A few days ago I downvoted someone’s comment, and the next day I happened to notice every single comment I’ve ever made had at least one downvote. All from the person I dared to downvote the ONE time. I straight up asked why they did it, and they seem to think I’m an “obvious” troll account that “apparently just exist to downvote other people”. I assure you I’m no troll account, and ironically don’t really downvote all that often.
I know the topic of public downvotes has been discussed before, but I never used to care either way. Now I’m kinda leaning in the “I don’t like it” side. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a little offended, maybe even attacked. Also, there goes all my imaginary internet points. Lol
Has anyone else had something like this happen to them, or am I just unlucky?
I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Downvotes do have some kind of meaning — when you give a downvote, you’re doing it for some reason that you want to convey — and people are going to interpret downvotes accordingly. If downvotes didn’t mean anything, then there’d be no point to them existing at all. What exactly a downvote means depends on the person giving it, but it’s ideally (imo) used to express that a post is spam, hateful, or otherwise a bad contribution to the discussion. Obviously, people shouldn’t take downvotes personally, but a post being downvoted does and should mean something.
Thus, what OP mentions in his post is a legitimate concern. Public votes allow people to more easily downvote spam someone who downvoted them, which is unequivocally a bad thing that we’d prefer not to have. However, whether we should make votes private is a matter of whether the downsides outweigh the upsides, and they don’t.