I came from Reddit where they definitely did matter. They don’t seem to hold any real weight here. Is this true for some or all instances? If they don’t matter, what are they for?
The up/down vote system directs the ranking algorithm on how to order posts and comments, and it visually signals to the user the relative popularity of a comment.
This, imo, is a wildly underappreciated mechanic for combating a lot of the harmful issues people associate with social media.
Most people recognize that discourse on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. is designed to divide and inflame people. the reddit-style downvote is remarkably effective at addressing this:
It does two key things in particular:
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Downvoted comments are down ranked and hidden, so people are exposed to less toxic content.
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If people do engage with unpopular comments, the negative score influences how people engage with them. On Facebook, commenting to defend Biden’s Israel policy will get elevated and create viscous fights. On Lemmy, it will get flagged with a virtual dunce cap. You can dunk on it, but there’s no point in arguing with it: we can all see that the argument is already over. Laugh and ignore.
Taken together, these discourage people from feeding trolls, and in doing so reduce the incentive to post something uncivil or stupid. It’s a remarkably powerful tool to address a huge problem, and I wish more people understood this.
Yes, yes and yes. Unless it is overrun/diverted by bots & shills, which is a corruption silently allowed by reddit to serve its corporate agenda. Reddit, being proprietary and closed-source, does not disclose the specifics of its voting system, which grants it some plausible deniability in the face of accusations of bias. Lemmy and Kbin etc have the advantage of being opensource, transparent, forkable, etc. whether or not you’re in line with its creator’s political standing.
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There are still some sensitive mods who can see your vote history (within comms they mod) and ban you because they don’t like the way you interact with their comm. Conservative comms especially, they seem to think they deserve a captive audience.
Also note that anybody can use lemvotes.org to view post/comment/user votes in most cases.
Lemmy doesn’t enforce anything, but there’s no accounting for small people with an ounce of power.
they mattered on reddit? how?
I thought up/down wasn’t for approval/disapproval, but to vote if the post was worth reading. In other words, a well written, factual article about a topic you disagree with should have a good number of up votes.
Theory and practice quite frequently don’t align in reality and humans are spiteful.
Hey, fuck you. I’m not spiteful!
Well then your username checks out
Upvoted because it’s an imprtant contribution, not because I agree with it.
There is no such thing as karma here, it’s more so to express approval/disapproval
I like the lack of karma. Generally I’m using the up/down vote options to express my dis/approval, just like you’ve stated they’re for. Given how different things can be across instances it seems I’ll just have to relearn how I view and interact with Lemmy over Reddit.
Aside from the much smaller user base and communities, I prefer Lemmy 100%. I’m learning to enjoy the smaller user base since it’s also lacking the huge amount of bots and trolls.
They just signify if a comment or post is good or bad. They do have some impact on how high up a post or comment is displayed within their list, ie a lot of upvotes will show up better on active or hot sorting, but that’s about it. Some instances like Hexbear.net disable downvotes, to force discussion if you disapprove something.
It’s been my experience on Reddit that you only ‘win’ a difference of opinion by not engaging people. And what you “win” isn’t Internet clout, it’s your sanity, continued semi privacy, and peace of mind.
Curious to see how Lemmy works out. Searching for a place you can actually engage in respectful disagreement or exchange of ideas. Even if someones’ ideas are different than your own, they help you think and explore, and if you come to the same decision, cool.
In general, you can’t normally convince your interlocutor, but instead onlookers. I talk a lot about Marxism-Leninism, and in my experience it isn’t the ones I talk with that change their minds, but those who see the convo as an outside observer.
Thanks! This helps my understanding a good deal.
They never mattered. Its a psycological trick to steal your attention. Some instances disable downvotes or voting at all
I’ve read about the disabling of voting and find it interesting. I enjoy the voting system because it gives me an easy way to interact with a post without having to comment. I usually only downvote if the post is low effort/slop, or the poster/commenter is just being a troll.
Thanks for your input.
They release a little burst of dopamine in my brain
No but there are some people who tend to act holier than thou because they have hundreds to thousands of meaningless points. I find out that they tend to be uptight assholes.
Anyone who places superiority on that is fucking silly.
