this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024

202 points (88.5% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

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Disabling downvotes by server admins on Lemmy is dumb and does not make any sense. (lemmynsfw.com)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

90 comments fedilink hide all child comments

By default, Lemmy allows downvotes globally. However, when a server disables downvoting, it is similar to using a feature that is usually reserved for enterprises and very small, non-federated communities.

If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 month ago (27 children)

The problem with downvotes in LemmyNSFW was very specific to that instance and its sexual nature. It boils down to the typical user doing the following:

people use downvotes to signal "I don't want to see this"
most people want to see naked women, not naked men
the instance is supposed to be inclusive towards people who want to see either

As a result, content geared towards gay+bi men, hetero+bi women, and plenty non-binary people was consistently downvoted - and it was discouraging genuine OC for those demographics.

It was totally a band-aid measure, mind you. But it kind of worked?

An actual solution for that issue would be to require people to tag their content, and allow posters to pick what they want to see based on those tags. But for that you'd need further improvement of the software.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 month ago (9 children)

Supply demand is king either ignore the downvotes or find a new target market. I dont recon its worked at all its just means people will block the accounts meaning they are memory holed perminantly.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

they're disabled on hexbear.net, take a wild guess why

spoiler

it's to protect their circlejerk

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Originated and enabled well before there were other active Lemmy instances or possibly even federation of any sort. It was put in place to stop anti-trans harassment.

Plus AFAIK it’s only truly applicable within Hexbear itself. The main effect it has is that a Hexbear user can’t downvote anything on any instance with their account.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I like being able to downvote using my main account, but on lemmynsfw it really needed to be removed. People were downvoting literally everything that didn't fit into their fetishes, so anything that wasn't straight and and vanilla would go into the negatives. Like, I'm not into mascs, but I still think they should be able to post to gonewild. Even posts in gay-specific subs were getting downvoted en masse.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Downvotes on lemmynsfw were being used to bully people who posted pictures of themselves. They weren't always disabled. But they became a problem and the instance felt that downvotes didn't belong in a porn instance.

There was no reason to downvotes a porn post. Ever.

If it breaks the rules, report it. If you don't like it, keep scrolling.

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[+] [email protected] -8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

This might be a real unpopular opinion but I think the down vote is a broken feature. We do need some kind of vote to help the best stuff rise to the top, thus the up vote. Down vote basically says "I disagree with your opinion but I don't have a strong enough rebuttal to engage in the discussion to explain why". A basic agreement doesn't usually add a lot to the conversation unless the comment itself comes with additional context, a disagreement requires some level of dialog as to explain why. It encourages this bubble hivemind instead of open discussion. Really makes me miss how popular forums were in the mid 2000s.

It doesn't really stop spam, we have stronger mechanics for that like reporting, moderation and spambot tools. Plus posts without any engagement usually just fall off pretty quickly without reaching a wider audience.

Then you have your trolls who collect down votes. Having a vote score of 1 is way less compelling for a troll than -15.

Edit

4 down votes without discussion, we've just proved the point.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Eh, up votes are just as likely to be an "I agree/like" rather than a topicality, importance, or quality indicator. And it's just as likely to be done without any engagement worth seeing.

This is also a way to form bubbles/echo chambers since sorting by anything but new will surface just the stuff most agreed with.

If down votes are broken, then all votes are broken. The only way for voting to be not broken is to have them not change what all users see. You'd have to use some other metric for sorting that isn't time based, and specifically exclude any vote based sorting at all.

Which is entirely possible, and I think that's the way it should be. Keep votes because they work to filter out useless comments to some degree, but don't let them matter.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I agree that it's a broken feature, but I disagree with the idea of simply removing it and calling it a day. It is useful; the content that surfaces up might not be always the best, but the content near the rock bottom is typically shitty.

In my opinion the best approach would be to force some feedback from the user while they're downvoting the content. It doesn't need to be fancy, nor to go against the pseudo-anonymous of downvotes; just something like a pop-up asking "why are you downvoting this?", followed by 5~6 options (for example: "disagreeable", "rude", "factually incorrect", "unfunny", "off-topic" etc.). In that situation, even if people downvote you based on opinion, it's damn easy to detect and say "nah, they just disagree with it".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Love this idea. Down vote is severely lacking a why and ultimately doesn't change anything but good reasoning can go a long way.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Downvote do have a role... It sort of reading the room.

Sometimes the hot take is too hot, sometimes person literally spouting wrong information with confidence of ChatGPT. You don't always have to engage.

All of this is true in "natural" social media tho once it becomes big enough too many bad faith actors get involved and no consensus can be built

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which server? Remote instance or your home instance?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What do you mean?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

[...] However, when a server disables downvoting, [...]

I'm asking about this sentence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I am talking about any public Lemmy server.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

If you simply forced the ordering to be by new/newest comment, votes in either direction would become irrelevant. But that also means that only the most active users will ever see a bulk of the content when it is relevant, or at all.

[+] [email protected] -7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's to encourage posting and comment by having a positive environment, especially on hobby community/instance. Lemmy is still small and post isn't as many, and its full of people who is downvote happy and will downvote topic they don't understand or care. Try build a community around that, i'm sure it won't survive.

If a user prefer to not see downvotes, they can disable it by his favourite client settings, but the rest of the community should not miss this functionality for the pleasure of few users.

Let me flip it around:

If a user prefer to see downvotes, they can go to another instance that support that, the admin paying for the hosting shouldn't need to listen to a few user.

It's a setting, it's a tool, let people building the community/instance adjust it how they want instead of dictating how they choose, isn't that your point?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You can't force people to be positive, they might still leave negative comments.

Lemmy is still small, so users don't have the option to choose servers as they please. For instance, I'm looking for an instance where you don't need an email to register (for privacy reasons) and where you can quickly create an account (I don't have the patience to wait for days to get my account). Also, it should have a good number of federated servers working with it.

With these specific requirements, there are only a few servers available.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

It's pretty ironic that your posts are being downvoted here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Why do you think not allowing dislikes is toxic positivity?

I mean, it's more like "don't be critic" rather than "you're forced to like". You can choose not like if you don't want to.

Don't mix things up. Don't be allowed to dislike is not the same as being forced to like.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Toxic positivity is just like woke, it can be anything you want it to be!

For real though, not allowing down votes is not toxic positivity. You don't go to an orgy and start yucking everyone's yums. You're not being told you can't dislike things, you just aren't allowed to vocalize it at no cost. And if you do decide to vocalize it in a comment, you may* be kicked out of the orgy because it's a fucking orgy and that's the rules. There's literally no point to it except to shit on others, which you wouldn't do at an IRL orgy**.

*There might be a room for sexual degradation **There might be a room for scat

Toxic positivity is telling someone their negative feelings (not opinions) are invalid. The existence of this term still doesn't make people at an orgy assholes if they tell someone who's bringing down the mood to go away. It's literally a fucking party, don't go there trying to make everyone worse. I could play devil's advocate and say that the act of throwing a feel good only party is toxic positivity as it's just as likely to enable escapism (from bad feelings) as it is to be totally neutral, but fuck that. Sometimes the cure to a bad mood is acknowledging it, and then escaping it.

[–] [email protected] 99 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Forced positivity is toxic positivity.

Removing an interaction choice from users can only result in lower quality user interaction.

Removing the capacity for downvotes harms the community.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I do not care enough, because here on lemmy.world it isn't a thing. But I see you're from lemmynsfw. I vaguely remember a thread where the disabling of downvotes was discussed and to this day I do not understand why people are afraid of downvotes on their wanking material.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 month ago (3 children)

They disabled downvotes because they want to encourage people to post porn of themselves not just to repost stuff. Getting downvoted for posting your own work isn't encouraging and essentially kills communities before they even start.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

If ur posting shit u don't want to build a community on that. I recon they did it simply to push an agenda of unpopular crap that most people (on lemmy) dont wanna see ie dudes and fat chicks, they got downvoted for a reason. Now i guess everyone needs to get used to a liberal application of the block button.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

This actually makes sense. Thanks.

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I’d downvote this post if I could.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 month ago

I gotchoo

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I would downvote this comment also if I could, but sadly my instance disable downvotes. (◕‿◕)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago

I did it! Maybe i should start a special downvoting service for the poor downtrodden commenters whos got no DV of their own

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