Unpopular Opinion

6190 readers

105 users here now

Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!

How voting works:

Vote the opposite of the norm.

If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.

Guidelines:

Tag your post, if possible (not required)

If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].

Rules:

1. NO POLITICS

Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.

2. Be civil.

Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...

Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.

5. No trolling.

This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.

Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Social media platforms should not display post scores to the users (lemm.ee)

submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The ability to up- and downvote posts and comments is useful but the score should not be displayed to the users and you shouldn't be able to enable it even if you wanted to. This means both, posts made by you as well as by others.

Nobody wants to see their messages get downvoted. This is bad for our mental health as individuals but especially as a group. It's like walking up to a person on the street, saying "I don't like you" and then moving on. You're free to not like (downvote) someone but they don't need to hear it. If you really want them to know then write a message and explain yourself.

Upvotes on the other hand skews the reality and encourages groupthink. People say what is popular even if they don't fully buy it themselves and conversely refrain from saying things they truly believe because they then dont get the upvotes and get downvoted instead.

Seeing the scores also primes the reader. When something is heavily upvoted for example you assume it to be true/good instead of using your own judgement to decide.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I think that at some point in your life you gotta face the fact that there is a sizeable percentage of population that is going to disagree with you whatever your opinion is

You don't have to face it all the time without asking for it though.

And more than that, sometimes you’re gonna say dumb things and in that moment you need the checks and balances of other individuals to tell you that you’re an asshole.

Has nothing to do with reactions. Just telling someone they are an asshole is simply noise. And upvotes\downvotes do not allow you to embed arguments.

The opposite mechanism of that is called echo chambering and in less than two decades of social media already produced flat earthers, incels, anti-vaxxers and a fresh rise of fascism in western society.

Actually this very mechanism is called echo chambering. When you pressure people thinking differently to be silent, so they leave. And, of course, those groups you've mentioned existed long before social media.

Being wrong is not the end of the world, admitting that and trying to fix it is the first step towards being a better individual.

Which is why wrong people shouldn't have the downvote\upvote button, and right people don't use those anyway.