Has anyone else been trying to break their reddit-era habit of downvoting?
I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree or to push down really disgusting bigoted comments. And to be honest, it became a habit to just downvote without replying. However, now that I’m on lemmy and not Reddit I’ve been actively trying to not instantly downvote things and instead move on or take the time to reply. Has anyone else been trying to do this?
I used to downvote fairly often on Reddit as a sign to disagree
that was technically wrong, wasn’t it. downvotes were not intended to be a sign of having a different opinion. but of marking posts that were negative or not adding to the discussion in any way.
I obviously know that this ideal does not reflect reality in any way.
But honestly, this is why I think, over all, social media has probably been a net negative for society at large and political/social discourse. Discussions became binary. Upvote vs Downvote. Like vs Dislike. Nuance seems to be less important. It is all about quick snips and outrage these days.
This behavior of just quickly downvoting differing opinions into oblivion (assuming of course it isn’t a hateful opinion) discourages discourse, and it discourages people to voice even mildly differing opinions. Which leads to echo chambers and this weird public opinion of averages. That in many cases are plain wrong. Almost everyone encounters this when a discussion suddenly revolves around a topic they are well-versed on - much more than Joe average. Then consensus settles on this very mid, tepid kind-of right, but not really.
If youre really into that, you should have signed up at Beehaw. They have downvotes disabled.
Personally, Imma keep doing it. Not because Im petty. But if I really disagree with something, I feel like it helps me avoid replying with something stupid or hurtful.
Downvotes really shouldn’t be for comments or submissions that you disagree with, but for anything that does not add to the conversation. Reddit started off with this guideline too, but at some point votes turned into agree/disagree.
People always said the same thing on Reddit too, but there’s a lot of stuff that “adds to a conversation” that needs to be downvoted. Just because something “adds to a conversation” doesn’t mean that the people shouldn’t express that it’s an awful comment or viewpoint by downvoting.
For instance, on a history article about Nazis someone could say “well some were bad, but not all were. Plus the good they did around the world was actually a lot better than people give them credit for like introducing a universal basic income or providing their citizens with jobs and healthcare for all.”
Like… it’s a viewpoint… but by not downvoting that viewpoint you’re basically allowing someone to say Nazis aren’t bad. Which to me is why the downvote button is there in the first place. Good, well thought out comments that add to a conversation should be upvoted, but awful comments should be downvoted too. People just need to be more well intentioned about when they’re downvoting a viewpoint they disagree with.
I agree. I’d say that expressing a viewpoint that derails the conversation and people already know is wrong definitely does not add to the conversation, and should be downvoted.
For any weird, bigoted stuff, lots of downvotes and no replies is hopefully the message an OP needs to receive to get the hint that they should by plying their recruitment attempts elsewhere. Engaging them is probably the worst thing to do.
I’ve had to remember that there’s automatic hiding though, and do that manually.
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