This is a general proposal that concerns Lemmy specifically, but also other forum-alike software that uses ActivityPub, such as Piefed.
For me, the original sin of social media is downvoting (rant incoming). Specifically, its rampant misuse as a “Me no like!!” button. Apart from conveying totally uninteresting information (i.e. a subjective binary opinion), downvoting encourages schoolyard social dynamics and discourages heterodox views (and therefore debate). The nearest in-person equivalent (saying “shut up”) is universally considered rude. At scale, the effect of downvoting is to brutalize a community that might otherwise be pleasant and welcoming. I believe this practice is almost always toxic and poisonous. Those who defend it (in good faith, I do not doubt) need to consider the possibility that it has helped to homogenize their communities into people like them (to caricature: insensitive males). Most ordinary people do not participate actively in social media. There’s a reason for that.
No, this is not a popular position here (cf. selection bias) and so it will of course be… downvoted. But it’s how I see it. I like to think that I’ve added some value to the fediverse with my contributions, but if there’s one thing that regularly causes me to consider leaving, it’s this. Going to Beehiv or Blahaj-whatsit is not a solution, because the communities I’m interested in are not there. Hiding downvote scores does not work because… it does not hide the downvoters.
Which gave me an idea. Given that the identity of downvoters is technically public, I propose a new setting: “Auto-block downvoters”. That’s it. Automatically hide comments (or posts, or anything) by users who have downvoted your contributions. Logical, no? They don’t care for what I have to say, and I don’t care for their inane negativity. It’s win-win! Lots of possible variants:
- Hide [ subsequent | all ] comments by users who have downvoted [ a post | a comment | anything ] by you [ in this thread | on this post | in this community | everywhere]
- Hide [etc] by users with an upvote-downvote ratio lower than [ X ]% etc
Such a setting (especially #1) would immeasurably improve my experience of Lemmy. No exaggeration. I like to think it might also serve as a subtle incentive for users to be more generous and tolerant in their behavior towards others, but that is secondary.
I might be wrong, but I think most use “New” sort, and I just checked, the default algo on .world is “Active”. So downvotes won’t push posts down
The definition of downvote is not set in stone, a lot of people define and use it differently. For some it’s “I don’t agree”, for some “it’s wrong but I’m not going to report” and for some… I have suspicion that for some it’s “I’ve seen the title, I’m not interested”. The fact that people don’t agree with you does not mean they see your point as worthless. They just don’t agree. And I suspect, most often people would just downvote and move on, the cross between those who downvote and comment will be much smaller. And actually the fact that they commented means that they decided it’s worthwhile to spend time on disagreeing with you
That’s reassuring as far as it goes. Hard to believe it won’t have some effect even with “Active” (i.e. when all other metrics are equal). Point being that “downvoted” is always going to resolve, to some extent, to “bad content”.
OK about the motivations of downvoting. I’ve had this debate a thousand times, I’ve heard the arguments, most feel like post-hoc reasoning to me. IMO the truth is mostly pretty simple: it means “Muh! Me no like!”. Which is completely uninteresting as well as (I argue) toxic. The best argument IMO is the “offramp” one: downvoting provides a safety valve for sterile negativity, i.e. people downvote instead of shouting back. OK fine. Except, for whatever reason, I personally don’t feel this overwhelming need to stamp aggressively on other people’s “wrong” opinions. Would be nice if social media were not so full of spoiled children. But I’m ranting again.
I regularly argue with people here, but I do it respectfully. Like I hope I’m doing with you. I would never downvote you for saying what you believe. It’s not so hard.
So for you downvoting is aggressive but shouting back is not?
Apart from votes meaning not being set in stone, I think they do serve a very important role. You can’t realistically be having 5/10/50 simultaneous threads, especially if the points are the same. Someone upvoting can be a signal “I agree with that take”, without essentially spamming the discussion with such comments. Someone downvoting can mean “I don’t agree”. Someone downvoting one comment and upvoting a response is essentialy taking part in discussion - “I don’t agree with you, that other person is right”. Without muddying the exchange. It’s a mechanic to have a social discussion without it looking like a chat during hype-train.
When we gather IRL and there is, let’s say, 50 of us, we will be using claps, murmurs, whistling, maybe short shouts. But for sure it would be impossible to discuss a thing if everyone in the room would form as little as one sentence. That’s what votes sometimes are - room temperature of the audience
The off-ramp argument is that downvoting is a substitute for shouting back, i.e. a marginal improvement. That’s the best argument I have seen for it.
Which you mention in your comment. About the in-person analogs, surely a downvote does not exist beyond jeering and booing. That is exactly my point. It’s fine to clap someone’s good point, it’s not fine to boo and to jeer. Just don’t clap. That’s what happens in person. It’s polite and honest without being hostile.
But we don’t have a mechanic for “I’ve seen this and didn’t clap”, other than a downvote
If “clap” means “agree with”, then personally I’m not looking exclusively for content that I agree with. There’s the report button for things that break the rules.
I mean - without downvotes we have no way of signalling “I don’t agree with this take, this and that comment voice my opinions”
I don’t understand. Of course you have a way to disagree with it. Reply to it, stating why.
The problem with that is then instead of having 15 downvotes and two comments with a bunch of upvotes you will end up with 15 (probably less but just to portray my point) comments all saying more or less the same. And since (IIRC) Lemmy does not have notifications one could enable on other comments, you would be discussing the same thing in 15 separate threads because your interlocutors won’t see your responses in the other threads
What then, is the response to content that deserves hostility? Misinformation, propaganda, incivility, posting videos without a text synopsis?
Reporting them, of course.
BTW the best moderation system IMO was invented by Slashdot decades ago. No upvotes or downvotes, you have to tag things as “offtopic” or “misinformation” or whatever (“I disagree” not being an option), and then the tags get passed randomly to meta-moderators based on reputation. It works brilliantly but is apparently far too complicated for normies, which is why everyone copied the R-site’s terrible binary system.