be a for you page that selects posts based on your usage data and whatever is trending instead of the votes, in an attempt to bring engagement to a maximum. Just like what's been happening to Instagram for years.
Yes now that engagement is directly monetized, you’re likely correct
And it happened right when it became apparent that we were living in the Disinformation Age and every bit of power to flag bullshit content became that much more important.
My fediverse instance removed downvotes 😔
That genuinely sucks and helps misinformation spread. It's part of the reason reddit went downhill after they did that.
I just went on Reddit. I could down vote.
What gives?
I think they mean you can't see the results. So you can downvote a post but if you look at a post it doesn't show you how many downvoted. It only shows you how many upvoted. It makes it impossible to tell if a subject is controversial.
Ouch, like youtube?
YouTube is much worse since they straight up removed dislikes (unless you get some add-on)
YouTube has dislikes. The thumb down is still there. But it doesn't show the results.
You’re right, just checked out YouTube without my add-on. So weird on why they even keep it.
Just checked on old.reddit. Can still see comments with negative votes.
Reddit removed downvotes?
Seconded. When did this happen?
I don't think they did. I just checked. Some subs disable downvotes I'm sure but they still exist in the site as a whole.
they capped the votes at 0. you can downvote but if there are more downvotes than upvotes reddit won't show it
It's because bigots will blanket down vote any and everything in queer instances.
Try holding a conversation when posts are all sitting in the negatives and nobody sees them unless they go directly to the community and sort by new.
Ok but as someone who used to mod large trans subreddits that’s less what their mo was compared to brigading with posts and comments and sending threatening messages.
That's the good thing with Lemmy, one instance can disable downvotes to f off TERFs, another has it enables for some civil discussion about bananas.
💖🍌
lemmynsfw has implemented (or intends to) an interesting compromise, in that you can only downvote posts on that instance's communities that you're already subscribed to. Ideally, this means that downvotes are for the quality of the individual post, rather than as a reaction to the type of content.
Beehaw does the same. I'm not sure if that's been the case in our instance. I don't inherently disagree, but I'm not 100% sold either.
If there's a clearly bad/misinformed/rude take, they simply don't get voted on. They rarely have more than the single 1 vote of their terrible opinion/sharing.
It's common to see +10 to +30 on a positive comment, with the comment it's responding to at 1.
I don't disagree that it could be a bad thing, but I think it's about the community and its practice surrounding it as well. So far in my experience on the instance I participate in I've seen it be effective.
Also I'm not sure if this is a thing on Lemmy but on reddit there were downvote farmers. Downvoting could also actually encourage people to perform these terrible comments to accumulate as many downvotes as they can. Downvoting disabled removed this problem in its entirety. Reddit has this issue long before some of its other problems and it has only grown since, up til I left. I don't know what the state of it is now, and I'm not sure how big of an issue it even is on Lemmy. It comes down to finding the line between what is preferable.
All in all, I think there are good and bad things about not having a downvote. I do think downvote disabled helps some aspects (engagement, active/trending posts) but it could also negatively influence federated content (spam, bad actors). I don't think a comment being at -30 is any more telling than the same comment at 1 when it's surrounded by +30 upvoted comments. However, if someone actively sought out getting downvoted, that can no longer exist.
IMO trading having bad comments be visibly negative in order to prevent the downvote farmers is a reasonable exchange
Good thing Lemmy 1.19 now has account migration support.
Go to another instance then. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Boo 🔽🔽🔽
I downvote stuff from communities that removed it from my instance and Sync for Lemmy lol, or at least I have never noticed the lack of the feature.
Just downvoted your post. Hah! Checkmate 👍
Aren't certain instances on Lemmy downvote disabled? I swear I've been on certain magazines on Kbin or the Fediverse where it's disabled by default.
Hexbear.net (spun off from r/chapotraphouse, banned on Reddit in 2019 for fascist propaganda), has downvotes disabled on their entire instance, so that's one. Please note that though they claim to be "leftist," their users' primary focus is spreading right wing propaganda via strawman and red herring tactics, usually in swarms.
Your take on Hexbear is absolutely correct
It's also something I've pointed out in the past that netted me bans on other instances (not just the community but the whole instance)
My instance has down votes disabled as well and it's something that has made me want to switch instances at times. Not to mention the admin really wanting to federate with Hexbear which is absolutely not popular with the users on the instance.
Oh wow, the blahaj admin wants to federate with them? That is unfortunate and more than a little disappointing. I'm sorry to hear that, I hope they figure it out soon and decide not to federate, because they'd just be exposing their users to fascist recruitment propaganda that is specifically tailored to the LBGTQ+ community. JFC, that would be awful.
The Hexbears' support for the queer community, as I'm sure you're aware (I'm saying this to promote general awareness), is superficial at best and in reality is a major part of their recruitment machine. They operate just like extreme right wing orgs: they target a specific disenfranchised group with the claim that they hear them, support them, and will fight for their rights, but in practice they take advantage of their already-present anger by funneling it towards a specific political target...in this case, the "liberal western world." The Hexbear ethos tells them that western values are the reason why they are being oppressed, and in the process they (somewhat ironically) become radicalized instruments of hate.
It's fucked up and really sad, and it's hard to get through to people just how dangerous this group is. A common defense is that the Hexbears are harmless because they think the Hexbear trolling approach is funny and that Hexbears don't come right out and say they are pro-Russia or deny genocide is happening in the world... it can be real difficult to get people to think critically and see past the manipulation tactics. But it's there, plain as day, it is a hate group.
But I digress. People need to know that these are not innocent good people. I will continue to speak out against these fascists, and I hope you do the same.
Well put, when I first came to Lemmy I remember seeing them and being confused that their actions were at odds with their stated goals.
That's the great thing, you can choose to join whichever instance you want or make your own.
Yes
Wait. Did they actually remove the downvote on reddit?
No. Just doesn't display downvotes counts anymore.
Have they ever (in the last 5 years)? I thought it's always a total amount type of counter instead of the way lemmy does it.
Tbf I was using a 3rd party client or the new ui so pardon if it's only the old ui.
Yeah the amount of posts I see just sitting at zero when all the comments are negative about the post is staggering
I've even down voted some just to see them pop right back to zero
No