Just wish there were more transparency around counts and content engagement.
I firmly believe most influencer these day were propped up with payed views and botted engagement. Not that lemmy is the same but it all feels so dirty.
Just wish there were more transparency around counts and content engagement.
I firmly believe most influencer these day were propped up with payed views and botted engagement. Not that lemmy is the same but it all feels so dirty.
This is precisely my reason for why they should be public.
In my view downvotes should be used sparingly, only to suppress spam and trolling comments that don’t add to the conversation.
By keeping votes private people just downvote anything they disagree with
Back when I first started using Reddit well over a decade ago, voting was explained as “upvote things you want to see more of and downvote the things you want to see less of”. That’s how I still treat it for the most part. I downvote loads of things not because they’re inherently bad or I disagree with the content but purely because it’s not what I want to see.
It’s fake internet points, the amount you have doesn’t matter in the slightest. There’s no reason not to downvote what you disagree with.
This is how you end up with echo chambers.
The amount on each individual comment does matter, as it affects how the algorithms order comments when showing them to other people.
You end up with echo chambers by blocking people and communities you don’t like.
Downvoted content is not only still visible, half the sorting options ignore it.
I think the idea is that what we want to see more of is genuine discussions in good faith using sound arguments, even if we don’t personally agree with the viewpoint.
If I’m just tired of seeing certain types of posts I can block them without downvoting their posts.
So what are you going to do with the knowledge that I downvoted your comment?
You have no reason to so I presume you haven’t.
If we were actually in a discussion and you started downvoting all my comments I’d see it as a sign of pettiness and disengage.
I’d probably also tag you as a reminder to myself not to engage with you again.
I’m telling you I downvoted your comment.
You got your answer, I guess.
I guess. I don’t get it. If I refused to talk to anyone if they ever downvoted me, I would run out of people to talk pretty quickly.
This sums it up exactly!
You aren’t just downvoting comments you disagree with, you’re downvoting comments because you don’t understand them.
By downvoting instead of commenting you never open that discussion to learn about somebody’s view.
And by downvoting you’re reducing the chance that somebody else might see the comment. Who either does understand it, or responds to continue the discussion.
What?
To go with the theme of this thread, I have no interest in debating why I downvoted you, nor if downvotes should be used for any reason. What I didn’t get is why you would (or not I guess since you replied) disengage with someone that downvoted you.
My actual question that you can’t seem to answer was: now that you know I downvoted your comment (the information you’ve been advocating for), now what? What are you going to do with that information now that you have it? Why is it so important to you to have it?
To me, a downvote means “what you wrote contributes nothing to the discussion, and should be less visible”. If someone downvotes me, I take it as a sign that no further discussion in that direction is meaningful.
I completely agree, you’ve summed up my view far better than I could.
There’s also a controversial approach that if you’re debating with someone and you believe in the points you’re making then you should upvote even the comments you disagree.
By doing so the full thread of comments is ranked higher so more people see the incredibly clever points you’re articulating.
This isn’t so relevant on Lemmy right now because it’s still small so you might read all comments on ba post. But it made a massive difference on reddit where there were thousands of comments. So the algorithm becomes very selective.
Wouldn’t that give trolls a juicy target to harass, thus leading into people not bothering to downvote to avoid the harassment?
That’s what the report and block tools are for.
If it occurs harassment is an issue for moderators and admins to deal with.