Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
Both up- and downvotes do have a significant function. I actually prefer the lemmy method where they are presented separately.
A simple example could be a post such as:
YSK: The world actually is flat
-contains link to some bogus videos and stuff
In a lemmy w/o downvotes, it could show as only (10 upvotes) until a mod gets around to removing it, whilst in one with downvotes this post would quickly accrue downvotes if it gained any amount of traction.
I used a simple example here, but my point is that the combination of up and downvotes provide an easy gauge of general sentiment towards the statement/comment/post.
Which is fine and better. It encourages moderation by the site instead of by users. The only function of downvotes on reddit is a very poor attempt to offload moderation to users.
The result without downvotes is exactly the same, because downvotes don’t actually do anything to the sorting algorithm on this platform. They just function to upset people. Lemmy’s algorithms heavily favour activity over votes, meaning that the things that get the most responses end up the most visible.
The up side of it is considerably better. Go ask Hexbear or Beehaw users how much nicer the behaviour and environment is without downvotes. Nobody in spaces that have experienced it without for a couple months will tell you that they want them back.
This is Lemmy, not hexbear, beehaw or similar forums. I’ve had experience with other platforms removing “downvotes” (or their version of it). Sometimes it works, but oftentimes it doesn’t.
We can go a lot further into this discussion, but I’ll summarize my opinion as follows:
Neither having nor not having downvotes is “right”. They’re just different - and lead to different types of forums and discussions. I prefer the former, because in many topics that I want to discuss, they provide important feedback (both to me and others), even if you perceive that this feedback comes at a cost.
If you like, we can elaborate further, but I think it comes down to Beehaw ( & co.) and Lemmy being different platforms, which is a good thing. The world would be a very dreary place if everything was the same - and this is something that corporations are constantly pushing us towards.
All of those are lemmy, it seems like you don’t understand what lemmy is? Lemmy is software, all 3 of these sites use Lemmy. Several instances of lemmy have no downvotes at all, the environment in them is better and much more enjoyable for everyone involved. Everyone that experiences this comes around to it.
Read some research on the topic, the issue is that these systems have multiple negative cumulative effects: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.1429
The fact of the matter is that downvotes DON’T improve a community. They create feedback anxiety in positive posters that reduces their activity, while in negative posters it increases their activity and decreases the quality of their future posts. It creates the literal opposite result of what you want in a community. Positive feedback on the other hand generally has no effect on behaviour. These are objective facts.
That’s actually rather interesting. It’s good to see a justification of why places like Beehaw disallow downvotes. I can sort of understand how this relates to YouTube removing downvotes as well, though maybe this shouldn’t be applied to videos that are a potentially more damaging medium.
Youtube likely has never used downvotes as any sort of metric for algorithm so their removal of them is entirely about user behaviour, based on research like this. Their algorithm work will be pretty much 100% derived from what keeps people watching the most and longest and what keeps the ad clickers clicking ads. They will be completely zoned in on total activity and profit. Not quality. This is unfortunately also why outrage content and debatebro reaction drama is all the boom regardless of its obvious harm socially.
As someone in an instance without downvotes, I can confirm that I don’t miss them. It didn’t take months, either, just a week or so.
The atmosphere and behaviour of people is noticeably different, it really takes no time at all to realise it. Combativeness massively decreases, and if people disagree they actually write a comment explaining why they disagree. It prevents bubbles in the community forming around “allowed” thought too, where downvotes are often used as a tool of keeping out thought that everyone disagrees with even when it might be correct. Moderation can keep out thought that’s actually bad and needs to be kept out, the rest can happen through real community social interaction instead of bizarrely handing over what should be a very human mechanic to a gameified system of carrot or negging.
I’m too new to the fediverse to form an opinion about community differences in general, but I have definitely noticed that my own behavior is different without the downvote option. The biggest difference for me is that I am more likely to do things that decrease my interaction with content that upsets me, rather than reading hateful garbage just to get the dubious satisfaction of pushing the little down arrow button. The stuff I downvoted wasn’t usually something I could have discussed in a civil way, it was trolling, bigotry, or generally hateful comments. (I am part of frequently-targeted groups, and no platform is free of bigots and trolls). Now, when I see that kind of thing, I do what I should have been doing all along, which is some combination of blocking, reporting, and just skipping over things I recognize as not worth my time. I think you’re right that the voting system can replace moderation in unhelpful ways. Trolls should be removed, not just downvoted in situ.
Hexbear is completely free of that rubbish and well established since it’s been on lemmy for 3 years now. It is also the only instance with visible pronouns next to usernames. Really depends on your politics however as it’s a mixed communist + anarchist community.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out! The issue isn’t my local instance, though, it’s that clearly marked safe spaces always attract people who want to make those spaces unsafe. It’s kind of a “Trolls? Must be Wednesday” kind of thing for me, after a lot of years online, but it never stops hurting. The only thing downvoting does to trolls is allow non-trolls to communicate to one another that the space is still supposed to be safe, which offers a little comfort, but it doesn’t actually make the space safe. Banning the trolls is much more effective.
That’s fair. Hexbear actually ended up without downvotes specifically because trans people and admins recognised that trans threads were getting downvoted on the sly, targeted. This was used to purge them and follow up with the establishment of what is probably one of the best cultures around lgbt issues online, in my opinion anyway. There will certainly be some issues a liberal disagrees with the community on, and even certain segments of the left. But in terms of lgbt people it’s honestly tip of the spear for how shit should be handled online. I have a take that places that put pronouns in profile pages instead of next to usernames are cowards trying to hide lgbt features from phobes while performing to lgbt people via them. They should be displayed.
Very cool. I think you can see by my display name that I like showing pronouns, lol. I remember when putting pronouns on a name tag was like waving a trans flag. It wasn’t very long ago. And I also appreciate the heads-up on politics. I’m far left enough that I usually feel comfortable with the level of disagreement I have with communists and anarchists, but the feeling is not always mutual, so it depends on specifics. I will take a look at the communities when I have a little time to go in depth.
Anyway, I think we’re a bit off topic, except that issues with bigotry etc are part of why figuring out how to manage vote history is important.